The "Big Picture"
Renewable energy is "the natural choice." Harnessing the earth's own inexhaustible energy - whether from the sun, wind, geothermal, or other renewable sources - can reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and provide clean, affordable electricity.
California has made a bold decision... to place 3,000 megawatts of new, solar produced electricity systems on rooftops by 2017. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's goal is to put solar systems on a million California roofs.
But that's only part of the "big picture." Almost 11 percent of the electricity we use comes from renewable sources - biomass, geothermal, small hydroelectric, solar, and wind (see graph below).
California's Renewables Portfolio Standard (RPS) was established by Senate Bill 1078 (Sher, Chapter 516, Statutes of 2002). It required the state's retail sellers of electricity - investor-owned utilities (IOUs), electric service providers (ESPs), and community choice aggregators (CCAs) - to procure 20 percent of their retail electricity sales with eligible sources of renewable energy by 2017. California's energy agencies subsequently volunteered to achieving the 20 percent target by 2010; seven years earlier than the target.
This 20 percent target was then mandated by the enactment of Senate Bill 107 (Simitian and Perata, Chapter 464, Statutes of 2006). The California Energy Commission's 2004 Energy Policy Report Update calls for increasing that goal to 33 percent by 2020.
The Governor's goal for a million solar roofs is an important part of that "bigger picture."
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