Tool Tracks California's Renewable Energy Progress

Tool Tracks California's Renewable Energy Progress

California's clean energy policies have helped the state double the delivery of renewable energy to the grid since the Renewables Portfolio Standard (RPS) was launched in 2002. The state requires utilities to meet 33 percent of retail sales from eligible renewable resources by 2020. By the end of 2012, an estimated 22 percent of retail sales were from renewable resources.  

California has an estimated 17,400 megawatts (MW) of renewable energy, enough to power more than 4 million homes. This represents more than twice the renewable generating capacity that was online in 2002 when the program began.

The California Energy Commission recently launched the Tracking Progress tool to track progress toward the state's energy goals. The site provides detailed information on a variety of energy programs, including the RPS and the Governor's goal of installing 12,000 MW of renewable distributed generation (DG) by 2020. Distributed generation is small-scale renewable energy facilities that are 20 MW or less in size. California currently has about 4,400 MW of operating DG and, if all renewable DG programs are fully subscribed by 2020, California will have about 9,000 MW of renewable DG. By transforming the market for renewable DG, these programs could also lead to the installation of the nearly 3,000 MW of additional capacity needed to achieve the 12,000 MW goal.

As one of its RPS responsibilities, the Energy Commission verifies renewable generation claims and uses the findings to determine compliance by the investor-owned utilities (IOUs) and publicly owned utilities. The most recent verification report covers preliminary verification of eligible renewable generation from 2008 through 2010 for the IOUs and covers nearly 1,880 claims.

Updates for the Renewable Energy Tracking Progress tool are available quarterly.