What's the Most Important Thing California Can Do with Its Clean Energy?

By Conner VanLoo

"It is like the lunch table you sat around as a kid — one where you can trade that banana pudding that overflows at your house for one of your neighbor’s chocolate chip cookies. It’s a delicious deal, where everybody wins."

This is exactly what will happen if bill AB 813 passes in California. It will create a better trading platform between Oregon, Washington, Nevada and California. California will share their extra solar power and the other three states will share their extra wind, solar, and hydropower resources with California. This will help all four states move toward a low-carbon future.

AB 813 will do these for the four states:

1. A structure that any regional grid operator, or trading platform, needs to have in order for California utilities to join.
2. These include requirements for limiting conflicts of interest on the grid operator’s board, protecting the states’ policies from federal intervention and getting states’ input, providing for public participation, and ensuring California’s climate goals are met.
3. A road map for how CAISO can evolve into a multistate entity, or a bigger table, through a public process at the California Energy Commission to ensure CAISO meets these requirements.

The bill has yet to be passed due to some details still being worked out like the ones stated above plus others that will help with this cause. Because we are sharing, this new regional electricity grid will give us more access to renewable resources. 

Resources: 

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/articles/2018/03/what-s-the-most-important-thing-california-can-do-with-its-clean-energy.html