News, CalWEA in the Media, and reports of interest to our members
If California kills the Fountain Wind Project, sited on private, active timberland next to a successful 15-year-old wind project, it will chill investment in the wind projects that California needs to meet the CPUC's 9-GW in-state wind target. Worse, the Energy Commission staff's reasoning could kill any renewable energy project.
Scout Clean Energy’s Gonzaga Ridge in Merced County will provide nearly 150 megawatts of clean wind energy to 385,000 CleanPowerSF customers
A FLIGHTY WIND: The developers of a new wind farm in the Santa Barbara County hills did something a lot of people thought was impossible, a local official said today: They finished an industrial-scale renewable project on California’s pristine and heavily regulated coast.
“Projects like this are really important as a counterfactual to change that narrative, to show that it’s possible to permit and operate in coastal counties,” county supervisor and former Assemblymember Das Williams said at a press conference today.
Across America’s power grid, there’s a growing gap between what we need and what we’ll allow.
Floventis Energy and the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians on Nov. 8 signed a community benefits agreement for a floating wind farm that is expected to be operational years before deployment of California's larger-scale wind projects in the Morro Bay and Humboldt federal lease areas.
A recent state auditor's report noted that California has the seventh-highest average electricity rates in the nation, with substantial jumps in just the past year.
Any attempt to extend the license of Diablo Canyon should not divert from solving the challenges that are slowing the transition to clean, renewable energy, including reforming permitting and grid access policies and promoting resource diversity. Read more in CalWEA's editorial published in California Energy Markets.
The California Wind Energy Association (CalWEA) today praised the State Lands Commission for advancing two proposed offshore wind demonstration projects near Vandenberg Air Force Base. “This decision is an important step forward to make floating offshore wind a reality for California,” said Nancy Rader, Executive Director of CalWEA.
This new report from Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law chronicles at least 100 ordinances in 31 states (including California) that block or constrict construction of new renewable energy facilities. CalWEA concurs with the report that “At a time when the U.S. needs to be stepping up renewables installation, these laws are slowing the transition.”