Thursday, December 11, 2008

Feed In Tariffs – The Right Idea, Right Now

Sierra Club California just submitted a letter urging California’s energy officials to embrace “feed-in tariffs” in a big way.


Feed-in tariffs are incentive structures used to encourage generation of renewable energy by compensating for price differences between renewable power and fossil fuel electricity. As applied in Germany, this system sets a fair price for renewable power, encouraging widespread generation and use.

Not only would feed-in tariffs encourage cleaner power production, they also represent a good way for the state to take on climate change. Sierra Club California has
urged the California Air Resources Board to consider this powerful economic tool as it considers the Climate Change Scoping Plan today and tomorrow.

But for now, the state has proposed a limited version of feed-in tariffs, limiting them to smaller plants (less than 20 megawatts in size). We are telling the air board and the energy commission to raise that limit, and to give feed in tariffs more power to increase the amount of renewable energy generated in the state.

We’re also working with lawmakers to generate measures that would encourage California to embrace this powerful new philosophy – and that encourage the state to raise its clean power production goal to 33% by 2020.

Read Sierra Club California’s Dec 10 comments to the California Energy Commission

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Family Farm in Trouble

Someone please tell me when it became acceptable to take away a family's legacy and home for the sake of power lines. Where are the voices of reason to stop Edison from placing towers dead center on the San Andreas Fault? Someone with the power to stop Edison, drive out onto Elizabeth Lake Road in Leona Valley, California and take a look at the travesty taking place and stop them while there is still time.

Glenn Buxton
Leona Valley, CA