Adapting California’s resources to changing regulations

Electric power generation is the second-largest category of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) in California, next to transportation. Californiapsilas legislature and energy regulators have adopted aggressive controls on the GHG emissions from electricity production, as well as aggressive targets for renewable energy due to heavy reliance on natural gas as a fuel for electric generation. These regulations will change the operational characteristics of Californiapsilas resource mix. There is essentially no coal-fired generation within California, and readily identified coal-fired generation from out-of-state sources represents less than 5% of the energy procurement by the three large investor-owned utilities, although smaller municipal utilities have substantial imports from out-of state coal plants. However, California depends heavily on imports from other states, and the supporting generation is often difficult to identify. Increasing the amount of renewable in-state generation involves increasing reliance on intermittent, often remote resources. This requires new transmission and increases ancillary service requirements. Decreasing the GHG emissions introduces uncertainty as to whether the adopted mechanisms will actually be effective if other states do not adopt similar enforcement mechanisms. If Californiapsilas regulations result in changes to generation dispatch in other states, flows throughout the western region could change. Solving these issues can involve demand response resources (which California is actively developing) in addition to other supply resources.