Is California’s Electricity Policy Really a Model for the United States?
Received Date: Mar 02, 2011 / Accepted Date: Aug 15, 2011 / Published Date: Aug 15, 2011
Abstract
Concerns over rising energy prices, climate change, and energy security have many policymakers and analysts promoting demand-side management (DSM) programs and renewable portfolio standards (RPSs). In recent years, California has been cited as the example for the United States to follow in the national mission to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. California purports to have utilized aggressive DSM and efficiency policies to hold its per capita electricity demand 40% below the national average, and the state stands ready to boost its still unachieved 20% RPS to a Herculean 33% by 2020. The present paper aims to make clear, however, that California’s electricity policy is not only unrealistic for the United States but undesirable as well. Continued economic and population growth confirm that the United States’ path to clean, reliable, and affordable electricity will need to be different than the one taken by California.
Keywords: Demand side management; Renewable portfolio standard; California public utilities commission; Western climate initiative; “Tragedy of the Commons”
Citation: Clemente J (2011) Is California’s Electricity Policy Really a Model for the United States?. InnovativeEnergy Policies 1: 102.
Copyright: ©2011 Clemente J. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
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