How High California Must Jump to Top Zero Emissions Bar

California can achieve a zero-emissions economy by 2045 with existing technologies, but only if the state adds a lot more solar, wind, and battery storage each year. It specifically requires that over the next 25 years, annual build outs of these resources exceed their single biggest growth year to date, according to a draft joint agencies report on SB 100 previewed last month.

It also concluded that California must keep its natural gas fleet in place, while slowly dialing down reliance as the renewables come online.

California’s biggest annual solar build to date was 2.67 GW. Going forward, therefore, requires annual solar capacity additions of 2.7 GW, the report’s ”High Electrification” scenario stated. Wind’s best year added nearly 1 GW, thus nearly 1 GW of wind must be added every year. But batteries must nearly double. Battery storage’s top year produced about 1 MW, and now 2.2 GW of new battery storage annually is necessary.

The total cost to meet these renewable load increases will be between $62 billion and $70 billion through 2045. It will have an average electricity cost of $0.148/kWh to $0.171/kWh electricity cost, the joint agencies reported.

A resource mix more diverse than the high electrification scenario will more quickly achieve the zero greenhouse gas goal, but it comes with a higher cost . More solar, wind, battery storage , and zero carbon firm resources, like geothermal and hydrogen, could further reduce natural gas reliance but would produce “an $8 billion increase in total resource cost,” California Energy Commission spokesperson Michael Ward said.

Zero carbon is defined

The report fills a gap by providing California’s first definition of a zero-carbon emission resource, Jessie Knapstein, a senior consultant with Energy and Environmental Economics, said. E3 supports modeling and planning by the agencies.

A resource contributes toward SB 100’s 2045 goal if it is renewable portfolio standard-eligible, according to the CEC guidebook , or if it has zero onsite emissions . The latter includes large hydropower and nuclear power from Palo Verde.

The California Public Utilities Commission, California Energy Commission and the California Air Resources Board’s joint SB 100 report is due to the legislature Jan. 1, 2021.

This work could allow the agencies to conform their planning efforts with “uniform reference points and assumptions,” making future analyses “apples to apples comparisons,” Knapstein said.

Key challenges

Stakeholders have expressed concern about assumptions of the eligible resources and about projected loads, the joint agencies reported .

Regarding eligibility: if a resource’s cost is too uncertain to be forecast or if there is doubt about it being carbon emissions-free by the new definition, it was excluded from the modeling.

In addition, SB 100 expressly requires that loads from all utility retail sales in California and served by the Department of Water Resources be met by greenhouse gas-free resources. But bill provisions allowed the joint agencies to reduce the 2045 load by emissions-free resources to only about 80% of the state’s total load. The portion of the load lost to transmission and distribution system line losses, to solar self-generation, and to storage inefficiencies was not factored in and may be met by other resources.

The SB 100 report was challenged for a number of other reasons. They range from not addressing needed emission reductions in the electric sector to giving short shrift to long duration storage.

This report shows there is a critical contradiction in analyses by the joint agencies and CARB, Union of Concerned Scientists Senior Energy Analyst Mark Specht said .

The joint agencies found electric sector carbon emissions must be reduced to 24 million metric tons by 2045, but should move to a “lower carbon” scenario, Specht said. “ CARB’s draft carbon neutrality report , released in August, found electric sector emissions must be no more than 10 million metric tons.”

There also is concern about “the sheer number of projects and their land use implications,” E3 Senior Partner Arne Olson said.

Wind and solar use more land but are likely less expensive than battery storage, for instance. At stakeholder insistence , the joint agencies agreed to further explore the value of those comparative benefits before making final resource choices.

Due to the growing number of load serving entities taking over customers previously served by investor-owned utilities, procurement has slowed while the new Community Choice Aggregators assume a larger role. But that is being resolved by accelerating community energy’s joint power procurements, California Community Choice Association Executive Director Beth Vaughan reported .

The joint agencies’ energy procurement modeling may be accurate, but questions remain about their reliability scenarios, California Independent System Operator Director for California Regulator Affairs Delphine Hou said . Uncertainty remains over the state’s 15% reserve margin as more of the load is served by variable renewables.

And their planning may not align with “more aspirational state and local transportation and electrification goals,” Los Angeles Department of Water and Power Assistant Director of LA Clean Grid Strategy James Barner added .

The “urgency” to meet new battery storage needs is “understated, especially for long-duration energy storage,” California Energy Storage Association Executive Director Alex Morris emphasized .

Back to the land

“Where are all these renewables projects going to be built? How are we going to make decisions as a state about land uses?” GridLabs Founder Ric O’Connell asked.

Infrastructure building must accelerate, but “it will impact a lot of communities, and cannot be done with ‘gun-to-the-head’ land-use planning,” he said. A thoughtful conversation is needed, he added.

The joint agencies’ report “a need for 40 GW to 67 GW of new utility-scale solar,” depending on other resources’ growth, and we need to plan for where it will be built, Large-Scale Solar Association Executive Director Shannon Eddy said. “The blackouts were a wake-up call, telling us we are way behind on planning and procurement. The only mistake we can make is not building new renewable energy.”

California faces mounting costs and deficits, but Eddy said, “We must do something that has never been done. The climate emergency is the challenge of our time.

The high-level takeaways from the assessment’s ten scenarios may be revised in the joint agencies’ final implementation report to the state legislature.