A California program designed to spur innovation in technologies for distributed generation of low-emission energy is disproportionately benefiting fossil fuels projects, primarily natural gas — and a new proposal to update the emissions threshold that determines which projects are eligible will not change that, critics of the program say.
Some 70 percent of the energy generation that has so far received rebates from California’s $83-million-a-year, ratepayer-funded Self-Generation Incentive Program (SGIP) has been fossil-fueled, according to the Sierra Club.
SGIP, administered by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), provides rebates for distributed energy systems installed on the customer side of the utility meter — “behind the meter” in industry parlance.
To qualify for funding, distributed energy system providers must demonstrate that their technology’s greenhouse gas emissions fall below a certain threshold, ensuring that it’s cleaner than the grid energy it will replace.
Janice Lin, executive director of the California Energy Storage Alliance (CESA), says that the new emissions threshold proposed by CPUC chairman Michael Picker is too high because it fails to properly account for California’s Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS), which directs energy providers to increase procurement from renewable sources to 33 percent of the state’s total energy mix by 2020.
“If they had correctly factored in the 33 percent RPS,” Lin told DeSmog, “they would have arrived at a much lower emissions factor threshold.”
In one example cited in a comment CESA and the Natural Resources Defense Council submitted to the CPUC, a consumer using a distributed energy system that adheres to the proposed emissions factor could be responsible for as much as 23 percent more greenhouse gas emissions than if they were to simply stick with the grid, which is easily on pace to achieve
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