The first post AB 32 report on California's energy policy just came out. 

This was not an easy task to pull together.  California is the second largest consumer of transportation fuel in the world--16 billion gallons of gasoline and 4 billion gallons of diesel annually.  We are the twelfth largest emitter of greenhouse gases [GHG's] in the world, and the eighth largest economy.

The major issues are transportation and powering our electrical grid.  Reducing our dependence on fossil fuels is critical to restraining climate change, and the California legislature has passed a number of laws addressing what needs to be done.

How effective are all these laws and policies?  Our public utilities are no closer to meeting the requirement that 20% of their power come from renewables by 2010 than when the law was enacted:

Demand has grown apace with bringing renewables online--but they are just treading water.  This may be telegraphing an increase in power costs to lower demand.

If not the utilities, then who?

The California Public Utilities Commission, through its “Big Bold Energy Efficiency Strategies,” has adopted three programs designed to move all new residential and commercial construction to a zero net energy standard. The goal of this program is to reach zero net energy in residential construction by 2020 and in commercial construction by 2030. 

The CPUC is calling on builders and developers of residential projects to design to a net-zero energy building standard by 2020, and 2030 for commercial.  Distributed generation--namely PV--is exempt from property taxes in California, is exempt from discretionary review--building permit review only--and can be deployed in a matter of months rather than years.  And people like shaded parking!

Entire report [pdf, 4MB, 301p] downloadable here.