Mixed report on renewable energy in U.S.

By Kate Galbraith and Matthew L. Wald
Published: December 5, 2008

NEW YORK: In hopes of slowing global warming and creating "green jobs," the U.S. Congress and the incoming administration may soon impose a mandate that the United States get 10 or 15 percent of its electricity from renewable sources within a few years.
Yet the experience of U.S. states that have adopted similar goals suggests that passing that requirement could be a lot easier than achieving it. The record so far is decidedly mixed: Some states appear to be on track to meet energy targets, but others have fallen behind on the aggressive goals they set several years ago.
The states' goals have contributed to rapid growth of wind turbines and solar power stations in some areas, notably the West, but that growth has come on a minuscule base. Nationwide, the hard numbers provide a sobering counterpoint to the green-energy enthusiasm sweeping Washington.
Al Gore, the former vice president, is running advertisements saying that the United States could switch entirely to renewable power within a decade. But most experts do not see how. Even with the fast growth of recent years, less than 3 percent of the nation's electricity is coming from renewable sources, excepting dams. "I think we are really overselling how quick, how easy and how complete the transition can be," said George Sterzinger, executive director of the Renewable Energy Policy Project, a Washington advocacy group.
More than half the 50 states have adopted formal green-energy goals. In many states, the standards are too new to be evaluated, but so far the number of successes and failures is "sort of a 50-50 kind of affair," said Ryan Wiser, a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who is co-author of a recent report on the targets.

Connecticut and Massachusetts have made their utilities pay for missing targets, and utilities in Arizona and Nevada are lagging. California and New York appear almost certain to miss deadlines that are looming in the next few years.
A few states have met their goals, or even exceeded them. One big success has been Texas, which has capitalized on a wind-power boom and already exceeded its 2015 goal. The state gets 4.5 percent of its electricity from the turbines. New Mexico's big utilities are at 6 percent renewable power, within striking distance of the state's 10 percent goal by 2011.
The structure and aggressiveness of the targets varies widely among states; some have been able to meet their goals because they set relatively modest ones in the first place. Maine set a goal of 30 percent renewable power by 2000, an impressive-sounding target that was essentially meaningless because the state was already getting close to half its electricity from sources that counted against the goal, including dams. A more recent law requires development of new renewables in Maine.
In those states that set aggressive goals and have had trouble meeting them, a big hurdle has been building power lines that could transmit the electricity, Wiser said. Another has been the utilities' inability to secure enough long-term contracts to buy renewable power.
California is the prime example of a state reaching high and falling short. Big utilities there are supposed to get 20 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2010, and most are expected to miss that deadline.
San Diego Gas & Electric gets a mere 6 percent of electricity from renewable sources, and the state's other two big utilities, Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison, are at 14 and 15.7 percent, which includes some dams. The Edison number is a 2007 figure; the other two are more recent.
Fines for missing the targets can run to $25 million a year, but because of fine print in the regulations, the San Diego utility and Pacific Gas & Electric said they did not expect to incur fines; a representative for Southern California Edison said he was not sure.
The utilities cited a catalog of reasons for falling short. These include stop-and-start federal tax incentives for renewable power, problems finding reliable suppliers among the many young and fragile startups in the industry, and difficulty getting transmission lines built and obtaining permits to build solar stations and wind farms.
"Not every part of the country is equally blessed in terms of having locations for renewables," said Debra Reed, president and chief executive of San Diego Gas & Electric, which is having trouble getting new transmission lines built to an area with a lot of sunshine.
Moreover, for utilities, the effective goals keep changing. As customers' electricity use rises, so does the amount of renewable-derived electricity the utilities must produce to meet their percentage targets. "When you're judged based on customer demand, you're always chasing a moving target," said Stuart Hemphill, vice president of Southern California Edison, which serves a fast-growing population.
The only mechanism the states have to force utilities into line is to fine them for not meeting the targets, but such costs would ultimately be passed on to electricity customers or company shareholders, neither of whom would look favorably on politicians who imposed such a burden in tough times.
That may explain why most of the penalties issued to date have been modest. In 2006, the payments totaled around $18 million for Massachusetts and $5.6 million for Connecticut, and virtually nothing in any other state, Wiser's report said.