The Renewable Energy Acceleration Law (REAL) was submitted to the California Legislature’s Legislative Counsel as an unbacked bill in February, 2024, and assigned RN#2406426.
REAL started out as a citizen’s initiative ballot measure. We were unable to raise the $7 million dollars in funding needed to gather the 800,000 petition signatures required to place it on ballot in 2024.
Here is the full text of the proposed law:
An act to amend Section 218 of, and to add Section 780.7 to, the Public Utilities Code, relating to electricity.
THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA DO ENACT AS FOLLOWS:
SECTION 1. This act shall be known, and may be cited, as the Renewable Energy Acceleration Law of 2024.
SEC. 2. The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:
(a) California has enacted multiple laws to decarbonize the electrical grid by 2045. California needs to triple the current deployment rate of renewable energy projects to meet its 2045 greenhouse gas emissions goals.
(b) Developers of new renewable energy projects must apply to the Independent System Operator for permission to access transmission lines, but a backlog for approvals now stretches up to eight years. In 2022, the Independent System Operator did not accept any new applications for solar projects. Transmission gridlock hampers faster deployment.
(c) The sale of rooftop solar setups has plummeted about 80 percent since a Public Utilities Commission ruling in late 2022 reduced, by 75 percent, the compensation that new solar owners get for surplus electricity. The California Solar and Storage Association estimates that 17,000 solar jobs statewide have been lost since the commission implemented this rule change.
(d) A controversial decision by the Public Utilities Commission in November 2023 stopped farms, schools, shopping centers, and warehouses from using their own rooftop solar to reduce their electricity bill and selling electricity to subtenants.
(e) Due to the falling price of solar generation and battery storage, and generous federal tax incentives, tens of billions of dollars of private investment capital are available to build solar farms at no expense to state government.
(f) State law provides utilities with a monopoly on transmission lines. This limitation worked well during the 20th century but now impedes 21st-century energy technology. Because industrial and agricultural property owners are prohibited from selling the electricity that they generate from photovoltaic panels to neighboring properties, known as “over-the-fence” sales, these property owners are unable to pool the cost and benefits of low-cost solar electricity generation on their lands.
(g) The deployment of privately financed, decentralized electrical systems and microgrids is being blocked by antiquated regulations that prevent communities, businesses, farms, and industry from sharing clean energy technologies.
(h) Scientists and the United States Department of Energy encourage the rapid expansion of decentralized electrical systems and microgrids and has found them to be proven technologies that are as safe, or more safe, from fires than centralized electrical systems that require moving electricity through high-voltage transmission lines over large distances.
(i) Decentralized electrical systems and microgrids provide urgently needed resilience and safety from transmission grid breakdowns caused by fires, earthquakes, criminal ransomware, terrorism, and cyberwarfare.
(j) Due to climate change and long-term drought, more than 500,000 acres of farmland in the San Joaquin Valley alone will need to be fallowed.
(k) Loss of farmland to drought is expected to have significant environmental consequences in disadvantaged areas of the state with high Latino populations, populations that already suffer from some of the worst air quality in the United States. If this fallowed land is left barren, air quality in the regions will worsen due to increased dust emissions leading to adverse consequences for human health.
(l) Loss of farmland due to drought is also expected to have significant economic consequences, leading to increased income inequality and injustice.
(m) Placing solar panels on drought-fallowed farmland will provide jobs for
people who lose farm-related jobs, will provide income to farmers, and will reduce dust emissions from fallowed farmland.
(n) As current fossil-fueled farm vehicles, including trucks and tractors, are replaced with electric vehicles, electricity usage will increase dramatically.
(o) Satisfying the growing electricity needs of agriculture through onsite solar systems will reduce pressure on the electrical grid, both in terms of transmission and in terms of reducing the total generation needs of the state.
(p) Because generating solar electricity on farms would cost less than the agricultural rate that farmers currently pay to utility companies for electrical service, solar farms can sell energy to participating neighbors for a discount of 20 to 30 percent and lock in those rates against future utility rate increases.
(q) Developing solar farms on agricultural and industrial land and allowing for the sale of electricity in a limited geographical neighborhood will create a market mechanism to spur the development of electric vehicle charging in rural areas for use by both residential customers and commercial entities. Rural air quality will improve as farm vehicles and water pumps transition to clean energy sources.
(r) As heavy-duty transportation vehicles transition to electric vehicles, there will be a need for an extensive network of fast charging stations for heavy-duty trucks along corridors, such as Interstate 5 and State Route 99. Many of these corridors are in rural areas far from where electric vehicle charging stations are being developed. This act would enable renewable energy to be used to charge electric vehicles along these and other transportation corridors in California.
SEC. 3. Section 218 of the Public Utilities Code is amended to read:
218. (a) “Electrical corporation” includes every corporation or person owning, controlling, operating, or managing any electric plant for compensation within this state, except where electricity is generated on or distributed by the producer through private property solely for its own use or the use of its tenants and not for sale or transmission to others.
(b) “Electrical corporation” does not include a corporation or person employing cogeneration technology or producing power from other than a conventional power source for the generation of electricity solely for any one or more of the following purposes:
(1) Its own use or the use of its tenants.
(2) The use of or sale to not more than two other corporations or persons solely for use on the real property on which the electricity is generated or on real property immediately adjacent thereto, unless there is an intervening public street constituting the boundary between the real property on which the electricity is generated and the immediately adjacent property and one or more of the following applies:
(A) The real property on which the electricity is generated and the immediately adjacent real property is not under common ownership or control, or that common ownership or control was gained solely for purposes of sale of the electricity so generated and not for other business purposes.
(B) The useful thermal output of the facility generating the electricity is not used on the immediately adjacent property for petroleum production or refining.
(C) The electricity furnished to the immediately adjacent property is not utilized by a subsidiary or affiliate of the corporation or person generating the electricity.
(3) Sale or transmission to an electrical corporation or state or local public agency,
but not for sale or transmission to others, unless the corporation or person is otherwise an electrical corporation.
(4) (A) The use or sale of electricity from a solar energy system if all of the following apply:
(i) The solar energy system is not on residential land or productive farmland.
(ii) The solar energy system’s solar array is not larger than 100 acres.
(iii) (I) All solar energy system users meet both of the following requirements:
(ia) The property of the solar energy system user is contiguous to the property
of the solar energy system seller or another solar energy system user.
(ib) The property of the solar energy system user is within a two-mile radius of the property of the solar energy system seller.
(II) As used in this clause, “contiguous” does not include an intervening public road between the property of the solar energy system user and the property of the solar energy system seller.
(iv) The owner of the solar energy system finances, safely builds, maintains, and privately insures every component of the solar energy system, including, but not limited to, the photovoltaic array, associated battery storage, new distribution lines, and meters.
(v) The solar energy system does not use the existing distribution lines owned by an electrical corporation for the distribution of its electricity without an explicit written agreement.
(B) The definitions in Section 780.7 apply to this paragraph.
(c) “Electrical corporation” does not include a corporation or person employing landfill gas technology for the generation of electricity for any one or more of the following purposes:
(1) Its own use or the use of not more than two of its tenants located on the real property on which the electricity is generated.
(2) The use of or sale to not more than two other corporations or persons solely for use on the real property on which the electricity is generated.
(3) Sale or transmission to an electrical corporation or state or local public agency.
(d) “Electrical corporation” does not include a corporation or person employing digester gas technology for the generation of electricity for any one or more of the following purposes:
(1) Its own use or the use of not more than two of its tenants located on the real property on which the electricity is generated.
(2) The use of or sale to not more than two other corporations or persons solely for use on the real property on which the electricity is generated.
(3) Sale or transmission to an electrical corporation or state or local public agency, if the sale or transmission of the electricity service to a retail customer is provided through the transmission system of the existing local publicly owned electric utility or electrical corporation of that retail customer.
(e) “Electrical corporation” does not include an independent solar energy producer, as defined in Article 3 (commencing with Section 2868) of Chapter 9 of Part 2.
(f) Nothing in paragraph (4) of subdivision (b) supersedes otherwise applicable local laws that regulate solar energy systems.
(g) The amendments made to this section at the 1987 portion of the 1987–88 Regular Session of the Legislature do not apply to any corporation or person employing cogeneration technology or producing power from other than a conventional power source for the generation of electricity that physically produced electricity prior to January 1, 1989, and furnished that electricity to immediately adjacent real property for use thereon prior to January 1, 1989.
SEC. 4. Section 780.7 is added to the Public Utilities Code, to read:
780.7. (a) As used in this section, the following definitions apply:
(1) “Distribution line” means an electrical line that carries electricity that is used to distribute electricity within the area described in clause (iii) of subparagraph (A) of paragraph (4) of subdivision (b) of Section 218.
(2) “Productive farmland” means agriculturally zoned land that has been used for agricultural production within the last four years or that has sufficient access to water for irrigation.
(3) “Solar energy system” means an electricity-generating photovoltaic array and the associated energy storage, metering network, microgrid, and electrical lines used for direct distribution to solar energy system users meeting the requirements of clause (iii) of subparagraph (A) of paragraph (4) of subdivision (b) of Section 218.
(4) “Solar energy system seller” means a seller of electricity from a solar energy system.
(5) “Solar energy system user” means a user of electricity from a solar energy system.
(b) An electrical corporation shall allow all solar energy system users and all solar energy system sellers to maintain their customer accounts with the electrical corporation.
(c) An electrical corporation shall provide all solar energy system users and all solar energy system sellers with the same timely schedule for connection approvals that the electrical corporation provides to the nearest existing rooftop solar system within the electrical corporation’s service territory.
SEC. 5. No reimbursement is required by this act pursuant to Section 6 of Article XIII B of the California Constitution because the only costs that may be incurred by a local agency or school district will be incurred because this act creates a new crime or infraction, eliminates a crime or infraction, or changes the penalty for a crime or infraction, within the meaning of Section 17556 of the Government Code, or changes the definition of a crime within the meaning of Section 6 of Article XIII B of the California Constitution.
LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL’S DIGEST
Bill No.
as introduced, ________.
General Subject: Electrical corporations: solar energy systems: exemption.
Existing law vests the Public Utilities Commission with regulatory authority over public utilities, including electrical corporations. “Electrical corporation” is defined for that purpose to include every corporation or person owning, controlling, operating, or managing any electric plant for compensation within this state, except as specified.
This bill, the Renewable Energy Acceleration Law of 2024, would additionally exempt from the definition of “electrical corporation” the use or sale of electricity from a solar energy system, as defined, if certain conditions are met, including, among others, that the solar energy system’s solar array is not larger than 100 acres, as specified. The bill would require an electrical corporation to allow all solar energy system users, as defined, and all solar energy system sellers, as defined, to maintain their customer accounts with the electrical corporation. The bill would require an electrical corporation to provide all solar energy system users and all solar energy system sellers with the same timely schedule for connection approvals that the electrical corporation provides to the nearest existing rooftop solar system within the electrical corporation’s service territory.
Under existing law, a violation of the Public Utilities Act or any order, decision, rule, direction, demand, or requirement of the commission is a crime.
Because the above provisions would be part of the act and a violation of a commission action implementing this bill’s requirements would be a crime, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program.
The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement.
This bill would provide that no reimbursement is required by this act for a specified reason.
Vote: majority. Appropriation: no. Fiscal committee: yes. State-mandated local program: yes.