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Southern California Edison, the largest subsidiary of Edison International, is the primary electricity supply company for much of Southern California. It provides 15 million people with electricity across a service territory of approximately 50,000 square miles. However, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E), Imperial Irrigation District, and some smaller municipal utilities serve substantial portions of the southern California territory. The northern part of the state is generally served by the Pacific Gas & Electric Company of San Francisco. Other investor-owned utilities (IOUs) in California include SDG&E, PacifiCorp, Bear Valley Electric, and Liberty Utilities.
The Moss Landing Power Plant is a natural gas powered electricity generation plant located in Moss Landing, California, United States, at the midpoint of Monterey Bay. Its large stacks are landmarks, visible throughout the Monterey Bay Area. The plant is owned and operated by Houston-based Dynegy and currently has a generation capacity of 1020 MW (net) from its two combined cycle generation units. It was once the largest power plant in the state of California, with a generation capacity of 2560 MW, before its two large supercritical steam units were retired in 2016.
There are several solar power plants in the Mojave Desert which supply power to the electricity grid. Insolation in the Mojave Desert is among the best available in the United States, and some significant population centers are located in the area. These plants can generally be built in a few years because solar plants are built almost entirely with modular, readily available materials. Solar Energy Generating Systems (SEGS) is the name given to nine solar power plants in the Mojave Desert which were built in the 1980s, the first commercial solar plant. These plants have a combined capacity of 354 megawatts (MW) which made them the largest solar power installation in the world, until Ivanpah Solar Power Facility was finished in 2014.
The Andasol solar power station is a 150-megawatt (MW) concentrated solar power station and Europe's first commercial plant to use parabolic troughs. It is located near Guadix in Andalusia, Spain, and its name is a portmanteau of Andalusia and Sol. The Andasol plant uses tanks of molten salt as thermal energy storage to continue generating electricity, irrespective of whether the sun is shining or not.
According to preliminary data from the US Energy Information Administration, renewable energy accounted for about 12.6% of total primary energy consumption and about 19.8% of the domestically produced electricity in the United States in 2020.
A green-collar worker is a worker who is employed in an environmental sectors of the economy. Environmental green-collar workers satisfy the demand for green development. Generally, they implement environmentally conscious design, policy, and technology to improve conservation and sustainability. Formal environmental regulations as well as informal social expectations are pushing many firms to seek professionals with expertise with environmental, energy efficiency, and clean renewable energy issues. They often seek to make their output more sustainable, and thus more favorable to public opinion, governmental regulation, and the Earth's ecology.
Sunrise Powerlink is a high-voltage power transmission line by San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) in San Diego County, California and Imperial County, California. The project was approved by the United States Forest Service (USFS) in July 2010, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in January 2009 and the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) in December 2008. SDG&E states that the 117-mile (188 km) long 230/500 kilovolt power line will bring 1000 megawatts of renewable energy from the Imperial Valley to San Diego County. The cost of the project is estimated to be $1.9 billion for construction. SDG&E, which will receive a guaranteed profit of over $1.4 billion from the construction of the line, claims that the power line is necessary to support future growth of the San Diego region, and its economic benefits to the region will measure on the order of $100 million per year. However, the project has been called one of the most controversial projects ever proposed.
Green jobs are, according to the United Nations Environment Program, "work in agricultural, manufacturing, research and development (R&D), administrative, and service activities that contribute(s) substantially to preserving or restoring environmental quality. Specifically, but not exclusively, this includes jobs that help to protect ecosystems and biodiversity; reduce energy, materials, and water consumption through high efficiency strategies; de-carbonize the economy; and minimize or altogether avoid generation of all forms of waste and pollution." The environmental sector has the dual benefit of mitigating environmental challenges as well as helping economic growth.
Solar power includes utility-scale power plants as well as local distributed generation, mostly from rooftop photovoltaics and increasingly from community solar arrays. From January through December 2021, utility-scale solar power generated 114.7 terawatt-hours (TWh), or 2.79% of all generated electrical energy in the United States. During the same time period total solar generation, including estimated small-scale photovoltaic generation, was 163.7 TWh.
BrightSource Energy, Inc. is an Oakland, California based, corporation that designs, builds, finances, and operates utility-scale solar power plants.
Topaz Solar Farm is a 550 megawatt (MWAC) photovoltaic power station in San Luis Obispo County, California, United States. Construction on the project began in November 2011 and ended in November 2014. It is one of the world's largest solar farms. The $2.5 billion project includes 9 million CdTe photovoltaic modules based on thin-film technology, manufactured by U.S. company First Solar. The company also built, operates and maintains the project for MidAmerican Renewables, a Berkshire Hathaway company. Pacific Gas and Electric will buy the electricity under a 25-year power purchase agreement. According to First Solar, it created about 400 construction jobs.
eSolar is a privately held company that develops concentrating solar power (CSP) plant technology. The company was founded by the Pasadena-based business incubator Idealab in 2007 as a developer of CSP plant technology. The company aims to develop a low cost alternative to fossil fuels through a combination of small heliostats, modular architecture, and a high-precision sun-tracking system. In October 2017, an article in GreenTech Media suggested that eSolar ceased business in late 2016.
California Proposition 7, would have required California utilities to procure half of their power from renewable resources by 2025. In order to make that goal, levels of production of solar, wind and other renewable energy resources would more than quadruple from their current output of 10.9%. It would also require California utilities to increase their purchase of electricity generated from renewable resources by 2% annually to meet Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) requirements of 40% in 2020 and 50% in 2025. Current law AB32 requires an RPS of 20% by 2010.
The Blythe Mesa Solar Power Project, also known as the Blythe Solar Energy Center, is a 485 megawatt (MWAC) photovoltaic power plant near the city of Blythe in Riverside County, California. It occupies about 2,000 acres of public land managed by the Bureau of Land Management in the Mojave Desert. The construction uses CdTe thin film panels from the U.S. firm First Solar, and the majority of the output is being sold to Kaiser Permanente and Southern California Edison under 20-year power purchase agreements.
The Rice Solar Energy Project was a 150 MW concentrating solar power facility project proposed for Rice Valley in the southern Mojave Desert, within Riverside County in southern California. It was put on indefinite hold in 2014.
TBEA Co., Ltd., previously known as Tebian Electric Apparatus, is a Chinese manufacturer of power transformers and other electrical equipment, and a developer of transmission projects. Along with competitors Tianwei Baobian Electric (TWBB) and the XD Group, it is one of the major Chinese manufacturers of transformers.
Although sun and wind could supply plenty of energy in Turkey, hydropower is the only renewable energy which is fully exploited, averaging about a fifth of national electricity supply. However in drought years much less electricity is generated by hydro. Over half of capacity is renewables, and it is estimated that over half of generation could be from renewables by 2026 but Turkey has invested less in solar and wind power than similar Mediterranean countries. Turkey lacks a renewable energy plan beyond 2023 which includes transport, industry, heating and cooling as well as electricity generation. More renewable energy could be used to reduce the nation's greenhouse gas emissions and thus avoid paying other countries' carbon tariffs. The country is a net exporter of wind power equipment, but a net importer of solar power equipment. Total non-hydro renewables overtook hydro in 2021.
Mount Signal Solar, also known as Imperial Valley Solar Project, is a 794 MWp (614 MWAC) photovoltaic power station west of Calexico, California, United States, in the southern Imperial Valley, near the Mexican border. The facility is being developed and constructed by 8minutenergy Renewables in three phases, with two completed as of 2018. At full build-out, it will be one of the world's largest PV solar farms with a capacity of about 800 MWp (600 MWAC). The project has been supported by several environmental groups, as the power station was built on low productivity farmland.
The California Flats Solar Project is a 280 megawatt (MWAC) photovoltaic power station on Hearst Communications' Jack Ranch in the Cholame Hills area of southeastern Monterey County, California, near the San Luis Obispo, Kings, and Fresno County borders in Central California.
The Springbok Solar Farm is a 443 MWp (350 MWAC) photovoltaic power station in the northwestern Mojave Desert, near California City in eastern Kern County, California. The facility was developed and constructed by 8minutenergy Renewables in three phases. It is among the country's largest PV solar farms with a capacity of about 440 MWp (350 MWAC).
References
- 1 2 3 Lifsher, Marc (2011-02-05). "Labor coalition's tactics on renewable energy projects are criticized - Three California unions criticize CURE for challenging construction projects on environmental grounds, then dropping objections after CURE's affiliate wins contracts to supply workers. CURE says it aims to protect people and the environment". Los Angeles Times . Archived from the original on 2011-02-12.
- 1 2 Rubin, Sarah (2015-03-12). "Environmentalists and shadowy labor group may sue over planned solar farm". Monterey County Weekly .
Horton’s firm also has represented California Unions for Reliable Energy (CURE), a coalition that pushes for union contracts on power plants across the state. ... Critics call the practice “greenmailing.” ... CURE is a project of the State Building & Construction Trades Council of California.
- ↑ Lifsher, Marc (2004-09-06). "Struggle Over Power Plants - Cities say a union group is using environmental laws to protect jobs, but CURE says it's trying to prevent pollution". Archived from the original on 2011-02-14.
The California Energy Commission is studying allegations that California Unions for Reliable Energy, or CURE, repeatedly has threatened to raise environmental concerns that could cause costly delays in licensing procedures unless power plant developers agree to use only union construction workers. ... "CURE aggressively opposed this project, which was surprising because as renewable energy, it faced few environmental hurdles," he said. "But once we executed the project labor agreement and were confirmed as working with the unions, CURE's intervention at the energy commission no longer was an issue."
- 1 2 3 Woody, Todd (2009-06-19). "A Move to Put the Union Label on Solar Power Plants". The New York Times .