photo: 416style
Talk about green buildings. California regulators on Thursday proposed that all new residential housing developments in the Golden State be energy self-sufficient by 2020, and that all new commercial buildings be "zero net energy" by 2030. The California Public Utilities Commission also ordered the state’s investor-owned utilities to collaborate on creating a single efficiency program to help meet California’s mandate to slash greenhouse gas emissions.
"A comprehensive, integrated long-term strategy to achieve maximum energy savings in residential new construction is both very promising and critically needed," wrote Commissioner Dian Grueneich and Administrative Law Judge Kim Malcolm in a 148-page proposed decision. "[Annual] potential energy savings could be as high as 500 megawatts. These savings are substantial and would provide long term, permanent energy savings and can lead to the development of new technologies and the training of design and construction professionals that will extend to the retrofit market." The commission estimated that new carbon-neutral commercial buildings would save up to 950 megawatts a year, or the equivalent of two large power plants. Commercial building consume about a third of California’s electricity production.
But the commission was vague on how to actually make buildings energy self-sufficient. Presumably that would involve a combination of energy efficiency measures and power generation from solar panels and other sources of renewable energy. And while the commission regulates big utilities like PG&E (PCG), Southern California Edison (EIX) and San Diego Gas & Electric (SRE), it cannot impose energy efficiency standards on the building industry. The California Energy Commission and local governments will have more influence on that front. Still, the utilities spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year on energy efficiency programs and can offer lucrative incentives to building owners to go green. And some residential builders, such as Lennar (LEN), already are beginning to sell new homes with solar panels integrated into their roofs.
Green Wombat 
This is why your utility bills just get larger and larger along with the price of houseing. All these nifty ideas are passed on to YOU the consumer. The cost of a KW hour of solar is 1.69-1.99 and coal/N. gas is .10. But that’s OK because the taxpayer(YOU) and the rate payer(YOU) is going to pick up the half the costs. Who are these unelected people?
Ok Bob. The cost of solar per KW hour may be much higher than coal, but have you thought of all the other costs associated with use of these fuels. Mining deaths, escalating health care costs, increases in lung disease and asthma. As they say YOU get what YOU pay for.
Bob,
1. What are the sources for your numbers?
2. Are you including amortized capital costs in your coal/n gas numbers?
I feel that the regulators must set goals as they are doing here. Industry will only do the minimum it is forced to do on environmental issues. Mercury levels are now so high in the worlds oceans that you can no longer safely eat the fish and only 30% of the fish stocks remain. What’s the point of your money without a world worth living in?
Ian
Bob Cooper is cherry-picking his apples and oranges, if you’ll pardon the mix of metaphors.
He must be comparing fossil fuel’s best wholesale power costs to the highest outdated number he can find for solar’s end-use cost.
Solar today costs $0.12-$0.14 per kilowatt hour (kWh) in utility-class concentrating solar installations. SOURCE: U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Solar Energy Technology Program report, 2006. http://www1.eere.energy.gov/office_eere/pdfs/solar_fs.pdf
Commercial cost of PV is expected to reach $0.05-$0.10 by 2015.
It’s not the smattering of under-funded DOE programs that will acheive that level. It’s the enthusiastic European and Japanese markets and their forward-thinking leaders who will bring solar to parity.
Remember: coal, natgas and nuclear power all receive government subsidies.
http://energypriorities.com/entries/2005/02/2005_energy_bil_1.php