The financial support is part of a $2bn clean energy investment plan, which is also putting $100mn into green hydrogen and $240mn into a pumped-hydro storage project at the Oroville Dam hydroelectric facility, $960mn for building decarbonisation and $10mn to support offshore wind generation.

The state of California has legislated for 40% carbon emissions reduction by 2040 and net zero thereafter. The state’s electricity production is currently 43% from natural gas, 14% solar, 7% wind, 8% nuclear, 20% hydro and 8% other renewables.

California’s government issued a roadmap to net zero in 2021: California’s Electricity System of the Future, which says that: ‘California’s clean energy goals are fundamentally about reducing reliance on natural gas-fired plants’ and notes that between 136 GW and 208 GW of clean energy technologies must be built by 2045 to achieve the 100% clean electricity goal. 

Currently, the state has about 15 GW of utility-scale solar and 10 GW of distributed solar generation. Therefore, solar and wind build rates need to nearly triple and storage build rates need to increase nearly eight-fold, says the report.

However, decarbonisation could be a challenge. A report from Princeton University, Stanford University, the Environmental Defense Fund and Energy and Environmental Economics (E3) emphasised that: ‘extensive electrification and increased reliance on weather-dependent renewable energy sources could create new reliability challenges requiring proactive planning.’ Solar and wind power capacity would need to increase to about 500 GW by 2045, along with 160 GW and 1,000 GWh of new storage to reliably generate electricity by 2045 and avoid a significant drop of about 60% from summer to winter generation.