Energy Efficiency Is New Gold in California Rush

As San Francisco-based Google rushes to find a viable coal alternative, California is panning for mainstream energy strategies. Resembling the forty-niners of its past, California’s state legislators are on a mission to uncover renewable energy.

Planning to meet future energy needs, and hoping to make new homes so efficient that by 2020 they don't draw any energy from the state's electrical grid, the California Energy Commission espoused the 2007 Integrated Energy Policy Report. The report lays out strategies to meet the state’s hefty energy requirements, while reducing emissions, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Aside from a plethora of proposals for high-efficiency homes, new building standards, local power generators, solar panels and fuel cells, the report most notably pushes for renewable energy feed-in tariffs. Based on a price-setting system successful in Europe, feed-in tariffs ensure stable financing for fledgling renewable-energy projects. If California implements the tariff, it would be the first instance in which the U.S. government has fixed long-term prices for electricity purchased from renewable sources.

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