The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:
(a)Building operational generating facilities that utilize sources of renewable energy within California, to supply the state’s demand for electricity, provides significant financial, health, environmental, and workforce benefits to the State of California.
(b)The California Solar
Initiative will achieve its goals, resulting in over 150,000 residential and commercial onsite installations of solar energy systems. However, the California Solar Initiative cannot reach all residents and businesses that want to participate and is limited to only solar energy systems and not other eligible renewable energy resources. A green tariff shared renewables program seeks to build on the success of the California Solar Initiative by expandi
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The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:
(a)
Building operational generating facilities that utilize sources of renewable energy within California, to supply the state’s demand for electricity, provides significant financial, health, environmental, and workforce benefits to the State of California.
(b)
The California Solar
Initiative will achieve its goals, resulting in over 150,000 residential and commercial onsite installations of solar energy systems. However, the California Solar Initiative cannot reach all residents and businesses that want to participate and is limited to only solar energy systems and not other eligible renewable energy resources. A green tariff shared renewables program seeks to build on the success of the California Solar Initiative by expanding access to all eligible renewable energy resources to all ratepayers who are currently unable to access the benefits of onsite generation.
(c)
There is widespread interest from many large institutional customers, including schools, colleges, universities, local governments, businesses, and the military, for the development of generation facilities that are eligible renewable energy resources to serve more than 33 percent of their energy needs.
(d)
Public institutions will benefit from a green tariff shared renewables program’s enhanced flexibility to participate in shared generation facilities that are eligible renewable energy resources.
(e)
Building operational generating facilities that are eligible renewable energy resources creates jobs, reduces emissions of greenhouse gases, and promotes energy independence.
(f)
Many large energy users in California have pursued onsite electrical generation from eligible renewable energy resources, but cannot achieve their goals due to rooftop or land space limitations, or size limits on net energy metering. The enactment of this chapter will create a mechanism whereby institutional customers, such as military installations, universities, and local governments, as well as commercial customers and groups of individuals, can meet their needs with electrical generation
from eligible renewable energy resources.
(g)
It is the intent of the Legislature that a green tariff shared renewables program be implemented in such a manner that facilitates a large, sustainable market for offsite electrical generation from facilities that are eligible renewable energy resources, while fairly compensating electrical corporations for the services they provide, without affecting nonparticipating ratepayers.
(h)
It is the further intent of the Legislature that a green tariff shared renewables program be implemented in a manner that ensures nonparticipating ratepayer indifference for the remaining bundled service, direct access, and community choice aggregation customers.