New California procurement order opportunity for geothermal

Transmission lines, Southern California (source: flickr/ Curtis Gregory Perry, creative commons)

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), in ongoing efforts to ensure electricity reliability in the state and meet clean energy goals, on June 24, 2021 approved a historic decision ordering utilities to procure 11,500 MW of new electricity resources to come online between the years 2023 and 2026, enough to power approximately 2.5 million homes, with all of the resources procured coming from preferred resources, such as distributed energy resources (including energy efficiency and demand response), renewables, and zero-emitting sources. This represents the largest capacity procurement ordered at a single time by the CPUC, and is the largest requiring only clean resources.

The California PUC’s decision facilitates the integration of high amounts of renewables required to meet the state’s renewable and clean energy goals and ensure reliability. The decision is a foundational investment in meeting the state’s goal of 100 percent clean electricity by 2045.

With the impending retirement of the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, and last August’s capacity shortfalls, this surely is a very timely decision.

As pointed out by industry players, what makes this really interesting for the geothermal sector is the adoption in the text that requires 1,000 MW of this energy to be come from zero emission, firm generating resources with an 80% capacity factor.

So and this is where geothermal energy comes in, as non of the other available renewable energy sources in the State of California and neighboring states fits these requirements better than geothermal energy.

Source: California Public Utility Commission