CalWEA articles from the "News" category.
Politico reports that Hillary Clinton's promise of a huge buildout of new solar panels and wind turbines on federally owned deserts and scrublands may be impossible under the land-use strategy that the Obama administration is pursuing, including the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan.
Largely credited with launching the industry in the 1980s, wind energy in California is poised for a resurgence. This article by CalWEA's Nancy Rader and Dariush Shirmohammadi discusses the challenges that must be addressed for wind energy to succeed in California's market for renewable energy.
PRESS RELEASE: SACRAMENTO – Contracts for California’s first wave of renewable energy facilities, built and producing power before the state first adopted its renewable energy targets in 2002, are expiring, and many facilities are in danger of shutting down because they are locked into low prices.
A new plan released by the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) puts approximately three million acres that had been available for solar and wind development off-limits. This will make it difficult, if not impossible, to achieve the plan’s stated planning goal of 20,000 MW of renewable energy and presents a challenge to the greenhouse-gas-reduction goals laid out by President Obama and Governor Jerry Brown.
The opinion piece, by CalWEA Executive Director Nancy Rader and Michael Gerrard of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School, highlights the fact that wind energy projects are being banned or severely restricted in several California counties and, more significantly, across vast federal lands in the state. These restrictions threaten the ability to achieve California’s climate change goals.
