Changing the current

State environmental laws drive power producers to renewable resources

WASHINGTON – The Imperial Valley of California is ideal country for solar and wind power. It rains less than three inches a year. Temperatures hit 110 degrees in the summer. The wind blows pretty steadily, too. And it’s just east of San Diego.

Now, because of a California law requiring utilities to get 20 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2010, this untapped renewable-energy basin has caught the attention of Sempra Energy. The utility, based in San Diego, gets only 6 percent of its electricity from renewable resources, so it has proposed building a transmission line to bring solar power from the desert to the city.


California is one of 25 states that have adopted laws that require electric utilities to use more renewable resources, and that has sent utilities scrambling to line up wind and solar projects across the country. Electric utilities that have long relied on coal, nuclear energy and natural gas to power their generating plants are buying into biomass projects from Minnesota to Virginia, solar plants in the deserts of California and Arizona, and wind farms from Maine to West Texas.

Washington Post