Ongoing RPS Implementation

RPS Cost Containment

Senate Bill (SB) 1078 (Statues of 2002, Chapter 516, Sher) and SB 107 (Statues of 2006, Chapter 464) established the supplemental energy payments (SEPs) program to contain the total costs of the RPS program.  SB 2 (1X) (Statues of 2011, Chapter 1), modified the statutes such that the Commission was to "establish a limitation for each electrical corporation on the procurement expenditures for all eligible renewable energy resources used to comply with the renewables portfolio standard."  More recently, SB 350 (Statutes of 2015, Chapter 547) revised Section 399.15(c) such that the cost limitation "be set at a level that prevents disproportionate rate impacts."

For additional information on Cost Containment, please click here.

BioMAT Program Overview

The Bioenergy Feed-in Tariff Program or the Bioenergy Market Adjusting Tariff (BioMAT) is a feed-in tariff program for small bioenergy renewable generators less than 5 MW in size. The BioMAT program offers up to 250 MW to eligible projects through a fixed-price standard contract to export electricity to California’s three large investor owned utilities (IOUs).

In November 2017, in accordance with the program rules established by the Commission in 2014, Energy Division initiated a BioMAT program review. This program review does not suspend the program, and the IOUs will continue to offer their proportionate share of remaining BioMAT capacity within each technology category and execute contracts according to existing program rules while the program is under review. The goal of the program review is to assess program performance to date and recommend programmatic and procedural changes to simplify the BioMAT procurement process, enable expanded program participation, reduce ratepayer expenditures, and help achieve statewide goals. Energy Division staff will use stakeholder comments and reply comments and workshop discussions to inform a final staff proposal that the Commission can consider in the RPS proceeding.

For more information on the BioMAT program review and BioMAT program, please click here.

 RPS Calculator and Integrated Resource Planning (IRP)

The RPS Calculator was used to develop plausible portfolios of renewable resources needed to meet the state's Renewable Portfolio Standard in Future years for the purpose of generation and transmission planning and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.  The role of the RPS Calculator has been replaced by the new Integrated Resource Planning (IRP) process.  For more information on the development of the new IRP process, please see the IRP events and materials page here.

Green Tariff Shared Renewables

The Green Tariff Shared Renewables (GTSR) Program was created by SB 43 (Wolk, 2013). The GTSR program has two components: the “Green Tariff” component and the “Enhanced Community Renewables” component.

 For information on the GTSR program, please click here.