Keeping California’s lights on will require a major electricity market, partnerships across the West

Clean. Reliable. Affordable. Those are the challenging but achievable goals for California’s electric grid. 

To affordably and reliably get the clean energy required to run a state as populous and prosperous as California, we have to build. We must build all of the rooftop renewables that we can. We need to build unprecedented amounts of new solar and battery storage at big power plants throughout California. And we must import significant quantities of renewable energy from other states to fill the gaps.

We need all three. And the third means renewed and deeper collaboration with our energy partners across the West.  

State Sen. Josh Becker’s proposal, Senate Bill 540, represents the carefully considered path to achieving that partnership. SB 540 continues the march started by several western energy officials who proposed a new independently governed entity offering an expansive suite of wholesale electricity market functions across the largest possible footprint. Making a market that spans the North American West is fundamental to providing a roadmap for solar and wind projects to get built, helping fill the gaps left by our transformative buildout of clean energy in California.

SB 540 is also critical to enabling California’s participation in that market, and ensures our state has a leadership role since other competing market concepts are less likely to share the commitment to our clean energy goals.

During a 2020 heat wave, California’s grid operator was forced to institute rotating outages, a necessary step to protect the grid in California and neighboring states. Gov. Gavin Newsom led a careful multi-agency after-action analysis, identified causes and made changes to market design. The state began accelerating the deployment of batteries to help stabilize the grid.

When the next heat wave occurred in 2022, these changes brought positive results. But it was still a close call. During extreme heat last year, the grid remained stable as the solutions had progressed even further.

We cannot afford to rest on this success. 

Heat waves and related emergencies highlight the challenges of decarbonizing a grid as large as California’s amid ever-worsening climate change. Unfortunately, we need to redouble our efforts because climate change is going to get worse even as we become more dependent on renewable energy resources that do not produce energy at all times.

SB 540 will allow us to rely on our neighbors in a pinch, and allow them to rely on us as well. This bill is a key next step. 

This is nothing new. Since the Pat Brown era, California has always collaborated in securing its electricity. The transformation we are leading — with our pathbreaking commitment to clean electricity, commitment to electric vehicles and broader goal of demonstrating what a prosperous, opportunity-creating clean energy economy can look like — requires a renewed focus on interstate institutions and structures that have shaped our modern energy reality in ways that may be hard to see. They are taken for granted. 

As the Western Interstate Energy Board brings together stakeholders in California and other states to continue a west-wide pathway, clean, reliable, affordable energy is edging closer to reality. Consumers, utilities and regulators must continue developing a shared market concept that creates wins for everyone.

SB 540 ensures that California can continue to benefit from those wins and increase collaboration and efficiencies across the West. History — both the early path to national economic leadership and the recent close calls with our grid — counsel continued work to create the governance necessary to build and run the 100% clean grid that is California’s North Star.

My research with economists, engineers and policy analysts has shown that clear, equitably enforced market rules are key for achieving California’s energy and climate goals. SB 540 is the next major step on a course toward practical solutions to this challenge.