The ultimate goal is to have zero carbon energy homes and businesses. This means renovating and constructing buildings to be as energy efficient as possible and then installing renewable energy systems that produce as much or more energy than the buildings need. In general our utilities need to get more of their energy from renewable sources. This way residential and business customers could just request “green” energy rather than having to install a private system. Some utilities already allow you do this, and PG&E is moving in this direction.

California established a Renewable Portfolio Standard in 2002, and Governor Schwarzenegger accelerated it in 2006. The RPS program requires that California’s three largest utilities get at least 20% of their energy from renewable sources by the end of 2010 and 33% by the end of 2020. PG&E currently gets about 13% of their energy from renewable sources and says they are on track to meet the Renewable Portfolio Standard. We need to encourage them to go beyond this goal and produce the majority of their energy from renewable sources.