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California Clean Energy Initiative to Go on Ballot

The California Secretary of State’s office has announced the California Clean Alternative Energy Initiative has qualified for placement on the November 7, 2006 General Election statewide ballot. Nearly 1.2 million California voters signed the petition, almost double the number required to certify. Outrage over high gas prices, record-breaking oil company profits, poor air quality and over-dependence on insecure foreign oil sources are fueling the momentum behind the California Clean Energy campaign. “The Clean Energy Initiative represents a choice,” said Dan Kammen, PhD, Professor of Public Policy at U.C. Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy and founding director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory (RAEL). “In the absence of a federal energy policy, the oil companies have a business-as-usual plan for California’s energy future: higher gas prices, more pollution and greater dependence on insecure foreign sources of oil. The Clean Energy Initiative will fund a $4 billion effort to reduce California’s dependence on gasoline and diesel by 25% over the next 10 years by making alternative fuel vehicles and alternative fuels more widely affordable and accessible to consumers. The program will be funded by a modest and temporary assessment on the extraction of oil in California, paid for by oil […]

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ACEEE Suggests Focusing on a Few Big Items at Senate Hearing

The U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee focused on energy efficiency by hosting a hearing on a bill?introduced by Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) and a bipartisan group of ten other Senators?called the Enhanced Energy Security Act (S. 2747). One of the witnesses, ACEEE Executive Director Steven Nadel, testified that in the energy legislation passed in 1992 and 2005, most of the energy savings came from a few major provisions and that many provisions had little impact. Based on this experience, he urged Congress to “concentrate on a few provisions with significant energy savings and not spend a lot of time on provisions that may sound good on paper but are unlikely to actually save much energy in practice.” Nadel urged the committee to emphasize four provisions with the opportunity for large energy savings: (1) oil saving targets and associated policies; (2) energy efficiency resource standards (energy-saving targets for utilities); (3) equipment efficiency standards; and (4) extensions and refinements to efficiency tax incentives enacted in 2005. ACEEE analysis of energy savings from these provisions projects that they could reduce U.S. energy use by about 12% in 2020, compared to less than 2% for the 2005 energy bill. “These four policies […]

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