California's big electrical utilities may miss the state's deadline for increasing their use of renewable power if Congress doesn't extend tax credits for new solar plants and wind farms, the head of Pacific Gas and Electric Co. said Friday. Like all California utilities, San Francisco's PG&E has been scrambling to sign contracts with renewable-power developers. State law requires that by the end of 2010, 20 percent of the electricity each utility sells must come from renewable sources. But Peter Darbee, PG&E's chief executive officer, said many developers have already warned him that their projects may fall through if Congress doesn't extend tax credits due to expire at the end of the year.

When it unveiled its Sunrise Powerlink project three years ago, San Diego County's electric utility warned that rolling blackouts like those that swept California during the 2000-01 electricity crisis could return to the region in 2010 without the new power line. Now, because of state delays in evaluating the $1.5 billion project, that high-voltage transmission line ---- even if it is eventually approved ---- won't be available to help meet the county's peak summer demand for electricity in either 2010 or 2011, utility officials say. ...Bill Powers, an activist and engineer from San Diego who has been fighting Sunrise, maintains there is another option: Ship the power west via an existing line in Baja California and north on wires that connect Tijuana with San Diego. "You've got a lot of options here that don't necessarily involve building any new transmission," Powers said.

In a setback for San Diego Gas & Electric Co.'s controversial transmission line, state regulators Friday ordered that a draft report examining the Sunrise Powerlink's environmental impacts be expanded to include new information about a Mexico wind power project. The four-page ruling by California Public Utilities Commissioner Dian Grueneich and Administrative Law Judge Steven Weissman also directs the agency that runs the state power grid to recalculate the economic benefits of Sunrise and project alternatives. The ruling marked the second time in a year that the finish line for the $1.5 billion project has been pushed back.

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. has under contract all of the renewable power it needs to meet state mandates by 2010, if the promised power systems can be built in time. It's a big if. Expiring tax credits, the lag in building utility-scale renewable energy and increased competition for renewable power sources are potential roadblocks for the Northern California utility and the state's two other major utilities. ...Another issue for PG&E and the other utilities is that costs are rising 20 percent per year for renewable power.

Speculators have filed applications to develop more than 1 million acres of desert in Southern California with solar, wind and geothermal power plants, setting up a classic clash over land use with environmentalists and off-road enthusiasts. They have submitted at least 130 proposals with the Bureau of Land Management, which oversees all of the territory, in recent years and especially since 2007. The interest is so hot that even if many of the projects fall through, the remaining ones would change the look of the arid landscape. ... "We have worked for decades to protect the desert. . . . Let's not trash what we've saved," said Elden Hughes, who has worked with the Sierra Club and other environmental groups for decades.

It's not a question of whether the state should pursue clean-air strategies -- but rather which ones, and at what cost. Who stands to save money and who stands to pay more? Is nuclear power part of the solution? ...The solar-power industry already lags far behind wind in Texas, which recently leapfrogged over California to become the largest wind-power-generating state in the nation. And many more wind turbines are expected ...solar power enjoys several advantages over wind -- advantages that increases the value of sun power for those paying the bills. For instance, because the wind typically stops blowing during the middle of hot summer days, Texas won't get much use from those expensive new transmission lines when it needs the power the most. Obviously, that's not a problem with solar. Wind also presents tough -- and sometimes expensive -- technical challenges. Because wind turbines will stop spinning without a moment's notice, engineers at the power grid must sometimes have more expensive standby power ready and waiting.

Should two Arizona billionaires tell California, arguably the nation's greenest state, how to run its electricity business? They're going to try. University of Phoenix founder John Sperling and his son, Peter, are backing a ballot initiative that would force the state to more than quadruple its production of solar, wind and other alternative energy sources by 2025. But the state's major alternative-energy companies and environmental groups say the Solar and Clean Energy Act of 2008 is poorly drafted and riddled with loopholes, and they plan to oppose it. "It could slam the brakes on renewable energy development in the state," asserts a letter signed by the California Solar Energy Industries Assn., the American Wind Energy Assn., labor unions and environmentalists.

The ensuing paper chase through city ordinances, planning commissions, and permit hearings has consumed seven years and tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees, and - through California's obscure 1978 Solar Shade Control Act, which criminalizes the shading of solar panels by trees - resulted in the Santa Clara County District Attorney prosecuting Mr. Treanor and Ms. Bissett. ...The Solar Shade Control Act went unnoticed for 30 years, but since December it has come up in several lawsuits, says Stamen, the tree lawsuit specialist. "The legal system," he says, "will see [more of] these cases in the near future." Treanor and Bissett hope to influence that. "We woke up one morning essentially violating criminal law," says Treanor.

"The California Bureau of Land Management has had over 100 applications in the desert, many of them in the 1st District," said Apple Valley Town Councilman Scott Nassif, who found out about the projects through concerned residents. "My fear that there was a proliferation of these projects has come to fruition." Once they get a foothold on a certain area, they just multiply from there, Nassif added. ..."My concern is there is other uses for the desert such as mining, cattle grazing, recreation and military operations," Mitzelfelt said. "I don't want to see all of our remaining desert that's available to people covered in windmills and solar plants."

Exclamations of dismay rang among the crowd last Saturday night as Dave Miller of the California Desert Coalition presented his renderings of what Green Path North would do to scenic vistas in the Morongo Basin. Miller superimposed huge transmission towers onto photos of desert panoramas, depicting the lines snaking through canyons and topping buttes. The Los Angeles Department of Power and Water Green Path North project would carve an 118-mile swath through the desert in order to erect transmission towers up to 200 feet tall on public and private land. The towers would deliver renewable electricity from geothermal, wind and solar sources from the Imperial Valley to Los Angeles.

The contracts are subject to approval by the California Public Utilities Commission. "We hope to add even more prospective contracts to our renewable energy portfolio from our 2007 competitive solicitation," said Stuart Hemphill, Southern California Edison's director of Renewable and Alternative Power. The deal with Ormat is for energy from a new 30 MW geothermal plant to be built in Imperial Valley, Calif., and expected to come on line by mid 2012. The agreement includes an option to increase capacity at the Imperial Valley facility to 100 MW. "We are very happy to bring more baseload through clean geothermal energy to California," said Dita Bronicki, CEO of Ormat.

But as California lawmakers take up the nitty gritty task of implementing the law, they are haggling over what the 1990 benchmark even is and exactly who will be asked to make emission cuts. And industry representatives now warning that cutting production may be the only way they can meet its requirements. ...Manufacturers have warned the law could put factories out of business, although the group's trade association could not identify a company that has closed or plans to leave California. What they do argue is that the global warming law will only add to the price of doing business in a state already known for its strict regulatory environment.

Looking east into Gilliam County and north into Washington, turbines are strung over ridgelines as far as the eye can see. And there are nowhere near enough of them. ...West Coast utilities and independent power producers are locked in a land rush to secure the best wind sites and the power they produce. Coupled with a worldwide shortage of turbines and a falling dollar, the resulting scarcity is driving up the cost of wind power, a burden electricity ratepayers will shoulder.

When San Diego Gas & Electric unveiled the Sunrise Powerlink two years ago, the company gave three essential reasons for building the 150-mile long power line: Renewable energy, Savings, Reliability. The power line's $447 million annual savings was cut to $142 million a year after erroneous calculations were uncovered. A solar energy project whose fate was once tied to the line has failed to demonstrate that it works on a commercial scale. SDG&E has equivocated about how much renewable energy can be found in Imperial County, where the line will begin. The company has waffled about whether the line is necessary to spark renewable energy development in Imperial County. And the Division of Ratepayer Advocates, a state watchdog, has said SDG&E won't need the power line to keep the lights on until at least 2014.

As California takes its first baby steps toward implementing the most aggressive climate-change policy in the country, experts debate the economic feasibility of attaining the state`s goals. Its overarching policy lies in the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, which requires greenhouse gas emissions in the state to fall back to 1990 levels by 2020. One of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger`s executive orders, S-3-25, addresses long-term goals by aiming at an 80 percent emissions reduction below 1990 levels by 2050. The state`s ability to reach these goals holds implications not only for Californians, but the rest of the nation`s climate-change policy as well, Samuel Thernstrom, director of the American Enterprise Institute`s program on culture and freedom, said at a panel discussion last week.

About 25 windmills in the north Palm Springs area were approved this week by the Riverside County Board of Supervisors. The windmills will be part of the Dillon Wind Project, which will have a total of 45 windmills north of Interstate 10, east of Highway 62 and west of Indian Avenue. The windmills will be 327 feet tall, or about 33 stories high.

WASHINGTON - The House rejected a resolution Wednesday that would block government plans to spur construction of major new power lines in many states regardless of local opposition. The issue has been contentious in parts of the East Coast and in the Southwest, where two high priority transmission corridors for power lines were proposed. Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., warned colleagues that unwanted power lines could come to their district.

But even del Cardayre, as passionate and committed as he is, working for a company fueled by millions of dollars in venture capital and at the epicenter of Silicon Valley's fast-growing clean-technology industry, offers a sober assessment of the state's ambitious goals to fight global warming. "There is definitely not a silver bullet," del Cardayre said. Nearly one year after California passed landmark legislation to cut carbon-dioxide emissions 25 percent in 13 years, the state already risks failure.

The California Energy Commission on Wednesday imposed new rules that effectively forbid the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and all other municipal utilities in the state from signing new contracts with coal-fired power plants. The move, together with identical regulations imposed on private utilities in January, is a significant step toward reducing the contribution of California, the world's sixth largest economy, to global warming.

Wind turbines flourishing in California's Altamont and Tehachapi passes need tighter federal regulation, environmentalists told lawmakers Tuesday. Wind energy officials disagree. Thus the battle is joined, at a politically sensitive time. With tax credits up in the air and a long-awaited study arriving on how wind turbines kill birds and bats, strong opinions are blowing across Capitol Hill. As often happens, the central policy question pits rules against recommendations.