Making their offering to the annual Earth Day celebration scheduled for Saturday in the state capital, California Democratic state senators Thursday dedicated six legislative proposals dealing with clean energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. All of the measures were previously introduced earlier in the session, but Senate Majority Leader Don Perata used his prerogative to tie the measures to the nation’s annual environmental milestone, noting that California is attempting to create a “new energy economy.”

The senators described the group of bills as the state legislative body’s plan to “make more efficient use of traditional energy resources, rapidly expand the state’s use of renewable resources, and attract necessary capital to replace coal and natural gas in the electric generation system with renewables,” according to a written announcement by the Senate Democrats.

Their legislative proposals seek to reduce “energy uncertainty” in the state by promoting more clean, renewable sources of electricity and transportation fuels.

The bills include Perata’s two primary energy proposals — SB 1250 to push cost-effective energy efficiency programs and renewables by extending the last five years of using part the California Energy Commission’s public goods charges paid by investor-owned utility customers to advance efficiency and renewable development, and SB 1368 setting a GHG performance standard effectively prohibiting investment in new traditional coal-fired generation.

Others bills are SB 107 on the renewable portfolio standard (RPS); SB 757 on alternative transportation fuels; SB 1, the statewide solar initiative; and SB 1505, pushing hydrogen as an alternative fuel.

“The challenge of providing sufficient amounts of clean energy at affordable prices is greater today than ever before,” said Sen. Perata, in a prepared statement issued on a day when regular gasoline throughout the nation’s most populous state exceeded $3/gallon. “Energy efficiency and renewable energy are cost-effective solutions to the state’s current and future energy problems and these approaches form the basis of the Senate’s effort to get back to basics and bring California into a new energy economy.”

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