After a round of negotiations and proposed amendments during the state legislature’s first week back from its summer recess last week, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “million solar roofs” proposal (SB 1) and several other major energy proposals face a critical test this Wednesday in the state lower house Assembly Appropriations Committee. What form the proposals will take, and who is supporting them, was still unknown last Friday.

Several major players, including the state’s solar industry and Pacific Gas and Electric Co., were still wading through proposed amendments and negotiating with the lawmakers and other stakeholders, but neither had changed their opposition to SB 1, or in the case of the utility, to other key energy bills, such as one that would set renewable portfolio standards (SB 107), electricity resource adequacy levels (SB 380) or establish a liquefied natural gas (LNG) siting review process (AB 426).

“We have obviously been in some very significant discussions (with the lawmakers and governor’s advisers) this week,” said an official with the California Solar Energy Industry Association (CalSEIA), who added that as of late last Friday he had not seen “any definitive amendment” that would cause the solar association to change its current opposition because of the provisions related to the qualifications for installers of solar systems under the proposed new law.

“Many entities are offering many amendments,” the CalSEIA official said. Before the legislative recess last month CalSEIA was taken aback by the SB 1 backers including a requirement in the proposed new law that only “prevailing wage” contractors could be used to install solar systems under the state-authorized program (see Power Market Today, Aug. 8).

Similarly, some of the major energy players, such as PG&E’s utility, have found concerns in the other energy bills set to come before the Assembly Appropriations Committee, which would be the last stop on the way to a vote by the full Assembly. PG&E in particular has problems with what it considers the lack of flexibility in the renewable energy standards and the lack of a long-term time frame on the resource adequacy requirements, which the utility argued is the only way to attract sufficient new generation or power supply contracts.

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