New Calif. Clean Energy Goals Need Projects Of All Sizes

Nossaman Partner Martin Mattes was quoted in the Law360 article, "New Calif. Clean Energy Goals Need Projects Of All Sizes." The article addresses Governor Brown's proposal to have half the state's electricity come from renewable sources by 2030.

For the story, Mattes commented on California directing its major investor-owned utilities to collectively procure 1,325 megawatts of energy storage capacity by 2020. Mattes said "A lot of the best [large-scale plant] sites are taken, and the pinch point is really on transmission from remotely located, large-scale plants into the urban centers...the increase will be from the distributed ends."

That's not to say that no utility-scale projects would be needed, but experts say traditional large-scale developers can't simply bank on picking up where they left off before the slowdown in renewable energy projects.

"My sense would be they need to be somewhat more nimble," Mattes said. "They need to look more for scaling down, as well as scaling up."