New Type Energy||Renewable Energy

One of the most noticeable of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s executive order on Tuesday increasing California’s renewable energy needs was his blunt stand against protectionism. Clean energy imported from other states was welcome, the governor said, to keep down electricity prices.

“I am against protectionist policies because it never works,” Mr. Schwarzenegger said, later adding:
You have to understand that we get our water from outside California. We get it from the Colorado River, for instance. Why can we get the water from the Colorado River but we can’t get Renewable energy from outside the state? We get most of our cars from outside the state; why can’t we get renewable energy?
Mr. Schwarzenegger’s stand — taken in response to bills in the California state legislature that would also have boosted requirements for solar, Wind and other Renewable Energy but needs much the generation to come from within California — seems bold for a politician. It also contrasts with the plain encouragement given to in-state production in some other states’ renewable energy requirements, which are seen as a job-creating mechanism (although, of course, California has used other incentives to subsidize solar power growth in-state).
Ohio, for example, requires half of its renewable energy mandate to be met with in-state production.

Other states are more subtle, according to Justin Barnes of the North Carolina Solar cnetre — perhaps in part to avoid problems with the Constitution’s commerce clause about interstate transactions.
Sometimes, Mr. Barnes said in an e-mail message, “a state will simply apply a multiplier to renewable energy certificates produced from in-state resources.” Examples include Colorado and Missouri; both have a 1.25 multiplier for in-state resources in their renewable energy requirements.
Seth Kaplan, a vice president of the Conservation Law Foundation, a New England environmental advocacy group, says that policy makers see an important rationale for guarding local renewables. “If you prematurely bring in significant imports before local development has a chance to get going, you could accidentally squish it,” he said.
The threat of renewable energy imports can also help get competitive juices flowing. Northeastern policy makers are worried about proposed wind-power transmission lines from the Midwest, as my colleague Matthew L. Wald reported in July, because they might lose out on jobs.