Nancy Pfund: Jerry Brown should not back down on energy standards

Gov. Brown, Don't Back Down on Clean Energy Standards

San Jose Mercury News
February 1, 2013

DBL Part­ners’ Man­ag­ing Part­ner Nan­cy Pfund placed an arti­cle in today’s San Jose Mer­cury News.  The link to the piece is here.  The con­tent is recre­at­ed below.

When I took home my new Tes­la Mod­el S last June, I learned what it meant to be a celebri­ty. Not me, mind you, my car.

Long-lost friends emailed me, com­plete strangers high-fived me, and I start­ed writ­ing myself reminders to “give so-and-so a ride in the Mod­el S.”

Dri­ving this sleek sedan is a priv­i­lege I don’t take for grant­ed. And thanks in large part to Cal­i­for­ni­a’s vision­ary ener­gy and vehi­cle stan­dards, the Mod­el S — which trav­els up to 300 miles per charge, with min­i­mal impact on our air and cli­mate — offers a glimpse of our auto­mo­tive future. While it’s a pre­mi­um-priced car, future mod­els will be increas­ing­ly acces­si­ble. Our state can be a mec­ca for this job-cre­at­ing new e‑vehicle industry.

As an investor, I’m excit­ed about the pos­si­bil­i­ties, and as a Cal­i­forn­ian, I’m proud. After see­ing Gov. Jer­ry Brown last June share in the excite­ment of the Mod­el S launch in Fre­mont, I believe he is equal­ly opti­mistic about our state’s clean ener­gy future.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Brown is being pres­sured heav­i­ly by inter­est groups that want to weak­en clean air laws, par­tic­u­lar­ly the Low Car­bon Fuel Stan­dard (LCSF), signed as an exec­u­tive order by Gov. Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger in 2007. The stan­dard is aimed at reduc­ing the trans­porta­tion sec­tor’s green­house gas emis­sions while boost­ing Cal­i­for­ni­a’s grow­ing clean ener­gy industry.

After an exten­sive reg­u­la­to­ry process, the fuel stan­dard took effect in Jan­u­ary 2011. It requires that fuel providers grad­u­al­ly reduce the car­bon inten­si­ty of their fuels and lets them meet the stan­dard through a vari­ety of strate­gies, includ­ing offer­ing advanced bio­fu­els or nat­ur­al gas, improv­ing pro­duc­tion tech­niques or buy­ing cred­its for elec­tric­i­ty used to fuel vehi­cles such as the Tesla.

In the future, it may allow for excit­ing syn­er­gies. Con­sid­er the rapid progress of the pop­u­lar Cal­i­for­nia Solar Ini­tia­tive, which pro­vides state res­i­dents of all income lev­els with grad­u­al­ly decreas­ing incen­tives to install solar pan­els. This month, Cal­i­for­nia passed the 1 Gigawatt mark, hav­ing installed enough solar pow­er, in tens of thou­sands of homes and busi­ness­es, to match the out­put of a nuclear reactor.

 Thanks to the solar ini­tia­tive and the inno­v­a­tive fuel stan­dard, the day should­n’t be far off when res­i­dents will be able to solar-charge their elec­tric cars at home and even sell the clean ener­gy cred­its pro­duced in the process, reduc­ing their ener­gy costs even fur­ther. That would be a win-win-win-win for con­sumers, work­ers, man­u­fac­tur­ers, and of course the envi​ron​ment​.Ener​gy tran­si­tions are nev­er easy. Many of our ener­gy laws, but par­tic­u­lar­ly the low car­bon stan­dard, have met resis­tance from parts of the fos­sil fuel indus­try, even though fos­sil fuels have ben­e­fit­ed from their own spe­cial sub­si­dies for decades.Obviously, not all oil com­pa­nies are going to embrace this pol­i­cy. Over time, how­ev­er, for­ward-think­ing busi­ness­es will trans­form them­selves into ener­gy com­pa­nies with a more cli­mate-friend­ly array of prod­ucts. That’s why it’s in every­one’s inter­ests to lev­el the play­ing field for clean fuel technologies.

Brown has been ahead of the curve for decades on clean and effi­cient ener­gy pol­i­cy. Now, more than ever, our gov­er­nor has the oppor­tu­ni­ty to dou­ble down on his sup­port for the fuel stan­dard and our oth­er impor­tant clean ener­gy laws. Investors need a strong mar­ket sig­nal to start dri­ving the clean indus­tries of the future. Not to men­tion some very cool cars.