One-Half of Green Power Contracts Fail

The Pasadena Pundit ^ | January 21, 2007 | Wayne Lusvardi

[WayneLusvardi]

One Half of Green Power Contracts Fail

"A contractor report prepared for the Energy Commission in 2005 identified renewable energy contract failure as a potentially significant impediment to achieving the state's aggressive renewable energy goals. A subsequent report summarized potentially relevant experience with renewable energy contract failure based on a contract sample of more than 21,500 MW of renewable energy capacity. The data suggest that a minimum failure rate of 20 to 30 percent should generally be expected for large solicitations conducted over multiple years. The likelihood of much higher failure rates is supported by historical experience, especially for projects that use technologies that have ye to be proven commercially or -- like many projects in California -- are likely to face siting, permitting, resource supply, or transmission barriers. Data on renewable contract failured documented by North American utilities show that of 2,857 MW from 74 signed renewable contracts, 36 contracts for 1,337 MW have been cancelled, delayed, or gone into default. Thus, just over half appear to be successful."

Source: California Energy Commission, 2006 Integrated Energy Policy Report Update, January 2007, CEC-100-2006-100-CMF, page 39.

http://www.energy.ca.gov/2006publications/CEC-100-2006-001/CEC-100-2006-001-CMF.PDF

[Brad from Tennessee]

Thanks for alerting me to a great site--Pasadena Pundit. Lots of good stuff here.

[Carry_Okie]

Nice tid-bit.

[BurbankKarl]

There was an interesting decision from the Washington Supreme Court last week that the rateholder could sue the utilities for these crazy green power schemes...saying that the power companie's charter was to provide cheap electricity, not save the planet.