Our Path to 24/7 Renewable Energy By 2025

From the beginning, we also committed to affordable pricing and have maintained prices consistently below those of Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E). We believe this is important for widespread consumer adoption of clean energy. This is because, even though research indicates that nearly half of Americans say they are willing to pay more for clean electricity, we have found that only a very small percentage of our customers choose to do so.

Peninsula Clean Energy was already delivering 50% renewable energy to our first customers in 2016, 14 years ahead of California’s goal of 50% renewable by 2030. In 2021, we procured 100% renewable or carbon-free power for all our nearly 300,000 customers.

We have done this while building a financially strong organization and providing this cleaner electricity at a consistently lower price than what our customers would pay at PG&E rates, demonstrating that we can reduce GHG emissions and save consumers money at the same time.

This is the cornerstone of the challenge we set for ourselves: How to cost-effectively deliver 100% renewable energy on a 24/7 basis by 2025. Because our load profile is similar in shape to the system-wide load profile in the state, we believe that achieving this goal would demonstrate that this approach is scalable state-wide. If we can achieve this goal, we can provide a model for other load serving entities to follow and accelerate further reductions of GHG emissions in the electricity supply.

The need to do this is urgent, a fact recognized by many since we set our goal in 2017. The following year, Google described its vision of a 24/7 carbon-free goal for their data centers and campuses, and in 2020 set a goal to achieve this by 2030.3 Cities such as Los Angeles, Sacramento, and Des Moines have now set similar goals, and researchers at RMI (formerly Rocky Mountain Institute) and Princeton have begun studying the trend.4 Earlier this year, the United Nations started building a global coalition for 24/7 carbon free energy.5 Our goal still remains the most ambitious in terms of its timeline and commitment to renewable energy.

This white paper introduces Peninsula Clean Energy’s vision for 24/7 renewable energy, our progress to date, and at a high level how we are planning to achieve it by 2025. This paper will be followed in the next few months with a report containing the results of our modeling, including details about the expected costs and resource mix required to achieve this unprecedented goal.