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The Biggest News from California Regarding Inclusive Financing in Years!
California's Public Utilities Commission has a new Proposed Decision on an Order Instituting Rulemaking (OIR) to Investigate and Design Clean Energy Financing Options for Electricity and Natural Gas Customers.
Backstory: The California Energy Efficiency Action Plan recommended that the CPUC adopt inclusive financing. Rather than working to approve inclusive financing for renewables, energy efficiency, transportation, building electrification, and community storage in various separate dockets, the inclusive financing rulemaking was introduced as single proceeding for all distributed resources and assigned to an administrative law judge. A full chronological summary of the actions and dockets leading up to this rulemaking start on page 13 of the attached document.
Proposed outcomes as seen by excerpts from the attached doc:
Examines financing options to assist electricity and natural gas customers with investments in residential and commercial buildings, as well as at industrial and agricultural sites, designed to decrease energy use and/or produce energy to support a customer's on-site needs.
This work is designed to support investments to reach the state's 2045 greenhouse gas goals for the energy sectors.
This rulemaking is designed specifically to examine options that encourage larger scale and deeper investments in one or more clean energy resources at customer sites.
In addition, this rulemaking will examine options for multiple sources of funding by combining and leveraging ratepayer funds with private financing to support these more comprehensive investments.
Achieving these goals will require the involvement of California customers in the residential, commercial, industrial, and agricultural sectors, at unprecedented levels, including people and businesses in urban and rural communities, as well as customers who are low to moderate-income, renters, and/or living in disadvantaged, underserved, or vulnerable communities. As we look to expand clean energy financing strategies, the Commission will look to ensure that new options will be accessible to populations that face issues of creditworthiness and barriers to accessing affordable capital.
