

The California Public Utilities Commission was a busy body Thursday, launching a new long-term energy-efficiency program, approving two biomass projects and voting to oppose Proposition 7, the hotly contested renewable-energy voter initiative.

Commissioner Dian M. Grueneich, the PUC's energy-efficiency maven, acknowledged that California has come a long way in saving energy, but it has mostly been through incremental changes to buildings and appliances, along with a shift to compact fluorescent bulbs.

With the pressing need to reduce planet-warming greenhouse gases, more was required. So Grueneich prodded consumer groups, energy experts and state agencies to come up with an ambitious program to move toward "long-term deeper savings which impact the fundamental ways in which California's residents and businesses use energy."

The result is the new Energy Efficiency Strategic Plan for 2009 through 2020. You can be sure it is not just about changing your light bulbs.

Under the plan, by 2020 all new residential construction would be "zero net energy," meaning that the homes' entire needs would be served by non-grid technology, such as rooftop solar panels or small-scale renewable-energy projects serving more than one home or business. And all eligible low-income homes would be made energy-efficient. New efficiency standards would be adopted for ventilation, heating and air conditioning systems.

By 2030 all new commercial buildings would have to be "zero net energy."

V. John White, a key player in the state's energy debates and head of the Sacramento-based Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies called the new plan "a very important change in direction."

And PUC Commissioner John Bohn noted that "squeezing greater efficiency out of our current uses of electrical power is our best and least costly source of additional supplies."

As for the panel's vote against Proposition 7, commissioners deemed the November ballot initiative too rigid and unworkable. It would "seriously interfere" with renewable-energy projects underway, they said.

Commission President Michael R. Peevey acknowledged that current renewable-energy programs have problems but said they should be fixed with "a finer instrument than the blunt hammer of a ballot initiative."

-- Elizabeth Douglass

Photo: Windmill farm near Palm Springs. Credit: Lee Celano AFP/Getty Images