California Renewable-Energy Initiatives Defeated
| November 5, 2008 |  View for printing |
Not entirely unexpectedly, two California initiatives that would have substantially expanded the state’s clean-energy profile — but which opponents argued were ill conceived — foundered at the polls on Tuesday.
Proposition 7, which would have required that California’s electric utilities get half of their power from renewable sources by 2025 (the current requirement is 20 percent by the end of 2010), was easily defeated with 65 percent of voters casting ballots against the measure.
Critics of the measure — which included an unusual alliance of environmentalists and public utilities, which are not covered by current requirements but would be folded into the new mandates — argued that, as drafted, the initiative would have driven up electricity rates, stalled the state’s already steady shift to clean power and strangled small alternative-energy companies.
By Tom Zeller Jr.
Full Story: http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/20 ... tives-tank/ 
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