Apr 08 - The Sacramento Bee

A California initiative that would have at least half the state's electricity coming from the sun and other renewable sources by 2025 has generated more than enough signatures to qualify for the November ballot, proponents said Monday.

But some of the most influential advocates of renewable energy, such as the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Environmental Defense, are lined up in opposition, saying the proposal actually would thwart clean-energy projects and raise electricity bills.

Pitched as a solution to global warming, the proposed Solar and Clean Energy Act aims to accelerate California's shift from coal, natural gas and other fossil fuels as sources of electricity.

Burning of fossil fuels is the primary source of increased emissions of carbon dioxide, a major heat-trapping gas, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- the scientists awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year with former Vice President Al Gore.

The initiative's campaigners count among their endorsers James Hansen, a top NASA climate scientist and one of the first to bring global warming to the attention of Congress in the 1980s.

Peter Sperling, son of the founder of the online University of Phoenix, is bankrolling the measure, which envisions concentrations of giant solar mirrors in California's deserts.

"The desert could lead us to energy independence," the proposal states.

Organizers said they are submitting to county registrars this week 735,000 signatures, 41 percent more than required to place the proposition on the November general ballot.

California law requires that 20 percent of electricity sold in the state be renewable by 2010, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has called for a 33 percent target by 2020.

California's three largest investor-owned utilities -- Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric -- provided 13.2 percent of their 2006 retail electricity sales with renewable power, according to the California Public Utilities Commission. Municipal utilities are not under the renewable requirement, but Sacramento Metropolitan Utility District has set a 20 percent target by 2011.

Proponents of the solar initiative said current targets are too lax, and the Legislature is too beholden to traditional energy interests to accelerate the transition to clean energy.

The opposition group, which includes several renewable technology companies and labor unions, called the proposition a "fatally flawed" product financed by "an out-of-state billionaire with no energy expertise."

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