Prop 23 Update: A hockey stick of another kind

Russ Steele

The California Energy Commission has been holding workshops on how to implement the Governor's renewable energy vision.

There will be Committee Workshop on the California Clean Energy Future on the 6 July. I was wandering through one of the presentations prepared for this meeting called Overview and Metric Review, and found this graphic on slide 20 rather interesting, as it looked like a lumpy hockey stick.


No do not ask me what IOU and POU mean, I searched the presentation and could not find a definition. These must be insider terms.

In another section of the presentation, the Committee worries about how to support a million plug in electric vehicles by 2020.  Given the poor sales of the Nissan LEAF and Chevy Volt, I am not sure they need worry to much.

As of June, Chevy Volt has sold 2,184 cars in 2011, and the Nissan Leaf has sold 2,167. That is about 725 cars a month in the US and one third of those sales are in California.  To reach a million plug in vehicles  by 2020 Chevy and Nissan would have to sell about 9,800 plug in vehicles a month in California.

I do not think that will happen any time soon. But, when you are dealing with Governor Brown's renewable energy vision, you have to pretend it will happen and build a capacity to meet a non-existing demand.  Remember this is a vision not reality!