[The following is a weekly digest of California energy news excerpted from Calwatchdog.com.  This inaugural report will be followed by updates from the world’s 8th largest economy every one-to-two weeks, depending on  developments.   MasterResource welcomes Mr. Lusvardi to our team (bio below).]

California Dems pass pro-fracking bill; CPUC Blacks-Out Green Power Prices from Consumers; Rooftop Solar to Cost Other Customers $1.1 Billion per Year

A Pro-Fracking Bill Disguised as an Anti-Fracking Bill

Can you imagine California’s Democratic-controlled legislature and Governor Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown passing a pro-fracking bill?  Neither could the mainstream media in California that reported state officials had passed an anti-fracking bill on Sept. 20 sponsored by State Senator Fran Pavley (D, Los Angeles County), the leader of the green voting block in both houses of the legislature.

State Senate Bill 4 (SB 4) was reported by green reporter Chris Clarke on his Re-Wire blog at the KCET public television website as requiring:  (1) a scientific assessment of fracking, (2) frackers to apply for permits, (3) fracking to continue while state crafts further regulations, (4) fracking permits to be provided to nearby property owners within 30 days; and (5) regulation of injecting acid into the ground, not fracking per se. …

• CA’s Green Energy Swan Turning Into Ugly Duckling; $5 Gas in CA? Lack of Cap-and-Trade Price Ceiling Could Bring It;
• Santa Barbara Picks Drilling Over Greening;
• Green Actions Cause One-Third of Human Caused Earthquakes; Study Questions Whether Fracking Causes Earthquakes;
• New Fracking Website Posted Online by Western Petroleum Association

California’s Green Energy Swan Turning Into Ugly Duckling

In the upside down world of California energy, no longer are the hot summer months or the occasional winter cold snap the only peak period of hourly risk to the state’s electric grid. The new daily peak hours of each day from 4 pm to 7 pm during the “shoulder months” of March, April and May and September, October, and November are the new peak month/hour times. What is causing this shift in peak time power is California’s transition to solar energy as the major source of base load power during day.…

“The U.C. Davis proposal to establish an environmental water market partly induced by environmental regulatory drought does not hold water.  And we find pricing environmental water sales by auctions to reflect inflated non-market prices derived from the “project influence” of inducing a water shortage as a result of the San Joaquin River Restoration Settlement Project of 2009 …. Nonetheless, we welcome the opportunity to open up a discussion of how markets might alleviate drought hardship on farmers and, wherever possible, on the environment.”

Road sign on rural highway in Kern County, California, erected in 2010:

“The real problem is that the price of water in California, as in most of America, has virtually nothing to do with supply and demand…If water was priced to reflect scarcity, a decrease in supply would lead to an increase in price, and people would demand less… My system is designed to reduce demand rather than cover costs.” – David Zetland, The Water Shortage Myth (Forbes, 2008)

In Part I of this series we discussed how a proposed Drought Environmental Water Market does not meet the criteria of a market nor would the prices produced from such a system reflect Fair Market Value. The proposal for an environmental water market by a group of experts from the University of California, Davis, the Public Policy Institute of California and law schools at the University of California and Stanford (the “U.C.…