SACRAMENTO — Proposition 7 on the November ballot aims to hurry the day when more of California's electricity comes from windmills, solar panels and other oil-free sources, requiring the state's utilities to get half their power from renewable energy by 2025.
But it would actually hinder renewable electricity production, according to an unusual coalition of opponents that includes environmental groups, solar and wind companies that may appear to stand to profit from the measure, and the state's three biggest private utilities.
Existing law requires private utilities such as Southern California Edison to increase their renewable electricity by at least 1% a year until they reach 20% in 2010. All are falling behind. Last year, nearly 16% of the power Edison delivered to its customers was renewable.
Proposition 7 would change the law to require an annual increase of 2% a year. It would set targets of 40% by 2020 and 50% by 2025. The measure would extend the requirements to publicly owned utilities, such as the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. It also would fast-track the permitting of large renewable-power plants.
The initiative's backers say it would raise electricity rates no more than 3%, although there is no language to enforce a price cap.
Proposition 7 was paid for almost entirely by Arizona billionaire Peter Sperling, son of the founder of the private University of Phoenix system. Sperling, who owns a home in Santa Barbara, is "deeply interested in the global warming and climate change debate," according to campaign spokesman Steve Hopcraft.
So far, the sole donors to the "yes" campaign are Sperling and former San Francisco Supervisor Jim Gonzalez, a political consultant who worked in 2000 on a drug treatment initiative campaign to which Sperling donated. Sperling and Gonzalez have contributed nearly $7.4 million.
S. David Freeman, who has run some of the nation's biggest public utilities and is now president of the commission that oversees the Port of Los Angeles, strongly backs Proposition 7.
"As the climatologists advise us," Freeman told legislators at a Capitol hearing recently, "it's what we do in the next few years that's going to make the difference as to whether we have irreparable damage from global warming or not."
Opponents, who have sunk nearly $28 million of shareholder money into a "no" campaign, say the measure is a false promise.
