California's RPS program was established in 2002 by Senate Bill (SB) 1078 (Sher, 2002) with the initial requirement that 20% of electricity retail sales must be served by renewable resources by 2017. The program was accelerated in 2015 with SB 350 (de León, 2015) which mandated a 50% RPS by 2030. SB 350 includes interim annual RPS targets with three-year compliance periods and requires 65% of RPS procurement to be derived from long-term contracts of 10 or more years. In 2018, SB 100 (de León, 2018) was signed into law, which again increases the RPS to 60% by 2030 and requires all the state's electricity to come from carbon-free resources by 2045.
The CPUC implements and administers RPS compliance rules for California’s retail sellers of electricity, which include large and small investor-owned utilities (IOUs), electric service providers (ESPs) and community choice aggregators (CCAs). The California Energy Commission (CEC) is responsible for the certification of electrical generation facilities as eligible renewable energy resources and adopting regulations for the enforcement of RPS procurement requirements of public owned utilities(POUs).
All electricity retail sellers had an interim target between compliance periods to serve at least 38.5% of their load with RPS-eligible resources by December 31, 2022. In general, retail sellers either met or exceeded the interim 38.5% target and are on track to achieve their compliance requirements.
California's three large IOUs collectively served 52% of their 2022 retail electricity sales with renewable power, while the Small and Multi-Jurisdictional Utilities (SMJUs) served roughly 39% of retail sales with renewables, CCA's renewable percentage was 55%, and ESPs 47%.
All retail sellers utilize a mix of RPS resources such as wind, solar PV, solar thermal, hydroelectricity, geothermal, and bioenergy to meet their renewable procurement targets. See below for a map of the large IOUs RPS Projects.