Growing the Grid: A Plan to Accelerate California's Clean Energy Transition

California's current bottom-up approach to clean energy deployment is insufficient to meet its targets of 90 percent zero-carbon electricity sales by 2035 and 100 percent by 2045. To achieve these goals, the state would need to quadruple its in-state electricity generation capacity and triple its transmission capacity by 2050. The document recommends the creation of a formal Clean Energy Deployment Plan with specific quantities and locations, the assignment of a lead agency, and the implementation of a public progress dashboard.

• California has established aggressive clean energy targets, including 90 percent zero-carbon electricity sales by 2035, 95 percent by 2040, and 100 percent by 2045, alongside economywide net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2045.
• Meeting these targets requires a massive scale-up of infrastructure: in-state electricity generation capacity must be four times larger than current levels, and electricity transmission capacity must triple by 2050.
• To meet goals, California needs to build 5 GW of utility-scale solar annually for over 20 years, which is five times the current rate of development.
• The transition requires a diverse mix of technologies beyond wind and solar, including batteries, nuclear, geothermal, clean hydrogen, and carbon capture and storage infrastructure.
• Current energy models often fail to account for real-world barriers to deployment, such as transmission access, parcel size, visual impact, and competing land uses, which make finding suitable solar sites difficult.

APA

Clean Air Task Force (2022). Growing the Grid: A Plan to Accelerate California's Clean Energy Transition. https://cdn.catf.us/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/11084608/growing-the-grid-factsheet.pdf

Chicago

Clean Air Task Force. Growing the Grid: A Plan to Accelerate California's Clean Energy Transition. 2022. https://cdn.catf.us/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/11084608/growing-the-grid-factsheet.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Clean Air Task Force |title=Growing the Grid: A Plan to Accelerate California's Clean Energy Transition |date=October 2022 |url=https://cdn.catf.us/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/11084608/growing-the-grid-factsheet.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{cleanairtaskforce2022growing, author = {{Clean Air Task Force}}, title = {{Growing the Grid: A Plan to Accelerate California's Clean Energy Transition}}, institution = {Clean Air Task Force}, year = {2022}, month = oct, url = {https://cdn.catf.us/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/11084608/growing-the-grid-factsheet.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }