Achieving 50 Percent Renewable Electricity in California

The analysis finds that California can reach a 50 percent renewable electricity mix by 2024 using existing technology. While increasing the Renewables Portfolio Standard to 50 percent would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 22 percent without further grid investment, implementing advanced grid management tools like storage and demand response could increase that reduction to 27 percent and significantly decrease renewable energy curtailment.

• California is capable of integrating 50 percent renewable energy into its electricity mix by 2024, which is a faster timeline than current state proposals suggest.
• Increasing the Renewables Portfolio Standard from 33 percent to 50 percent would lower greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation by 22 percent if no additional grid flexibility investments are made. However, utilizing low or zero-carbon grid management—including electricity exports, demand response, storage, and flexible renewable generator operation—would increase the emissions drop to 27 percent.
• Existing peaker and combustion turbine gas plants provide sufficient ramping ability for 2024, meaning additional gas capacity is not required to meet ramping needs.
• Allowing solar and wind power to contribute more to reliability services could reduce the curtailment of renewable energy by 44 percent.
• The deployment of energy storage, such as batteries, and advanced demand response can maintain grid reliability and flexibility while reducing carbon emissions and reliance on natural gas. These solutions can sometimes provide greater flexibility than natural gas because they do not need to be online and generating electricity to provide reliability services.

APA

Union of Concerned Scientists (2015). Achieving 50 Percent Renewable Electricity in California. https://www.ucs.org/resources/achieving-50-percent-renewable-electricity-california

Chicago

Union of Concerned Scientists. Achieving 50 Percent Renewable Electricity in California. 2015. https://www.ucs.org/resources/achieving-50-percent-renewable-electricity-california.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Union of Concerned Scientists |title=Achieving 50 Percent Renewable Electricity in California |date=14 August 2015 |url=https://www.ucs.org/resources/achieving-50-percent-renewable-electricity-california |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{unionofconcernedscientists2015achieving, author = {{Union of Concerned Scientists}}, title = {{Achieving 50 Percent Renewable Electricity in California}}, institution = {Union of Concerned Scientists}, year = {2015}, month = aug, url = {https://www.ucs.org/resources/achieving-50-percent-renewable-electricity-california}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }