California -- A Nation-State

Ladies and gentlemen, it is a great pleasure for me to welcome you to the "Nation-State" of California, on behalf of Governor Pete Wilson and on behalf of the citizens of California.

We consider ourselves the Nation-State for a variety of reasons. Most of you are aware that we are fortunate enough to possess the eighth largest economy in the world. I think that many people are unaware of where we rank from a population perspective as well.

Now, with more than 33 million citizens within California, we have literally twice the population or more than twice the population of Australia and we are roughly seven million more people than Canada. So, when we talk about some of our leadership perspectives, we believe that we can offer it from the vantage point of a large population base and of a very sophisticated society.

I have set a modest objective for myself this morning and that is to try to persuade you over the course of the next few minutes that there is something happening within California besides fire, floods, earthquakes and the O.J. Simpson trial.

California indeed has much to be proud of with respect to the development of progressive energy policies and we have the evidence to demonstrate that we have provided significant dividends for the people of our state. Over the last 15 years California has grown at an unprecedented rate. In fact, between 1980 and 1992, we grew at the rate of more than 850,000 people each year. To put that in perspective -- that is equivalent to the population of the state of Montana for 12 consecutive years. For the last three years, our population growth has slowed just a little bit. Now we are growing at a rate of only 550,000 people per year.

The reason I offer you these statistics is to highlight the enormous challenge that this kind of population growth presents for any service that is a fundamental part of a state's infrastructure. One of the things that we are most proud of is that we have seen continued decline in the overall cost of energy services for the people of our state. My intention this morning is to try to discuss with you some of the reasons why we believe that this has happened and why we think those policies offer opportunities for people throughout the rest of the globe as well.

According to the Energy Information Administration of the United States Department of Energy, California ranked 48th amongst the 50 states in per capita energy cost. What that means is that every man, woman and child in our state spends about $300 a year or less than the rest of the citizenry of the nation. Equally as important, with respect to the business climate and our competitive posture within the United States and throughout the World, California ranked 49th amongst the 50 states in energy cost per dollar of state gross product, according to the Energy Information Administration.

So by any measurement, it is clear that the policies I am about to describe to you have indeed produced very significant dividends for the people and the businesses of our state. As we meet here in the world's energy laboratory -- because that is literally what California has become -- you are visiting a region that enjoys singly the most diverse energy resource base anywhere in the world. And indeed, we have been the pioneers in the development of renewable energy technologies to the extent that today there are more of each of the four principal renewable technologies -- wind, biomass, geothermal and solar. We have more of each of these technologies installed and operating within California than in the entire rest of the world combined.

Today you can find vast arrays of solar thermal collection fields, and they are the largest investment in solar thermal electric generation anywhere in the world. You can visit the largest photovoltaic manufacturers found anywhere in the world and you can see the largest installations of photovoltaics in a whole variety of applications, whether they be power generation for utilities, dispersed off-grid generation in the rural areas of our state, or voltage and power support in the urban areas, where we are installing photovoltaics on household roofs as a means of reducing the load on local distribution systems.

Today you can visit four major wind turbine sites within California. More than 15,000 turbines are operating within California generating more than 1,600 megawatts of power.

Today you can visit 66 biomass facilities within California that use all manner of urban, agricultural, timber, wood and paper waste. This not only improves air emissions by reducing uncontrolled burning, but also generates electricity for use within our economy.

Today you can visit nearly 1,900 megawatts of geothermal production facilities within California ranging from the Geysers, which is north of San Francisco and the largest single geothermal site in the world, to Coso which is near the middle of our state, and all the way down to the Imperial Valley near the Mexican border.

What those investments and those technologies represent are really hope for the future for the entire globe because not only are they nearly pollution-free but they are indeed renewable technologies. Moreover, this means we are not simply extracting and consuming, we are reusing. I think that most of us understand that in our increasingly intensive society throughout the world, this is clearly the approach we need to take if we are going to be good stewards with respect to the earth. This is the 25th Anniversary of Earth Day. It is important to underscore the importance of the interconnection between energy production and consumption in global environmental issues.

There is another reason that we have been successful in California as well. That is because we have made arguably, perhaps second only to Sweden, the most aggressive large-scale investment in energy efficiency of any modern society. Today, California has the lowest per capita growth in energy consumption of any state in the United States. And it is literally for that reason that we have been able to absorb the kind of population growth that I described to you earlier.

The national appliance efficiency standards, that were adopted by Congress, were first propagated by the California Energy Commission. The building energy efficiency standards that are propagated by the California Energy Commission are the most stringent found anywhere in North America; and again, as I said, second only to Sweden. We recognize that when we invest in new building stock, whether it will be housing or commercial properties, that we are making an investment that could last a century. Therefore, from an economic efficiency standpoint, it is absolutely essential that we capture the maximum technologically feasible and economically efficient investment at the time of construction.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations right here in the great city of San Francisco. I think that it is important for me to close by explaining one of the most important programs that we have initiated in the last 10 years in our state, one that has now been emulated by a number of other agencies. I refer, of course, to the only state-sponsored Energy Technologies Export Program in the United States. The program was founded in 1985 with the recognition that the development of modern technologies that I have just described are less polluting, more efficient in nature and provide a better quality of energy service. These technologies also provide great opportunities to meet some of the challenges that the developing countries of the world face.

Our commitment is to share the knowledge that we have gained over the last 20 years. We call our Export Program: Ideas In Technologies. We are not simply in the business of trying to export hardware, we are also in the business of trying to share ideas and concepts to help people understand how they can better harness the energy resources which are available within their own region and to do it in the most environmentally and economically efficient fashion possible.

So let me conclude by reemphasizing our warm words of welcome and our commitment to work with the citizens of the world. Thank you.

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Energy used to create this page was produced by California's electric utilities. ..
the most diverse in the world.

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E-mail us at: energia@energy.ca.gov
"Energia" means ENERGY in Latin.

Page Updated: March 26, 1996

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