SACRAMENTO -- Governor Gray Davis today announced that the first two peaker plants have been licensed under the California Energy Commission's expedited review process. The two power plants, located in Palm Springs and San Diego, will provide electricity at peak use times this summer.

"Under my Emergency Executive Orders, the Energy Commission was able to accelerate the licensing process, approving these simple-cycle plants in just 19 days," Governor Davis said. "We continue to move at warp speed to meet California's summertime electricity demand, without jeopardizing California's environmental protections."

The two projects will be built by Wildflower Energy LP, a Houston, Texas-based subsidiary of InterGen North America. Both projects use natural gas-fueled simple-cycle turbine generators equipped with state-of-the-art air pollution control features, and are part of the Independent System Operator's reliability generation agreements planned to come on-line this summer. Both plants meet the Best Available Control Technology five parts-per-million NOx air emissions standards.

The Larkspur Energy Facility, a 90-megawatt peaker plant, will be located in the Otay Mesa area of the City of San Diego, at the corner of Harvest Road and Otay Mesa Road and will be on-line as soon as July 5, 2001.

The Indigo Energy Facility, a 135-megawatt peaker plant, will be located near an existing wind generating facility in the City of Palm Springs in Riverside County. The project, which plans to be on-line by July 5, 2001, is north of Interstate 10, on 19th Avenue, east of North Indian Avenue.

The Energy Commission announced it has received two more proposals for simple-cycle plants -- a 50-megawatt facility planned in Kings City in Monterey County, and a 57-megawatt facility planned in Chula Vista, in San Diego County. Those proposals, along with two others for power plants in the City of Colton in San Bernardino County, are being examined to see if their applications are complete. Once they are deemed complete, they can begin the expedited licensing process that applies to power plants that can be on-line by September 30, 2001.

The Energy Commission's current status report indicates that new generation totaling 4,168 megawatts will be on-line by the end of August 2001. This includes generation from the restart of existing biomass facilities and development of new renewable projects supported by the Commission's Renewables Program, as well as the new simple cycle power plants licensed through the emergency licensing process.

In addition to the 4 simple-cycle applications in review for data adequacy, the Energy Commission is working with 23 power plant developers, who could add 12 plants and an additional 910 megawatts for this Summer and 10 plants with 1,801 for the Summer of 2002. There are 17 new renewable energy projects expected to be on-line by early August with a combined generating capacity of approximately 120 megawatts.

The most significant contribution in the early summer will come from new baseload power plants previously approved by the Energy Commission. Four new power plants -- Sutter, Los Medanos, Sunrise, and Proctor and Gamble -- are currently in construction and will come on-line this summer and will produce over 1,400 megawatts.

Energy Commission staff regularly provides updates on all projects under its review at www.energy.ca.gov/sitingcases.