California Reaches New Heights for Renewable Energy | Guest Commentary | Commentary

California reached a major milestone earlier this year when renewable energy generated 100 percent of our state’s electricity for all or part of 100 consecutive days. It’s becoming increasingly common for our grid to run exclusively on clean, renewable energy, showing that the Central Valley can do for energy what it did for food.

Renewable energy – whether solar, wind or stored – is an important new crop for farmers who, faced with the effects of climate change and the loss of irrigation systems, must find new sources of income.

The company I work for, EDP Renewables, has invested heavily in the Valley and will continue to do so. Our three ongoing projects in Kern and San Bernardino counties have generated more than $22 million over the past few years to support schools, infrastructure, emergency management, and other public services for those communities.

In July, EDPR held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for our newest project in the Central Valley, a 240-megawatt solar and storage facility about 30 miles west of Fresno that we’re calling Scarlett I. By demonstrating how these projects can support the local agricultural community, EDPR will make an estimated $30 million in payments to local landowners over the next 25 years and spend millions more on local businesses during construction and operations.

EDPR will soon break ground on two nearly completed clean energy projects in Fresno and Kern counties. We also plan to invest in many other counties throughout the Central Valley. This is not to replace the agriculture that helps feed the world, but to support it by diversifying the region’s economy, providing farmers with a new source of income, reversing the climate change that is transforming the Valley, and producing a product, electricity, that is now almost as essential to life as food.