Enbridge, Solar Farms, and The New California Renewable Energy Mandate

California utilities will be required to draw 33 percent of their power from solar panels, windmills, landfills gases, small hydroelectric power plants, and similar renewable sources by 2020 under a new law passed in April, 2011. That is an increase from the current 20 percent mandate by 2020.

Understanding that I doubt the California utilities will be able to do that without a significant increase in rates for all consumers, there is an interesting side story.

(Significant rate increases -- double digit percent increases -- have been seen throughout the western states, much of it due to government mandates to increase the amount of energy coming from renewable sources.)

Enbridge: Diversifying Into the Solar Energy Sector

Interestingly enough a "fossil fuel company" may have seen this coming. From "Enbridge: Putting the Pieces Together."

Solar Farms -- Enbridge owns the following:

• Sarnia Solar Project, Ontario, Canada: the largest solar cell farm in the world at the time (40 MW); now expanded to 80 MW
• Amherstburg II (15 MW) and Tibury (5 MW) -- in Canada
• Federal government approves 748 MW project in Mojave Desert and Imperial Valley; panels will cover 6,800 acres, a small part of the 11 million acres of public land in these deserts, October 5, 2010 

I find this very, very interesting that a oil and natural gas pipeline company saw the opportunity to diversify into solar energy, and to do it in California. How prescient.