Three years after Prop. 39, California lawmakers call for oversight of clean jobs initiative

California lawmakers from both parties are calling for more stringent oversight of a clean jobs initiative after an Associated Press report found that a fraction of the promised jobs have been created. The report also found that the state has no comprehensive list to show how much work has been done or energy saved, three years after voters approved a ballot measure to raise taxes on corporations and generate clean energy jobs. The Legislature decided to send half the money to fund clean energy projects in schools, promising to generate more than 11,000 jobs each year. Instead, only 1,700 jobs have been created in three years.

SunEdison and Goldman agree to form $1 billion clean power fund

SunEdison Inc. is getting $1 billion in cash and loans to build and buy clean power plants. The world’s biggest renewable energy developer is forming an investment vehicle with a Goldman Sachs Group Inc.-managed fund, according to a statement released Monday. The Goldman-managed fund, West Street Infrastructure Partners III, will provide $300 million in equity, and a group of banks that includes Bank of America Corp. and Deutsche Bank AG will supply $700 million in debt.

Vivint pulls out of Nevada after only 2 weeks in the state

Vivint Solar was expecting aggressive expansion in Nevada starting in July. The company leased a warehouse in Las Vegas and hired more than 30 salespeople, some of who relocated for the position. Two weeks later, Vivint had closed up shop in Nevada. The company, along with other solar installers, believed that the cap of 235 megawatts for residential solar projects eligible for net metering would not expire until early 2016. The net metering cap was put in place in late May by the state legislature, after a bitter fight between the solar industry and the local utility, NV Energy.

SolarCity has a new plan to make distributed energy an integral part of the California grid

SolarCity has an idea for how to help California utilities tap their own customers as an integral part of their billion-dollar distribution grid plans: put them first in line. The plan is called a “distribution loading order,” a variation of the state’s longstanding loading order that puts renewables and efficiency ahead of fossil fuel-fired power for large-scale power procurements and transmission planning. In a white paper released this week, SolarCity wrote that the structure could be a key lever for customer-owned distributed energy resources to compete for billions of dollars of distribution grid projects being planned by the state’s big three utilities.