Gov. Brown signs major battery storage bill into law

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Environment California

SACRAMENTO — Today, Gov. Brown signed SB 700 into law, authorizing up to $800 million in incentives for customers to install batteries together with their solar energy systems. Like California’s visionary and effective Million Solar Roofs program, the bill will create momentum for the battery technology crucial to the battle to forestall climate change, and help bring it into the mainstream.

Dan Jacobson, director of Environment California, issued the following statement:

“By signing off on a boost to battery storage, Governor Brown has helped out our kids one more time, in one more crucial way.

“Just like the other components of our approach to forestalling climate change, this program may have to start here in the Golden State, but it can’t and it won’t end here. California’s leadership on climate has already had spillover effects across the country, and around the world.

“California created the standards and goals for clean energy, like SB 100 and the renewable energy requirements that came before it, that have helped push the technology along. We have brought renewable technology to scale. We are right now figuring out the engineering details of how to operate a reliable electric grid with increasing amounts of renewable energy.

“As California continues to uncover solutions to the puzzle of a renewable energy future, SB 700 provides a key piece.”