The California Secretary of State’s office has announced the California Clean Alternative Energy Initiative has qualified for placement on the November 7, 2006 General Election statewide ballot. Nearly 1.2 million California voters signed the petition, almost double the number required to certify.
Outrage over high gas prices, record-breaking oil company profits, poor air quality and over-dependence on insecure foreign oil sources are fueling the momentum behind the California Clean Energy campaign.
“The Clean Energy Initiative represents a choice,” said Dan Kammen, PhD, Professor of Public Policy at U.C. Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy and founding director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory (RAEL). “In the absence of a federal energy policy, the oil companies have a business-as-usual plan for California’s energy future: higher gas prices, more pollution and greater dependence on insecure foreign sources of oil.
The Clean Energy Initiative will fund a $4 billion effort to reduce California’s dependence on gasoline and diesel by 25% over the next 10 years by making alternative fuel vehicles and alternative fuels more widely affordable and accessible to consumers. The program will be funded by a modest and temporary assessment on the extraction of oil in California, paid for by oil companies that drill in California. The assessment is based on a sliding scale of 1.5- 6.0%, based on the price per barrel (PPB) of California crude oil at the wellhead; full funding of the program could be achieved in as few as 7 years, depending on the price of California oil. If the Initiative were enacted today, the assessment would be 4.5%, based on the current closing price of California oil ($58.00 per barrel, as of Friday, June 16).
Loading...