CPUC orders 2029–2032 electric resource procurement and transmission planning

On February 26, 2026, the CPUC issued a decision in its Integrated Resource Planning proceeding addressing power supply and power delivery. The decision orders electricity providers subject to CPUC jurisdiction — investor-owned utilities, electric service providers, and community choice aggregators — to execute contracts covering their proportional load share of 2,000 MW of net qualifying capacity by June 2030, an additional 2,000 MW by June 2031, and an additional 2,000 MW by June 2032. All procurement must come from clean generating resources such as solar, wind, or geothermal, or from energy storage such as batteries. One quarter must come from clean firm power or long-duration storage able to deliver at maximum capacity for eight or more hours. Providers cannot procure generation from fossil fuel power plants to meet the obligation. The decision also addresses planning of incremental transmission system upgrades.

California's regulated electricity providers now have dated, binding obligations to contract for new clean capacity and storage in three annual tranches through mid-2032, with a carve-out that must be met by clean firm or long-duration storage resources. Transmission upgrade planning advances alongside the supply obligation.

Procurement obligations with fixed dates generally precede solicitations, engineering, interconnection work, and construction. Suppliers in storage systems, long-duration and clean firm technologies, balance-of-plant construction, electrical equipment, transmission upgrade work, and related engineering and field services may see solicitation and qualification activity develop ahead of the June 2030, 2031, and 2032 dates. This is a consideration to evaluate, not a determined outcome.