Brown calls for more investment in rooftop solar energy

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California Gov. Jerry Brown delivers a keynote address during the 2011 Pacific Coast Builders Conference on June 23, 2011 in San Francisco, California.

Governor Jerry Brown has convened a couple of hundred solar developers, economists, politicians and policymakers at UCLA to sort out a strategy toward placing more solar panels on California rooftops.

As he campaigned for governor last year, Brown announced a goal to put 20,000 megawatts of solar power – enough to power millions of homes – on the grid within nine years. About 60 percent of that, he said, should come from what utility pros call distributed generation – very local renewable energy – most commonly, solar panels. These could be placed on houses or parking lots.

In the talk that opened the conference at UCLA, Brown admitted that California's keeping its purse strings tight. He said that while the state budget continues to limit public spending for renewables, he doesn't want to consider any limits on private enterprise. He called for investors to fuel the state's industry for solar and other renewables.

"We have to invest," Brown said. "We have to keep investing. California is still a place of innovation where the tradition of creating new entirely new industries is still very much alive. And I believe the distributed solar energy is another great breakthrough that can be invested in and keep California up among the innovative places in the world."

But he didn't offer policies or interim deadlines that would help state government support solar energy growth. "Nobody is resting," said Brown. "Nobody is kinda hanging out, not doing anything. So a milestone for next year or the year after, I don't know if that would be particularly helpful. My goal is to push the solar initiative as quickly and as wisely as I can."

Brown said much of his job for bringing solar onto the grid involves making sure that state and local agencies are doing what they're supposed to. Advocates for localized solar say local permitting processes get in their way. The other big thing Brown says he can do is bring people together at meetings like this one.