Common use of SERIOUS ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS Clause in Contracts

SERIOUS ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS. Appendix K to PG&E’s 2011 solicitation protocol states specific subcomponents of the RPS Goals evaluation criterion. Among these is “environmental stewardship”, which is identified in the CPUC’s Decision 00-00-000 as one of a few designated “qualitative attributes” that the Decision allowed the IOUs to use as the basis for including Offers on a short list, subject to (1) the Offer being within reasonable price proximity to others selected and (2) support from the utility’s PRG prior to elevation. In the 2011 RFO, PG&E’s evaluation team screened Offers to identify higher-valued projects with potentially serious environmental impacts; this is the contrapositive of the logic stated in Decision 00-00-000, in that PG&E is using a qualitative attribute to reject Offers from its short list. The team identified only a few Offers as posing sufficiently egregious threats to consider rejection on the basis of the most serious environmental concerns. These typically related to concerns regarding impact to endangered or threatened species from construction of a generating facility in close proximity to critical habitat. In administrating its methodology, PG&E only rejected one 2011 Offer based solely on serious environmental concerns; it was adjacent to known occurrences of both endangered and fully protected species. Other projects that were identified as posing such concerns were rejected anyway based on inadequate value or viability scores.