33% is a start.  The good Governor is on the right track.

I’ve become knowledgeable about California’s renewable energy portfolio via legislation I’ve helped to write regarding the financing of renewable energy projects. We need a new market mechanism to promote (and reduce current sky-high risk for) private investment.  The US has offered 50% ITC if we can get projects in gear by 2016.  Time’s a wastin’ — and the embedded CA business community is not being supportive of this technological progress.

WILL LEGACY CALIFORNIA BUSINESS (AND THEIR LOBBYISTS) SUPPORT THE PEOPLE OF CALIFORNIA (HEALTH, AIR QUALITY, RESOURCE PRESERVATION, EXPENSE SAVINGS, JOB CREATION) IN CREATING A CLEAN ENERGY FUTURE?

“A 33 percent renewable portfolio standard in the world’s eighth largest economy sends a clear message: renewable technologies can provide reliable, cost-effective, and sustainable solutions for electricity generation. This strong commitment puts California on a clear path for creating more green jobs and achieving long-term energy security. In addition, it gives us the confidence to make greater investments in our California operations and American manufacturing that will help drive down the costs of solar electricity.”

“California continues to be the U.S. policy leader when it comes to stimulating the adoption of renewable energy.  If measures like the 33 percent renewable portfolio standard are successful on such a large scale, the federal government will be more likely to follow.”

Read more about this here: It’s Official: 33% RPS Now the Law in California

Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law Tuesday a mandate that 33% of electricity in California must come from renewable sources by 2020.

Executives at solar, wind and other clean energy companies said the new regulations could help California reclaim its green leadership position after losing ground to states such as Texas and Iowa.

“This is tremendous,” said Mike Hall, chief executive of solar installer Borrego Solar. “A legislative solution provides a lot more clarity and firepower for regulators and proponents.”

Read more about this here:  California renewable energy gets major boost in new law

Much bigger than winning an Olympics, a 5-week event, the World Expo is a 6-month extravaganza, which attracted 70 million to Shanghai this year.  Imagine what 71 million visitors would do for the Bay Area and California’s economies + the business and infrastructure development this would attract!

The SJ Mercury News is publishing a series of articles about the bid.

Here is Jim Wunderman’s OpEd as a Kick-off:

Bring the World Expo to Silicon Valley in 2020 http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_15917732

Here are excerpts from the latest article (link below): Silicon Valley maps strategy for 2020 world expo

“First things first: The diagram is very, very preliminary. It’s a rendering of what Expo 2020 Silicon Valley might look like if it sees the light of day.

The rendering, produced by architect Jeffrey Heller of San Francisco’s Heller Manus, was revealed in conjunction with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s announcement in Shanghai last week that California is formally and “aggressively” bidding to host the 2020 international fair.

‘Shanghai has demonstrated that when you host the world expo, the world comes to you, and I want the world to come to California,’ Schwarzenegger said.

Should the bid be successful – the Bureau of International Expositions is supposed to pick the winner in 2012 – the world will be coming to Moffett Field, specifically to approximately 450 acres of the NASA-owned property in Mountain View, literally next door to Google Inc.

…There is not as yet, a budget estimate for the Silicon Valley expo. Putting together a bid package – not an inexpensive proposition – may cost between $10 million to $20 million, said John Grubb, senior vice president for the Bay Area Council, which initiated and has been spearheading the drive. And most of the money will have to be private.”

…’It’s early in the game, but we’re very serious about it,” said Bay Area Council CEO Jim Wunderman. “It’s a big idea and will require cooperation on many different levels.”

“This is about California.”

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/19/BU7I1FF0N3.DTL#ixzz10ID5UkeX

Lately, it seems like you can’t read a newspaper, turn on the TV or go online without hearing about China’s rise and America’s demise. Whether it’s China overtaking Japan as the world’s second largest economy or the Agricultural Bank of China having one of the biggest IPO’s in history, the story inevitably is about China.

Yes, China is gaining influence around the world. Yes, China is growing in stature. If we are smart, we will embrace it. Our organization just opened an office in Shanghai to help our region’s business succeed in China, and we’re leading a delegation with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in September to grow our exports to that country.

But China’s rise doesn’t mean we’re giving up here in the States. Quite the contrary. We can, and should, learn a lot from our Chinese partners. A great example is the Shanghai World Expo.

Just look at what Shanghai has been able to accomplish this year with its Expo. When everything is said and done, more than 70 million people from across the world will have attended. The city captured the world’s attention for six months and used billions of dollars generated by the Expo to build new subways, rail lines, ferries and other infrastructure projects. The Expo has been Shanghai’s stimulus package.

In a world where a strong global image is a key asset, world expositions are once again a vehicle for “region branding.” Apart from cultural and symbolic reasons, organizing countries — and the regions hosting expos — can use the event to share their best thinking, companies and culture on a global stage. China has certainly done this. Silicon Valley and California can and should too.

It’s time we lay a marker down and start to make a bid for the 2020 Expo to come to the Bay Area. Think about the possibilities.

Expos are about showcasing your region and its qualities and how they fit into a common vision for the future. For 30 years, the Bay Area and Silicon Valley have been the preeminent hot spots for the innovation that drives the world’s technological advances. Our region already has everything we need: innovation, creativity and technology, plus leadership in sustainability.

Another plus for a Silicon Valley Expo is that, unlike an Olympic bid, the exhibit is tied to commerce, not sports. Instead of building massive sports arenas and stadiums, we would allow countries to create international pavilions — buildings we can keep or demolish — and upgrade existing infrastructure that would benefit the region for decades after the Expo is over.

Perhaps we could even create a Silicon Valley campus for the University of California, for free! Everything that’s built could be used for a whole multitude of purposes, whether academic, business-related or nonprofit. And since the Bay Area is already working on getting high-speed rail from San Jose to San Francisco, perhaps an Expo would be the right ingredient to get that project over the finish line in a way everyone can agree on.

We’ve done it before. In 1915, San Francisco hosted the Pan-Pacific International Exposition, primarily to showcase that San Francisco was back and fully recovered after the 1906 earthquake. We have the chance to do the same thing right now after enduring an economic earthquake.

If we were able to invent the microchip, the iPhone, biotechnology and the search engine, we can also lead America’s way to prominence and respect once again.

Shanghai used its Expo to show how China has arrived on the world stage. Let’s make a bid for 2020 and do ours to show we are not leaving it.

JIM WUNDERMAN is president and CEO of the Bay Area Council. He wrote this article for this newspaper/Mercury News.

“In Chief Executive’s annual survey of best and worst states for business, conducted in late January of this year, 651 CEOs across the U.S. again gave Texas top honors, closely followed by North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. They gave the booby prize for worst state to California, with New York, Michigan, New Jersey and Massachusetts filling out the bottom five-a line-up virtually unchanged from last year. Florida and Georgia each dropped three places in the ranking, but remain in the top 10. Utah jumped six positions this year to sneak into the top 10 at No. 9.”

Check out the article at: http://bit.ly/9nlvyR

Here’ s what it says about CA:

“The leadership of California has done everything in its power to kill manufacturing jobs in this state,” observed another CEO. “As I stated at our annual meeting, if we could grow our crops in Reno, we’d move our plants tomorrow.”

How is it that the nation’s most populous state at 37 million, one that is the world’s eighth-largest economy and the country’s richest and most diverse agricultural producer, a state that had the fastest growth rate in the 1950s and 1960s during the tenures of Democratic Governor Pat Brown and Republican Governors Earl Warren and Ronald Reagan, should become the Venezuela of North America?

Californians pay among the highest income and sales taxes in the nation, the former exceeding 10 percent in the top brackets. Unemployment statewide is over 12.2 percent, higher than the national average. State politics seems consumed with how to divide a shrinking pie rather than how to expand it. Against national trend, union density is climbing from 16.1 percent of workers in 1998 to 17.8 percent in 2002. Organized labor has more political influence in California than in most other states. In addition, unfunded pension and health care liabilities for state workers top $500 billion and the annual pension contribution has climbed from $320 million to $7.3 billion in less than a decade. When state employees reach critical mass, they tend to become a permanent lobby for continual growth in government.

Bill Dormandy, CEO of San Francisco medical device maker ITC, summed it up: “California has a good living environment but is unfavorable to business and the state taxes are not survivable. Nevada and Virginia are encouraging business to move to their states with lower tax rates and less regulatory demands.”

Here’s what it says about Texas:

Lone Star Leader

By contrast, Texas, the second-most populous state and the world’s 12th largest economy, is where 70 percent of all new U.S. jobs have been created since 2008. Unsurprisingly, it scores high in all the areas CEOs value most. “You feel like state government understands the value of business and industry to create jobs and growth,” observed one CEO. Its tax credits and incentives to business choosing to locate or expand are among the most aggressive. The Texas Enterprise Fund is by far the largest deal-closing fund of any state, with grants totaling $377 million disbursed in 2008.

Little wonder then that while Texas gained over 848,000 net new residents in the last 10 years, according to the Census Bureau, California lost 1.5 million. New York State’s net loss exceeded 1.6 million – the highest of any state. High-tax, big- government New Jersey ranked fourth, with a net loss of almost 460,000, enough to drop it from 10th to 11th place in population.

Why doesn’t Sacramento get this?  What can the CEOs of California do to convince them that what is good for California Business is good for California?

First about Business:  It seems that our state is doing everything is can to suppress business growth and repel the attraction of businesses to California.   When we need jobs and revenues, why are we doing this?  It’s been happening for years, but first the prosperity that came with the defense contracting expansion (Reagan years) then the tech boom (Clinton years) covered up the creeping regulations and anti-business bureaucracy.  Additionally, the talent was here, and wanted to live here, so companies established here and paid the price. Things are very different now.  The price is too high.  Both companies and residents believe this.  I recently read that a formerly California-based executive cited the one permit they needed to build a factory in India, whereas they needed 20+ permits (and years of time requirements) in California.  And never mind other countries, other states are pulling away our companies.  There are Silicon Valley executives, of major industry-leading companies, who say they’ll continue to have their HQ here, but will never build another facility in California.  They are saying that they will NEVER CREATE ANOTHER JOB IN CALIFORNIA.

Joseph Vranich, The Business Relocation Coach, wrote an interesting blog lately – with a tremendous amount of data. http://thebusinessrelocationcoach.blogspot.com/ He states that 85 companies have left California for other US states during the first half of 2010, up from 44 in all of 2009.  The departures in 2006-2009 were 35 total.  He states the total amount of capital invested in these relocations is almost $5B.  FOUR BILLION DOLLARS GONE.  The states that appear to be luring companies from California include: Texas, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon, Virginia, South Dakota, Tennessee, Washington.  Why do these states have the ingenuity and fortitude to draw the treasure of California’s innovation and intellectual (people) property – and California does not have the ability or will to keep the basis of our economy here?  Actually, why do we not have the wherewithal to create a business friendly environment to not only maintain – but foster – IGNITE – a return to California’s business prosperity?

More on this subject to follow.