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Energy efficiency and conservation are the cheapest form of "new
clean energy".  But California's new energy efficiency standards
have to be vigorously implemented and fully taken into account in
any scoping plan.  Electricity demand and and should drop more than
forecasters seem to acknowledge if full implementation succeeds.
Conventional estimates of reduced demand have always proven to have
been too high during recent decades. 

Moreover, any scoping plan needs to reckon with the entire array of
distributed renewable energy resources -- storage, behind the meter
solar, advanced informational technology, advanced demand response
and new strategies made possible by electric vehicles such as V2G.
Pumped storage needs to be clearly supported now as a really vital
asset needed as intermittent renewables become a large part of our
electricity generation.

Former assumptions about the need for added natural gas generation
are being shown to be invalid.  State agencies should officially
make it GHG policy that no new natural gas generation be allowed.
Competitive cleaner alternatives now exist.  More natural gas
plants will soon be obsolete, adding to stranded costs. Such
investment is unwise, given that myriad new cleaner alternatives
have come to the fore. 

Direct true costs for fossil fuel combustion should be accurately
made part of all scenarios.  These costs include all health impacts
of conventional air pollution as well as truer costs of carbon
pollution.  Conventional analysis famously understates these costs.
 The potential damage of continued emission of fossil fuels is, in
fact, incalculably large -- the climate disruption that unabated
emissions entails amounts to an existential crisis for the economy,
for society, for civilization and for the very biological systems
that sustain us.  Scoping needs to reflect the emergency nature of
the decarbonization process so desperately required by the climate
challenge.