The California Energy Commission heard staff’s recommendation on Aug. 17 to adopt the 2026-2030 Electric Program Investment Charge (EPIC) 5 Investment Plan, a proposed clean-energy research and deployment roadmap backed by a $185 million annual budget.
In the commission’s business-meeting packet, staff said the plan would support new, emerging and pre-commercial clean-energy innovations in California and direct funding to applied research and development, technology demonstration and deployment, and market facilitation. The presentation said the program is administered by the CEC, which provides 80% of funding, and investor-owned utilities, which provide the remaining 20%.
The draft plan lays out research priorities including transportation electrification, distributed energy resources and load flexibility, grid connections for clean-energy resources and beneficial loads, tribal and community-based clean-energy capacity building, building and community-scale decarbonization, environmental-impact and health research, technology safety and supply chains, industrial decarbonization, and electricity-sector resilience and wildfire mitigation.
Staff also cited EPIC’s reported track record through 2025, including $1.5 billion invested since 2011, $19.8 billion in private-sector investment following EPIC support, 602 total projects awarded and 67% of technology demonstration and deployment funding going to projects in and benefiting disadvantaged and low-income communities, excluding combustion projects.
The recommendation called for adoption of the EPIC 5 Investment Plan, a determination that the action is exempt from CEQA, and a directive for the executive director or designee to file the plan with the CPUC by Aug. 26, 2026. The materials reviewed for the meeting do not show a final commission vote on the plan itself.
