In principle I agree, but I think in this particular case you might have trouble if you mandated a particular maximum level of energy consumption or a minimum l

In principle I agree, but I think in this particular case you might have trouble if you mandated a particular maximum level of energy consumption or a minimum level of on-site power generation, since some houses just aren't in a good place to get sun and there aren't any compelling alternatives to solar for power generation in residential areas. Perhaps we should discourage people from building in shady places, but that would have a side effect of encouraging people to build where they need more AC. A more market-based approach might be to just tax electrical use higher. Unfortunately, that would be a very regressive tax. (I don't live in California, but I understand you have or used to have a sort of sliding scale, where if you use more energy than average you pay a higher rate per kwh.) Another option would be to require new power generation to be built along with new construction, but allow builders to decide how to do that and allow them to share power generation. For instance, a developer building a hundred houses might put solar on each house or they might build (or buy a partial stake in) a solar farm or wind turbine being built outside of town where land is cheap. The tricky part there is to ensure that any new power generation is actually being built specifically for the new construction, and builders aren't just piggybacking on power generation that would have been built anyways.