In much of the country a powerful energy boom is providing a serious stimulus to economic growth. But in California, where fossil fuels are considered about as toxic as tobacco, we are lurching toward an anticipated energy shortage that will further exacerbate the state’s already deep geographic and class divisions.
California, in a typical feat of “virtue signaling,” has committed the state to getting half of its electrical power from renewables such as wind and solar, up from 16 percent today, within the next decade. This drive has meant the rapid abandonment of electricity generated by nuclear power as well as natural, gas which together comprised nearly 70 percent of all electricity production in 2015.
This may not end well. California Public Utilities Commission President Michael Picker suggested recently that we could soon return “the kind of crisis we faced in 2000 and 2001.” The rapid abandonment of existing reliable energy sources makes the state, in the estimate of the Institute for Energy Research, “vulnerable to rolling blackouts.”
TPTB want this BAD. They have pushed along the SONGS NP shutdown, killed LA county getting additional NG Fired base/peak load plants (that would have helped with SONGS getting decommissioned), Now Diablo Canyon is going to be shutdown, without any new RELIABLE baseload supply capacity coming online for any of it. Renewables are not a savior, they are intermittent in nature, and we are all going to be dealing with rolling blackouts because of it. Storage is just to MF'ing expensive right now to offset needed supply.
California, in a typical feat of “virtue signaling,” has committed the state to getting half of its electrical power from renewables such as wind and solar, up from 16 percent today, within the next decade. This drive has meant the rapid abandonment of electricity generated by nuclear power as well as natural, gas which together comprised nearly 70 percent of all electricity production in 2015.
This may not end well. California Public Utilities Commission President Michael Picker suggested recently that we could soon return “the kind of crisis we faced in 2000 and 2001.” The rapid abandonment of existing reliable energy sources makes the state, in the estimate of the Institute for Energy Research, “vulnerable to rolling blackouts.”
http://www.newgeography.com/content/006261-california-s-self-created-future-energy-crisis