California has serious energy policy problems
Ronald Stein
August 30, 2024
As a resident of California for more than 6 decades, the situation in California is bad and will be getting worse!
Citizens support for the “Green New Deal” and “Net Zero” in California has led to the States’ most expensive electricity and fuel prices in America, and increasingly high cost of living, housing, and transportation, coupled with an increase in crime, smash-and-grab robberies, homelessness, pollution, and congestion that has caused many people and companies to exodus California to more affordable cities and states.
● California’s net move-out numbers of residents in 2022 alone, was more than 343,000 people that left California — the highest exodus of any state in the U.S.
● The California Policy Institute counted more than 237 businesses that have left the state since 2005. Among these businesses were eleven Fortune 1000 companies, inclusive of AT&T, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Exxon Mobil, and Chevron.
The U.S. Department of Energy recently made a startling admission. U.S. electricity demand is going to double by 2050, and meeting that soaring demand is going to require the equivalent of building 300 Hoover Dams.
Efforts to replace the last California Nuclear Power Plant at Diablo Canyon, a 2.2 GW plant generating continuous uninterruptable electricity, faced multiple challenges, including disruptions to global supply chains. Diablo is projected to close soon.
● In nameplate only, it would take 1,000 2.2MW wind turbines to
generate 2.2 GW, but THEN, it’s only intermittent electricity vs the continuous uninterruptable electricity at Diablo !!!
In spite of the “Green New Deal” and “Net Zero” policies and renewable stations built at the expense of taxpayer dollars, otherwise known as Government Subsidies, California now imports more electric power than any other US state, more than twice the amount in Virginia, the USA’s second largest importer of electric power. California typically receives between one-fifth and one-third of its electricity supply from outside of the state.
Power prices are rocketing into the stratosphere and, even before winter drives up demand, are being deprived of electricity in a way that was unthinkable barely a decade ago. But such is life when you attempt to run on sunshine and breezes.
Further, these so-called “green” electricity sources of wind and solar are not clean, green, renewable or sustainable. They also endanger wildlife.
In California, the economy depends on affordable, reliable, and evercleaner electricity and fuels. Unfortunately, policymakers are driving up California’s electric and gas prices, and California now has the highest electricity and fuel prices in the nation. California’s emission mandates do an excellent job of increasing the cost of electricity, products, and fuels to its citizens.
It’s becoming increasingly obvious that these supposed “green” alternative methods of generating electricity won’t work – especially as demands for electricity are projected to double by 2050 due to AI, charging of EV’s, data centers, government-mandated electric heating, and cooking, and charging grid-backup batteries.
Intermittent electricity from wind and solar cannot power modern nations. In addition, wind and solar cannot produce thousands of essential products that require petrochemical feed stocks.
These “green” wind and solar projects primarily exist because they are financed with taxpayer money, i.e., disguised from taxpayers as “Government subsidies”.
These so-called “green” electricity sources of wind and solar are not clean, green, renewable or sustainable. They also endanger wildlife.
“GREEN” policymakers are oblivious to humanity’s addiction to the products and fuels from fossil fuels, as they are to these two basic facts:
1. No one uses crude oil in its raw form. “Big Oil” only exists because of humanity’s addiction to the products and fuels made from oil!
2. “Renewables” only exist to generate occasional electricity, as they CANNOT make any products or fuels!
To rid the world of crude oil usage, there is no need to overregulate or over-tax the oil industry, just STOP using the products and fuels made from crude oil! Simplistically:
● STOP making cars, trucks, aircraft, boats, ships, farming equipment, medical equipment and supplies, communications equipment, military equipment, etc. that demand crude oil for their supply chain of products.
STOPPING the demands of society, for the products and fuels made from oil, will eliminate the need for crude oil !!!!!
Ronald Stein, P.E. Author | Columnist |
Energy Literacy
Consultant
949-306-6604
Ronald.Stein@Energy
Literacy.net
Co-author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated book “Clean Energy Exploitations”, Columnists of Op Ed articles on Energy Literacy at America Out Loud NEWS (this link has access to many of my articles on Energy Literacy)
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