Time to leave California? Governor Moonbeam may be the best salesman Texas has. While there’s a state delegation in Texas (including former SFO mayor Gavin Newsom) trying to figure out why Texas is pulling business out of California (cue Ross Perot’s giant sucking sound) our governor turns up the volume.
Flashback:
While not the main theme at the moment (hostile state over-regulation of business is) the election reminder of “It’s the electricity, stupid” may someday be a yellow sticky note on some campaign consultant’s computer monitor.
WUWT reader DD More says:
Heard on the radio news this AM and looked it up.
California governor Jerry Brown is expected to sign legislation today requiring energy firms in California to generate 33 per cent of their energy from renewable sources by 2020, delivering one of the most ambitious renewable energy standards in the world.
Will you Cali-guys be starting a poll to guess the date someone in the state gives the Steve Holliday speech?
Electricity consumers in the UK will need to get used to flicking the switch and finding the power unavailable, according to Steve Holliday, CEO of National Grid, the country’s grid operator. Because of a six-fold increase in wind generation, which won’t be available when the wind doesn’t blow, “The grid is going to be a very different system in 2020, 2030,” he told BBC’s Radio 4. “We keep thinking that we want it to be there and provide power when we need it. It’s going to be much smarter than that.
“We are going to change our own behaviour and consume it when it is available and available cheaply.”
Texas has already dealt with the electrical issues of renewable energy:
We Spent Billions on Wind Power… and All I Got Was a Rolling Blackout
And, so far, California’s wind power doesn’t hold up so well:
America has lots of coal in the ground. Get it out and use it.
Hoser says:
“California SB34 is a new bill that will almost certainly pass that creates a new public goods charge for non-agricultural water… The cost is $110 per acre foot each year. That means you can expect an increase in your water bill of between $5 and $10 per month.”
This will amaze some folks in other parts of the country, but my water bill in the summer [NorCal] is already $80 – $100 a month. My gas & electric bill is half that.
Just because government mandates something doesn’t mean it’ll happen. I seem to remember that California had a mandate years ago for a certain percentage of electric cars by a certain date. It didn’t happen and the mandate died.
33% of electricity from renewable sources in 8 1/2 years isn’t possible.
And people won’t put up with significant interruptions in their electricity. Look what happened a decade ago when we had rolling blackouts. People screamed bloody murder and suddenly new power plants were built.
But maybe it’ll take something like more blackouts for people to wake up in this state and kick those idiots in Sacramento out of office.
Marion says:
April 12, 2011 at 3:32 pm
Soon they will be talking about the ’15, the ’45, and the ’11.
I just spent several days in Texas, and returned to California with weary relief.
Everything may be bigger in Texas, but everything’s better in California.
From the EIA website:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/page/state_profiles/california.html
California produced 6055 thousand megawatt hours of wind/solar generated electricity in 2008. A total of 207,981 thousand megawatt hours were produced. This is 2.9%. I doubt that new wind and solar capacity will keep pace with hydroelectric that is planned to be removed to satisfy the salmon.
Forecast? You want a forecast? I’ll give you a forecast. It’s gonna be cold.
It’s gonna be grey. And it’s gonna last you for the rest of your life.
JF
I cant’ wait until a major high-tech company announces it will be leaving California because of their energy policies. That will eventually lead to state bankrupcy.
Quis . . . Custodes,
Thanks very much for the information. Talk is talk, facts is facts. And, the facts are: California is gettin’ it done.
Meanwhile,
Brightsource Energy has closed on 1.6 billions dollars of DOE financing for their three California solar projects. The increase in funding was based on receiving a new higher power price with Pacific Gas and Electric and Southern California Edison. Brightsource did not report what that price was. Google and the California State Teachers pension fund are investors.
http://www.nasdaq.com/aspx/stock-market-news-story.aspx?storyid=201104112029dowjonesdjonline000388&title=doe-increases-loangoogle-steps-in-to-fund-brightsource-project
I think this site does a tremendous job with climate change, and should stick to that.
Whenever a post forays into politics like this one it loses credibility due to the many Tea Party mouth breathers it attracts.
I follow this site because it appeals to reason and pragmatism. The emanations from those quarters are neither.
We know we need to achieve energy independence. Green energy has a role to play there, but as far as I can tell it is minor, and probably better suited for residential and local applications. Fuel cells may be something one day.
Nuclear is the obvious choice, Fukushima nothwithstanding, for grid-scale applications. Let’s sure the engineers working on it are not from the Tea Party.
And please don’t tell me that the evil guvmint is planning for future energy needs out of a desire to “enslave” the population. It’s hogwash.
If you don’t like Sacramento, try Jeddah.
Was in LA just last week and spent quite a bit of time going around the LA basin during the trip. Except for the beaches and the enclaves of West LA, the county has become one gigantic economic disaster area chock full of housing foreclosures, high vacancies in the retail sector and crumbling streets and freeways. Governor Moonshine and the State Legislature have an excellent chance of seeing their 2020 energy goals achieved – all they have to do is continue to crush the California economy with high energy costs and high regulatory costs, including regular shakedowns of businesses by bureaucrats and regulators hungry for revenue to close state and local budget gaps. Surrounding states are cheering them on.
Last time we had governor “Moonbeam” we got 16 years of Republicans. Looks the Democrats want to go for that a second time! This time the “Greens” will lose all standing as we have rolling blackouts.
I will need to finish up a wood fired electricity generator on our small farm. pg
Dear Torgeir Hansson,
There are, unavoidably, right wing nuts that post on this site and I agree that people who say the government is using energy policy to enslave the population should be ignored. However, emergency-driven energy policy such as is noted in this post emanates from forecasts of catastrophic climate change and thus cannot be separated from purely scientific discussion of climate science issues. While your concerns about extremists polluting the dialogue are well taken, there are more than enough reasonable, balanced comments such that irrational comments can be easily ignored.
Berényi Péter:
I say he did not say something, you say he did, but you point to somewhere were he said something quite different. I listened to the speech all 1+ hours of it, I listen to the BBC broadcast, nowhere did he say the unquoted stuff in the piece I am complaining about.
That is why it is unquoted: it is stuff that he did not say, it is stuff that they made up. It is simply a very sorry excuse for journalism, and people know no better than to read it as if it were true.
There is a huge difference between a journalist stating a personally held opinion or interpretation under their own name but as soon as you use:
“… according to Steve Holliday”
it has to relate to something that accords with what Steve Holliday said or what his stated views are, and he never said the anything allowing such hyperbolic dramatisation.
Alex
Quote :
We know we need to achieve energy independence. Green energy has a role to play there,
This is about as stupid as stupid goes .
Nobody but a few brainwashed people knows that energy “independence” must be achieved .
There was only one consistent attempt in history to achieve “independence” in everything .
Indeed why only focus on energy ?
Independence is also mandatory for food , water , building materials , chemical products , computers by exactly the same argument as for energy .
It has been promoted and implemented by Ceaucescu , Romania .
Perhaps (some) Californians dream to finish like Romania did – in poverty , despair and ignorance .
But every reasonable person with a minimum understanding in economy knows exactly the opposite to the stupidity quoted above – “independence” is never a primary target in economy .
The primary target in economy is to produce and distribute ANY good or service at the lowest price for the LONGEST time to a MAXIMUM of people .
If that means importing goods because they can be produced cheaper elsewhere then this is a much better solution for everybody .
Misunderstanding this principle leads to the ruin immediately at the scale of corporations and a bit later at the scale of nations .
For Ceaucescu it took about 25 years to destroy the economy and the country and to finish in front of the firing squad , admittedly not only because of economical idiocy .
I am not Californian so will not judge those who vote in office people whose economical principle is “the highest price and the lowest quantity for as few people as possible” .
I consider them certainly seriously deranged and oblivious to history’s teachings but they are free of their choices . Sofar .
However I would have extreme objections is if they tried to export their madness outside .
In this case California would have to be put in a generalized quarantine – no trade and most importantly no loan .
Countries economically crippled for ideological reasons never pay their debts so the golden rule is to avoid any kind of interaction with them untill they self destruct .
The problem I see here, in the UK this is less of a problem as there all nutters left or right, is that it has been shown that all left leaning politico’s as children never where told no and got everything they wanted, so now when a adult of the left says that 33% must be produce through fairy dust well you either get to th bottom of the garden and beat some fariy dust out of a small woodland creature or expect a temper tantrum.
I surpose if your going to look at the bottom of a garden though a Hollywood garden would be the best place to start.
Bob Diaz says:
“More than one in five (21%) of California small-business owners do not expect to be in business in California in three years, according to a recent survey by Small Business California, an advocacy group in San Francisco. …” http://jan.ocregister.com/2011/03/08/are-calif-businesses-closing-or-leaving/55995/
I read that yesterday. I find it incredibly disturbing how many people actually believe that not only is the state doing just fine, but that what’s happening there is GOOD.
I grew up in the Inland Empire (for non-Californians that’s a region about 60 miles east of LA). Left the place 3 years ago, and every time I read about it, I’m happier with my decision.
William Mason says:
Many groups were formed and many years were spent pressuring the government to pass regulation to clean the air pollution. If it had stopped once the mission was accomplished things would be fine now. The problem is you had thousands of people that had most of their adult lives wrapped around this cause as a job. So what do they do now? Quit and find another career? I wish they had. No they went on and searched until they found another cause to go after. Then another and another and so on until this very day
Now there’s one reason I’ve always been rather skeptical of ANY organization whose stated goal is the abolition of their purpose.
Kum Dollison added a new comment to the post California’s giant sucking sound. ” California is gettin’ it done.”
Kum, yes the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) and California Energy Commission (CEC) have fully supported the legislative efforts/requirements to have 20% renewables in the states electrical generation (by 2010 originally) over the last half a dozen years or so. It’s a bit difficult to get real data on what the costs are for any particular RE project. The prices paid to RE generators are held confidential for a number of years. With the prices of solar and wind generation going down the ISO’s and the CPUC have moved to a market based approach to minimize the overall costs of bringing RE on line.
PG&E gave a presentation to potential RE generators back in 2009 at a bidders conference-
http://search.yahoo.com/r/_ylt=A0oGdSKnjKVNFWgA3SRXNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTE1aDN0djUwBHNlYwNzcgRwb3MDNgRjb2xvA3NrMQR2dGlkA01TWTAwNl8xNzY-/SIG=14innfb8c/EXP=1302716679/**http%3a//www.pge.com/includes/docs/ppt/b2b/wholesaleelectricsuppliersolicitation/2009rps_biddersconferencepresentation_final.ppt
If your into the details of what some smaller RE generators can get paid for their generation your might find the 2009 Feed in Tariff prices of interest (note the time of delivery factors and time of the year factors to get to the actual price the generator gets paid).
http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/PUC/energy/Renewables/Feed-in+Tariff+Price.htm
PG&E agreed last year to purchase the output of a PV facility located outside of Los Vegas (owned by Sempra). Some details of the project are noted here-
http://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/PUBLISHED/FINAL_RESOLUTION/111507.htm
I am unsure how PG&E will allocate the costs of the power across it’s customer base. In the past PG&E’s allocation of costs had spared Tier 1 residential electrical energy customers the increased costs of meeting the RE mandates. That approach changed last year and the CPUC agreed with PG&E that all residential tier’s should share in the increased costs.
Kum Dollison says:
Thanks very much for the information. Talk is talk, facts is facts. And, the facts are: California is gettin’ it done.
If by “gettin’ it done” you mean ruining what used to be a great state, then you’re absolutely right.
Torgeir Hansson :”Whenever a post forays into politics like this one it loses credibility due to the many Tea Party mouth breathers it attracts.
I follow this site because it appeals to reason and pragmatism. The emanations from those quarters are neither.”
A wholly unsupported set of allegations. You offer is nothing at all to support this–nothing but slander and insult. It is mere left wing cant. You are in fact guilty of what you accuse the “Tea Partiers”–you are projecting. Moreover, you have no evidence at all that anyone here is even a member of the “Tea Party”. One hardly has to be in the “Tea Party” to deplore and detest the agenda of the Left: one merely need be a sane adult. One suspects that you have know real knoldge at all about the “Tea Party People” whatsoever; you merely beleive what the Left’s propagandists tells you. How foolish of you.
You are a typical leftist. You cannot rationally argue your positions when faced with rational discussion but instead engage in ad homiem attacks against those would would disagree with you, thus the puerile resort to the usual dodge of calling the eminently rational and pragmatic opposition “right wing nut jobs”. Clearly, to cling to such obvious logical fallacies and moral errors such as these speaks of your mental and moral weakness and not those of others. Little about you position is either rational or pragmatic.
What is truly preposterous, however, is that you imagine that the issues surrounding “energy” can be understood without recourse to an understanding of the political environment. One gather that this is because you do not want to own up to the immense damage caused by the policies of the Left.
It is, perforce, the implementation of the policies of a great many “left wing not jobs” that has put us in this predicament. Rather than slander those who point this out to you, you would be better served to listen to them and then engage in some soul searching. You might then encounter the truth.
Washington State, nestled in a dark blue corner of the Pacific North Wet, declared in 2006 that we needed 15% alternative energy on the grid. We have crazies in charge here, obviously. Here’s our power breakdown from that time:
http://crosscut.com/2010/12/28/energy-utilities/20375/Can-the-state-meet-its-mandate-to-find-alternative-energy-sources-/
This clearly means more hydro is not in the plans, so we will need solar (it is to laugh. There is a reason this place is called the PNWet), wind, the perennial favorite of city dwellers that don’t have to live with the mess, or the miracle decarbonized Pielke Furnace energy source yet to be invented.
So out in our formerly beautiful Kittitas county, in the rolling lava flows and high prairies of our central desert, we have our newest blight. Our beautiful scablands, tortured and scoured by floods from the great glacial lakes and mile thick ice are now sullied by tall stands of soon to be broken Danish wind turbines. The Danes lead the world in placing windmills in other people’s back yards.
And how has wind worked out for the Danes? In Denmark, that is. Well, it turns out you really do need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
http://www.aweo.org/problemwithwind.html
Conveniently photographed to disguise the visual horror, welcome to Horizon Wind Energy and the Kittitas wind bodge.
http://www.horizonwind.com/projects/whatwevedone/kittitas-valley.aspx
For those interested . . . . From C-Span “congress” Capital hearings
http://www.capitolhearings.org/
Select ” Committee on Energy and Commerce”
Then Select “Featured Story
Watch Live: Energy and Power Subcommittee Hearing (10 am ET) Watch Live: Oversight and Investigations Hearing (10:30 am ET)”
John Tofflemire:
I agree that you cannot always separate scientific and political discussion. Yet political discussion can be pragmatic. The ideological cant in some of the claims you see on this thread is clear: government is out to get us. It is heated, distorted rhetoric, and we seem to be together in this.
hattip:
Yes, I am a typical leftist, one who takes a stand against climate change hysteria.
“The immense damage of the policies of the left?” Last time I checked the Republicans were in charge for the last two Administrations, and took the country from a surplus to a gaping deficit.
That is all I will comment, the rest of your comment speaks for itself.
I will not participate in any further discussion here along partisan lines.
John Tofflemire:
What I meant to say was that “we seem to be together in dismissing it as such,” not that “we seem to be together in this.”