Guest reanalysis by David Middleton
Analysis
California’s climate moon shot
Jeff Spross
August 31, 2018
California may be done waiting for everyone else to get their act together on climate change.
Earlier this week, by a vote of 44 to 33, the state Assembly passed a bill that would require California to get 100 percent of its electricity from renewables by 2045. An equivalent measure already passed the state Senate. A whopping 72 percent of Californians support the measure. All that’s left is for Gov. Jerry Brown (D) to sign the bill. And he’s expected to do so.
You only have to look at the news to see why. The biggest wildfire in state history has been burning for over a month, scorching some 400,000 acres, killing one firefighter, and clogging cities and towns with smoke. Meanwhile, sea level rise threatens the state’s prosperous coastal communities even as skyrocketing temperatures dry up farmland in the Central Valley.
So assuming Brown signs the bill, can California actually pull it off?
“It’s mostly a question of willpower,” Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, told Scientific American last year. “From a technological, economic point of view it’s possible to do it.”
Jacobson is one of the lead authors of a 2014 paper that laid out an entire roadmap for how California could do just this.
[…]
The whole planet needs to decarbonize between 2050 and 2070. California has 39 million people and an economy that would be the fifth biggest on Earth if it was its own country. It isn’t the world. But if California can pull this off, it would be one heck of a demonstration project.
How does this qualify as “analysis”?
Unsubstantiated claims that California’s wildfire season and the drying of the Central Valley were the work of climate change, rather than the State’s mismanagement of forests, wild-lands and water resources doesn’t strike me as “analysis.” The claim that “sea level rise threatens the state’s prosperous coastal communities” is preposterous. And the assertion that “the whole planet needs to decarbonize between 2050 and 2070” is simply bat schist crazy.
The closest thing to analysis is the citation of a “Unicorns are real” paper that was thoroughly destroyed and debunked. Destroyed and debunked so thoroughly, that the author tried to sue the debunkers.
Although, the characterization of California’s folly as a “Moon shot” is rather apt… Only because we haven’t returned to the Moon, relegating the Apollo Program to the status of a demonstration project in the eyes of many, if not most, people.
Why would anyone refer to Jeff Spross or The Week for “analysis” of energy policy?
Where to start? The Publication and author
The Week Magazine
The Week bills itself as “All you need to know about everything that matters”…
The Week is generally described as having a center-left bias. However, to their credit, they do occasionally publish articles and opinion pieces from a more conservative perspective. So, it is possible that The Week is a cut above The Nation, The Huffington Post, The Grauniad, Scientific American, etc. as it pertains to articles of at least a quasi-scientific nature… But not exactly a primary source for energy policy analysis… And certainly not even close to all I need to know about everything that matters… It’s more like “All you need to know about everything that matters” to social justice warriors with an occasional mild rebuttal.
Jeff Spross, the author
Jeff Spross
BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS CORRESPONDENTJeff Spross is the economics and business correspondent at TheWeek.com. He was previously a reporter at ThinkProgress.
On his LinkedIn page, he describes himself as “Media Jack-of-All-Trades,” with significant experience in blogging and video production. He has a BS in Radio/TV/Film from The University of Texas at Austin. The lack of any qualifications whatsoever in anything to do with energy and/or climate science doesn’t necessarily mean he’s wrong… But it leaves me lacking any reason to be interested in his opinions on energy policy… beyond ridiculing them.
Analysis and reanalysis
Reanalysis: “the act or an instance of analyzing (something) again : repeated or renewed analysis”.
The Spross Analysis
California decarbonization by 2045.
Earlier this week, by a vote of 44 to 33, the state Assembly passed a bill that would require California to get 100 percent of its electricity from renewables by 2045. An equivalent measure already passed the state Senate. A whopping 72 percent of Californians support the measure. All that’s left is for Gov. Jerry Brown (D) to sign the bill. And he’s expected to do so.
Reanalysis
So what?
A whopping 72 percent of Californians would probably support measures that repealed entropy and protected California from the ravages of plate tectonics. People can vote for Unicorns too.
For the sake of argument… Let’s assume California successfully decarbonizes its electricity generation by 2045… It won’t have any affect on California’s climatic woes, real or imagined. 95% of the electricity in these United States and District of Columbia isn’t generated in California.
| Total Net Electricity Generation, May 2018 | |||
| Rank | State | Thousand MWh | % of US Total |
| 1 | TX | 41,697 | 12% |
| 2 | FL | 20,493 | 6% |
| 3 | PA | 16,243 | 5% |
| 4 | CA | 15,566 | 5% |
| 5 | IL | 14,978 | 4% |
| 6 | AL | 12,243 | 4% |
| 7 | WA | 11,346 | 3% |
| 8 | NC | 11,183 | 3% |
| 9 | GA | 10,856 | 3% |
| 10 | NY | 10,538 | 3% |
The Spross Analysis
Wildfire prevention through decarbonization…
You only have to look at the news to see why. The biggest wildfire in state history has been burning for over a month, scorching some 400,000 acres, killing one firefighter, and clogging cities and towns with smoke.
Reanalysis
This is simply laughable.
Note the pattern:
While, the NIFC states that “prior to 1983, sources of these figures are not known, or cannot be confirmed, and were not derived from the current situation reporting process. As a result the figures prior to 1983 should not be compared to later data” and there is a clear seam in the number of fires time series, the acreage burned is not so subject to reporting errors, is a smooth time series and is very consistent with the data from Oregon.
It appears that CO2 might just be a good fire extinguisher.
The Spross Analysis
“Sea level rise threatens the state’s prosperous coastal communities”
Reanalysis
Words fail me… So I’ll use pictures.
The Spross Analysis
“Skyrocketing temperatures dry up farmland in the Central Valley”
Reanalysis
He’s referring to “The Valley That Hope Forgot.”
We have droughts in Texas too. We build dams and other water infrastructure. The issue is water resource management. Texas and California drought patterns have similar relationships to the ENSO. Texas deals with its droughts; while California doesn’t. The primary difference is that Texas relies more heavily on supply side solutions.
Meteorological drought conditions are the acute cause of water shortages. Government is the chronic cause of the water shortages. 35 years of idiotic governance have resulted California’s inability to deal with cyclical drought conditions. They have allowed environmental nonsense to block the expansion of their water infrastructure to keep pace with population and development.
Southern California and the Central Valley have always needed additional water storage and delivery capacity.
The 10 largest reservoirs in California, linchpins of the water system for 38 million people and the nation’s largest farm economy, were all built between 1927 and 1979. Shasta Lake, the massive inland sea on the Sacramento River near Redding, was finished in 1945. Oroville, the tallest dam in the United States, at 770-feet high on the Feather River in Butte County, was started under Gov. Pat Brown’s building boom in 1961 and finished in 1968.
The last huge reservoir built in California was New Melones, on the Stanislaus River in Calaveras County. Since the Army Corps of Engineers cut the ribbon on it in 1979, California has grown by 15 million people, the equivalent of adding everyone now living in Washington, Oregon and Nevada to the Golden State.
Much of the Great State of Texas has also always needed additional water storage and delivery capacity.
Texas surface reservoirs are at 72% capacity, despite persistent drought issues…
Texas has steadily increased its surface reservoir capacity over the past 80 years…
During the previous ENSO-related drought prone period, Texas quadrupled its surface reservoir storage capacity…
Texas is meeting the current ENSO-related drought prone period by building more water infrastructure, including 26 new major surface reservoirs…
In the 2012 State Water Plan, 26 new major reservoirs are recommended to meet water needs in several regions (Figure 7.1). A major reservoir is defined as one having 5,000 or more acre-feet of conservation storage. These new reservoirs would produce 1.5 million acre-feet per year in 2060 if all are built, representing 16.7 percent of the total volume of all recommended strategies for 2060 combined (Figure 7.2). Not surprisingly, the majority of these projects would be located east of the Interstate Highway-35 corridor where rainfall and resulting runoff are more plentiful than in the western portion of the state.
The Spross Analysis
“One heck of a demonstration project”.
The whole planet needs to decarbonize between 2050 and 2070. California has 39 million people and an economy that would be the fifth biggest on Earth if it was its own country. It isn’t the world. But if California can pull this off, it would be one heck of a demonstration project.
Reanalysis
If the “whole planet needs to decarbonize between 2050 and 2070,” the decarbonization of 5% of US electricity generation by 2045 won’t be “one heck of a demonstration project.” It would be a barely noticeable demonstration project.
In the meantime, Texans will continue to see increased oil and gas production, increased electricity generation (from all sources that work) and the build out of more water infrastructure (initially funded with oil & gas revenue).
| Texas vs California | TX | CA | TX/CA |
| Electricity Generation, May 2018 (1,000 MWh) | 41,697 | 15,556 | 2.7 |
| Wind Generation Capacity, 2016 (MW) | 21,450 | 5,561 | 3.9 |
| Crude Oil Production, May 2018 (1,000 bbl/month) | 131,541 | 14,391 | 9.1 |
| Natural Gas Production, 2016 (mmcf/year) | 7,203,012 | 205,024 | 35.1 |
So, if California pulls off one heck of a a barely noticeable demonstration project, it won’t make any difference anywhere outside the wallets of Californians. And, quite frankly, this is how the “whole planet” looks from here:
David Middleton is a petroleum geologist and has been a naturalized Texan since 1981.
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Sorry David,
but i was a Texan in 1962 by birth. Still all my family there.
Texas, the only State that ever its own independent nation too.
We even had an embassy in London. As recently as 2006, it was the best Tex-Mex joint east of Texarkana… I may not have been born here; but I got here as quick as I coould… 😎
There was a California Republic that existed for about 25 days.
The Rogue River–Siskiyou National Forest is mostly in Oregon. Bits of it lie in Del Norte and Siskiyou Counties, CA.
But the fact is that forest and other wild fires burned far more area before 1953 than since. Smokey the Bear must have had an effect. The reason some recent years have been bad is that Carter changed USFS management practices, and they got worse under Clinton and Obama.
Data from 1926 et seq:
https://www.nifc.gov/fireInfo/fireInfo_stats_totalFires.html
Worst year for area burned was 1930, with 52,266,000 acres. Lowest year for acreage burned was 1983, at 1,323,666.
Worst year for number of fires was 1981, with 249,370, but only 4,814,206 acres burned. Lowest number of fires was also 1983, with just 18,229.
Thanks to Obama and governors like Brown, two recent years were the first since 1952 in which more than 10 million acres burned. Trump needs to force the USFS to change its evil ways.
Year_Number Fires_Acres Burned
2017 71,499 10,026,086
2016 67,743 5,509,995
2015 68,151 10,125,149
2014 63,312 3,595,613
2013 47,579 4,319,546
2012 67,774 9,326,238
2011 74,126 8,711,367
2010 71,971 3,422,724
2009 78,792 5,921,786.
This summer, the Farmers Market in my town was closed on account of forest fire smoke. In 2015, I flew past the summit of Mt. Hood without being able to see it, due to smoke. It’s not climate change. It’s lunacy and idiocy at the highest levels of federal and state forest mismanagement.
+42, except… There’s no “the” in Smokey’s name… 😉
Unless you are referring to the song by Steve Nelson and Jack Rollins (and performed by Eddy Arnold) that was about Smokey Bear. Or the 1955 the Little Golden Books series about Smokey Bear 😉
Another +42 from me, but I don’t care how Smokey’s name is spelled.
They spelled it wrong. It is The Weak.
Go ahead California, show us how it is done.
Bottom line: Really good news for Texas. I see a REALLY BIG Texas/California grid interconnect :).
California, truly the land of fruits and nuts.
The US is sloped to the west. This causes all the fruits and nuts to roll to California.
David,
You might also point out that with only an irrelevant mandate and free markets ERCOT is on track to generate ~18% of its electricity from wind this year, a higher renewable penetration than CAISO. With the current interconnection queue it is likely that will push up to 30%. Given that wind in summer dies down during the hottest part of the day the ERCOT grid is well suited to integrate a large amount of solar without having to curtail wind (my guess is that they could integrate 20% solar without having to add storage). The reality is that Texas is going to get closer to California’s goal without California’s ridiculous policies, and provides electricity at half the cost.
Yes solar and wind get tax breaks, but those are (luckily) on their way out. It will be a good day when those end, but ERCOT will still be pumping out electrons at $0.08/kWh residential.
I’m a fan of wind in Texas…
I’d be a bigger fan if our wind resource wasn’t so heavily weighted toward spring & fall.
At one time (~2006) ERCOT gave wind generators a big break. Every powe plant had to report what they could deliver the next day. If they failed to deliver, they had to pay for the replacement. This didn’t apply to wind farms. I don’t know if they still do this.
Spring and fall actually has one advantage – it makes it easier to take dispatchable power offline for maintenance. However, the fact that ERCOT is already hitting +50% penetration at certain times means there is probably a lot of technical resistance to raising the wind capacity all that much. Curtailment was at 14% before CREZ went in. My suspicion is that if wind goes up by more than 12GW or so of capacity there will have to be either 1) a lot of curtailment (making the investment unprofitable) 2) bigger inter-ties with other states (threatening ERCOT’s independence) or 3) storage (which adds far too much cost).
That is why I think ERCOT hits massive resistance at 30% annual generation.
I’m not sure about the 15 minute day ahead market. I think that wind generators have to hit their targets now and they contract with storage (flywheels, batteries, etc.) to manage that. They have also massively improved their weather prediction technologies. The produced and day ahead are pretty stinking close anymore.
What do you mean by “an irrelevant mandate and free markets”? How has Texas’ experience in its massive investment in wind differed from that of California?
In California the state mandates that investors receive a guaranteed return on investment so that money will be spent to built capital. Then on top of that the state is mandating solar, wind, batteries, rainbows and sunshine. So in California you are required by law to build a solar farm and plug it into a battery. Ratepayers then are obliged to pay a higher bill in order to make sure that your backers make money at a guaranteed rate. This is true even if nobody wants your electrons.
In Texas the idea is you can jolly well find your own investors, build a business plan, and then sell your electrons into the market. If you lose money on the deal too bad, so sad, better luck next time. You get nothing from us and we won’t pass on the bill for your poor investment.
However, Texas did mandate something like 5GW of installed wind capacity. That requirement is still law (it might have been 7, I don’t remember), but there is well over 22 GW currently installed and new turbines going up. Although there technically is a mandate in Texas it is irrelevant to anything that is going in the ground now, and this has been the case for years.
OK I see. Were there any tax incentives?
Yes – the Federal tax incentives. I believe most of the wind put in was when the incentives were $22/MWh of production. This has the unintended consequence of negative pricing. Even if the price drops to -$20/MWh the turbines are still run because there is a net positive impact to the builders. On top of that wind gets an accelerated depreciation schedule (I believe that is the particular incentive that Warren Buffett likes).
On the solar side I believe the incentive is 30% of CapEx. However, you have to ask yourself whether solar was going in when capex was 30% higher than it is today. If the answer is yes then you have to admit that even without that incentive it would still be going in. In Texas it was not, but is now. So as far as Texas is concerned the correct price for solar is ~20% lower than it is right now.
David, Good analysis and comparison. The Siskiyou National Forest graph is a good example of poor fire management assuming the graph also includes prescribed burns. It appears they went 45+ years with no burn and therefore built up huge amounts of fuel.
Many states, including California, promote human population growth but then do little to prepare for such growth. It is a strange paradox. Living in Florida I watched much of my life as the politicians, primarily of the Democratic Party (they ran the state from Reconstruction until the late 1980s) ran on bringing new business to Florida. They then passed extremely restrictive development rules and regulations and were reluctant to properly fund infrastructure. Many of the problems facing Florida today are hold overs from years of promoting growth and the failure to prepare for such growth.
I can only imagine the battles that would ensue today in California if they attempted to create adequate water storage capacity.
I’m perfectly willing to let California be the US’s renewable energy crash test dummy as long as I don’t have to subsidize it with my tax dollars.
On second thought, I really don’t want California to be our renewables crash test dummy because of the irreversible environmental damage it’s likely to cause and the senseless hardship it will place on so many people.
Looking at the graphic from the lead posting ( NIFC, NOAA and MacFarling-Meurre, 2006 ) it would appear to show that there is so much CO2 in the atmosphere that it has suppressed wildfires. We have passed the tipping point about 50 – 60 years ago at 320 ppmv CO2. Our children just don’t know what wildfires are.
Start a wildfire today before it’s too late to have one! Hmm …. wait a minute … if we do that and it adds any more CO2 we won’t be able to light a match for the BBQ grill or our favorite blunt. It’s worse than we thought! 😉
Engaging in schadenfreude over California’s suicidal policies has entertainment value, but all of us red-county fly-over folks need to be planning defense against the inevitable collapse.
To quote FBI’s Peter Strzok, we need an “insurance policy”, and to quote Chicago’s Rahm Emanuel, we must “not let a good crisis go to waste”.
Nothing in the Constitution requires the federal government to rescue state or municipal entities from their own fiscal disasters.
So federal legislation is needed, entitled “No bail-outs for “Willing To Fail” (WTF) states/cities”.
Use your imagination
Will need to build a wall to keep Ca’s South American refugees from moving to a place near you.
Please press 2 if you want to read this in Spanish. Offer expires in 6 months. After that you will of course need to press 2 to read it in English.
So, California is going to build bullet trains and windmills instead of water infrastructure. It would be of enormous value to the world to demonstrate the real-world economics of their proposed climate policies, so I am very much looking forward to the demonstration. At some point though, I fear they’ll elect an adult and we won’t get to see the end result.
I love my state (Texas) and agree that it is a lot better off than California (Governance wise), but that seems to be slowly changing. The big cities are hornets nest of liberal thinking and seem to be detached from the rest of Texas. As population grows, and it is growing quickly, the cities are the main focus of growth. Texas offers a lot of job opportunity, lower taxes, and a good quality life…if you can survive July and August (hint, use lots of air conditioning!).
Over the past 20 years, as population is soaring, we have stopped proactively addressing resources like water. I now live in an area with watering restrictions in place even when the lakes, rivers, and streets are flooding – they are “preparing us” for the day when there is too little water. Why? Because we are no longer building in water capacity near the big cities. This shot-sighted behavior is recent (last 20 to 30 years) and seems to be a product of “building is too hard”.
Energy we seem to be doing better at, but this fixation of getting wind-subsidies and covering our beautiful western hills with the wind-turbine warts needs to stop. We have Nuclear Power plants and could always build more of those, once the price of gas goes up. The export of electricity for profit could be a huge business for Texas, while the coast areas are going dark from lack of planning.
So while there is much we can be proud of here in Texas, we can’t just sit around on our butts and “hope” for miracle solutions the way the Californians do. We will face serious droughts, and need to be ready for them. Serious hurricanes and need to be ready for those. And of course, everyone’s favorite, the lovely tornadoes that like to wreck entire swaths of the countryside. None of these are affected by Carbon dioxide. None of these are under our control. All we can do is adapt and prepare.
At least Kalifornia won’t go without electricity. They’ll be forced to buy it from Arizona and Nevada, maybe Oregon. But they’ll have it. At least for the wealthy.
One popular tactic by today’s politicians is to pass a law requiring something to happen far enough into the future that they will not still be in power when the deadline arrives. A competent voter would ask “what will you do this year?”
Also I wonder how California expects to get all its imports produced with renewable power, or are they going to ignore that and keep importing Chinese goods produced with coal power?
How can so many people be so dumb, and so gullible?
Between 2007 and 2016 five million people moved to California from other states and six million moved away to other states, a net loss of one million people. The state-by-state chart is shown, it was made by the California legislative analyst’s office. Texas is a very popular destination! The net to Texas is about 270,000 for the period.