Apparently, Brown learned nothing from the 100% renewable failures of Apple and Google. Both companies said they tried but can’t run on 100% renewable energy. California, known as the “Golden State” will likely become less and less desirable to live in and do business in as electricity prices soar, and grid reliability dwindles. Already, there’s a whole generation of people planning an exodus. I’ll probably be one of them – Anthony
By Valerie Richardson
Citing the “existential threat of climate change,” Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation Monday making California the first state to set a goal of 100 percent renewable energy by 2045, despite concerns about increased electricity costs.
“California is committed to doing whatever is necessary to meet the existential threat of climate change,” Mr. Brown said in his signing message. “This bill, and others I will sign this week, help us go in that direction. But have no illusions, California and the rest of the world have miles to go before we achieve zero-carbon emissions.”
The governor, who was joined at a press conference by Democratic mega-donor Tom Steyer, said the measure was needed in order for California to meet the goals of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, which the United States exited earlier this year at President Trump’s direction.
“This bill and the executive order put California on a path to meet the goals of Paris and beyond. It will not be easy. It will not be immediate. But it must be done,” said Mr. Brown, a Democrat who leaves office after the November election.
The legislation, Senate Bill 100, speeds up the state’s renewable-energy benchmarks, setting goals of 50 percent electrical-power generation from energy sources such as wind and solar by 2025, and 60 percent by 2030.
The path to 100 percent renewables by 2045 was described as “the most ambitious carbon neutrality commitment of any major economic jurisdiction in the world — of more than 20 countries and at least 40 cities, states and provinces planning to go carbon neutral by mid-century or sooner.”
.@TomSteyer at #SB100 bill signing: This bill is about California’s global leadership…and environmental justice pic.twitter.com/oGFVZJthB0
— Will Simons (@WillSimons_94) September 10, 2018
Mr. Brown signed the measure over the objections of the state’s utility and agricultural sectors, including the Agricultural Council of California, Pacific Gas and Electric, San Diego Gas and Electric, and the Western States Petroleum Association.
Critics have argued that the bill is unrealistic and will compound the state’s problems with rolling brownouts and high energy prices. Natural-gas plants are used to make up for gaps when the sun fails to shine and the wind doesn’t blow.
At the same time, California has grappled with an oversupply of renewable energy, especially at noon when the sun is at its highest, leading the state to offload solar energy to other states.
“We pass all these goals for renewables, but at the same time our families back home will pay the cost with an increase in the electric bills every year as we try to achieve this,” Assemblyman Devon Mathis, a Republican, told the Sacramento Bee.
Meanwhile, environmentalists cheered the bill, with Environment America calling it “the crowning achievement of Governor Brown’s legacy of embracing clean energy and fighting climate change.”
“In California, Democrats and Republicans know climate change is real, it’s affecting our lives right now, and unless we take action immediately — it may become irreversible,” said Democratic state Sen. Kevin de León, the bill’s sponsor, who’s challenging Sen. Dianne Feinstein in November.
“Today, with Governor Brown’s support, California sent a message to the rest of the world that we are taking the future into our own hands — refusing to be the victims of its uncertainty,” he said in a statement.
Read more at Washington Times
I guess we can look forward to Brown leaving quite a few of these time bombs for the good people of Ca as he approached departure.
Ha you silly deniers, to reach their goal, all CA needs to do are two things:
1. Build another 12,000 MW of solar + wind
2. Stop using electricity before 11am and after 4pm
Easy peasy
You might say “what about those cloudy windless days?” but that’s just being nit-picky — just expand the ban in #2 above.
Global leadership!!?? California!!!???
Most third world countries demanding money from the US because of “climate change” already have crap in their streets.
I think I know how they can do it. I live in a city that pulls the methane out of the wastewater treatment facility. Recently, the generators they had to power the place that ran off the methane needed rebuilding but it was found that selling the gas would be more financially sound to pay for electricity off the grid. With the level of schidt in California, they might be able to power the continent. And it is definitely renewable.
Previously Martin457. I have fiber optics to my house now. Really efficient stuff.
What good will going 100% renewable do?
https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/05/06/tcr-transient-climate-response/
“100% carbon-free electricity”, not 100% renewable energy. There is a very important distinction, in particular that nuclear is still included. Please read the bill before publishing an article on it and misquoting it. “Critics have argued that the bill is unrealistic and will compound the state’s problems with rolling brownouts and high energy prices.” Not only is this actually 100% feasible, and inspiring, but you know what is unrealistic? 1. Leaving the planet to our children ridden with drought, wildfires, and increased intensity of unforeseeable natural disasters. 2. Continuing to do nothing after learning we are all in-part responsible for this mess, and watching it escalate. 3. Continuing to apply bandaids but not actually treat the underlying problem. This is just the first tiny step towards treating the underlying problem.
Thanks!
It is the first step towards solving the CA energy problem.
The second step is to drive all of the productive industries out of the state so there is no more energy demand.
The third step is Venezuela, Angola, Haiti, Russia, East Germany (19080’s), and Syria.
The Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny and Santa Claus are real, also.
Are you actually delusional enough to believe that there is anyone in CA state government that will ever permit another nuclear plant to be built?
They are actually forcing existing plants to close early.
An “actual scientist” would know that there isn’t a shred of evidence to support the belief that natural disasters are getting worse, much less that CO2 is causing something that isn’t happening.
There is no underlying problem to treat. Just the wish by some to control how others are permitted to live.
An Actual Scientist,
You poor thing. You actually believe that we humans can change the earth’s climate.
Methane is a gas, so how much is a gallon? Oh yea, and it’s also a fossil fuel called natural gas.
Let’s apply some basic math to your proposition. 4 m^2 collects an average of about 4kw at high noon at the equator, but over a full day in non tropical latitudes with full summer Sun, 20% efficient solar cells (the high end of efficiency), the 4 m^2 might average as much as 600 watts per hour over 10 hours, or about 6 kw hours which is about the power it takes to run 4 60 watt light bulbs for a day (unless a cloud passes overhead). Four 60-watt light bulbs might keep a well insulated dog house warm in 0C weather, although in the winter, the same apparatus would be doing well to produce 300 Watts per hour over 8 hours, or less than 3 kw-hr.
Yet another case where basic conservation laws are ignored so that new energy can magically appear to solve a problem that doesn’t even exist.
A gallon of methanol contains about 30 kw-hours of energy, if you could convert it all at 100% efficiency, To gather that much electricity on average from the Sun over 12 months of the year in a non tropical latitude will take more than 50 m^2 of solar collection which will need to track the Sun to maintain sufficient average power. I’m familiar with the technology you cited and the numbers used are overly optimistic, full summer Sun kinds of numbers. You need to derate them by a factor of 3 or 4 to take reality into account.
When solar energy is concentrated on solar cells using mirrors, they get very hot which makes them much less efficient and shortens their usable lifetime. Also, 40-50% efficiency is what you might get on the kinds of multi-spectral cells used for deep space applications where there’s little solar energy available, temperatures are very cold and which are very expensive. Mass market poly-crystalline cells are generally in the mid to low teens and the highest quality commercially available mono-crystalline cells are in the low 20% efficiency range.
Catalysts don’t add energy to the system, but just decrease the energy required to achieve a particular reaction. The limit is still the incident solar energy and even if you could convert it all to usable energy, the area required is staggering and the vulnerability to wind, hail and other weather events makes catastrophic failure of the collection system highly likely, not to mention the birds that get cooked as they fly through concentrated solar energy.
Pipe dreams are nice to have, but reality always has a tendency to get in the way.
If this technology actually existed, investors would be killing each other to fund it.
The price of electricity will soar and there will be rolling brownouts constantly. The poor will suffer.
What will the movie moguls of Beverly Hills and the tech billionaires of Silicon Valley do? They will pay their electricity bills with chump change. They don’t care about that, it is not real money like the maintenance on their yachts.
How will they deal with brownouts and blackouts? Simple. Diesel generators with humongous fuel tanks, in the back behind a thicket of shrubberies will generate all the power they need.
Lost of middle class people will try to cope with They will explain why California’s fossil fuel use is not dented by this plan.
Time to open a candle/flashlight store in Cali? Nope, can’t afford the rent and am unwilling to pay dopers $15/hr.
In California, Democrats and Republicans know climate change is real, it’s affecting our lives right now, and unless we take action immediately — it may become irreversible,” said Democratic state Sen. Kevin de León, the bill’s sponsor,
What planet is this guy on? There are fools and idiots but I get seriously worried when after all this time you see politicians demonstrating a complete ignorance of even the basics and worse, invented alarmism in it’s place? “Climate change is real” “prevent it becoming irreversable”?????? Seriously concerning that fantasy is now the level of reality in the heads of people in power. There should be an IQ test before you can take office!
And in the UK we thought the Climate Change Act was the most expensive suicide note in history.
California is committed
I think that says it all really!
James Bull
Already, there’s a whole generation of people planning an exodus. I’ll probably be one of them – Anthony
Where are you looking to go, I’m sure there are many saner places to live with similar climates.
All the best and Gods speed.
James Bull
If we lived like the poorest in Africa, sure.
Thing is, we’ve been installing renewables for more than 20 years, and so far they have less than 2% penetration into the energy market. I’m not sure if the rate of installation has accelerated, but even assuming that most of the capacity has been installed in the last decade, that’s still 49 decades to reach 100%. To reach that goal by 2050 (3 decades) we’d need to up the installation rate by 49/3 or over 16 times.
The current global spend is estimated at half a trillion a year, so the spend would have to increase to 8 trillion a year. That’s an insane amount of money. Worse, it doesn’t include the as-yet untested energy storage that would be needed. Which might actually cost more than the energy sources.
By contrast, developing thorium or fusion would cost mere peanuts, and would give us a reliable 24/7 energy supply. Which to go for? No-brainer, really.
The Greens are keen on banning things. Well, we ought to immediately ban all subsidies for new wind turbine and solar panel installations, and split the money saved between thorium and fusion research. That hedges our bets as one or other is certain to come online in a decade or two. When it does, problem solved.
Whereas the alternative is to pour money down a black hole. and have no solution anyway.
And they are trying to ruin other states also. Tom Steyer is financing this in Arizona.
https://votenoprop127.com/#toggle-id-4
This is a foolish article. California is arguably already at grid parity for solar, even without government incentives.
https://sunmetrix.com/sunmetrix-grid-parity-map-for-residential-solar-energy-in-the-united-states/
Wind is expected to reach grid parity in the united states around 2025, 20 years before the 2045 goal. Rather than wreck the economy, California is positioning itself to remain a much stronger economy than every other U.S. state. Fossil fuels will be more expensive than renewables sooner rather than later, and the longer a state takes to switch the more they will get burned financially.
In these upside down political times there is no other state in the country I’d rather live in than California.
CA has at least a couple of Pumped Storage Hydro systems, the Big Creek Project with the first phase started in 1913, and of course has been having trouble with enviro-nazi’s getting their permits renewed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Creek_Hydroelectric_Project and PG&E’s Haas-Kings River Project which was opened in 1958. Big Creek’s motto is “The hardest working water in the world” as each drop runs through at least 4 turbines and most get pumped back for seconds, several times before it makes it’s way to the central valley. They have 9 Power plants and generate almost 4 million MWH annually of clean as the wind driven snow energy, but CA will never do something like that again.
How much “climate change” will be averted by 2100 as the result of this legislation? That’s a question that is not asked of any politician who supports the legislation.
Meanwhile in the land down under the state of Victoria is promising 50% renewable generation but a lot quicker .
Our glorious leader held a press junket yesterday to announce more wind and solar farms to be built .
Fast forward to today and the politburo seem to have hit a snag , residents that are near the Bald hills wind farm have been complaining about noise and health problems caused by this farm but had been getting the run around .
They hired a solicitor and took the council to court and the judge ordered council to have a study done , council did a dodgy study so back to court and finally an independent study was done .
The study which may be a world first indicates that indeed there are noise and health problems associated with wind turbine noise .
The solicitor now has a gag order not to disclose the content of the report or talk with any media , an interesting thing I learnt was that while the dodgy study was being done the windfarm was put into noise abatement mode .
Some residents want the turbines switched off at night others just want noise to be less than 50 decibels.
Me I just want the report to be published .
Moonbeam needs to move to the Moon, no chance of climate change there
The most reliable renewable energy source?
Cow shit and horse shit.
Never met a cow or a horse with constipation…