Guest essay by Larry Hamlin
The Wall Street Journal published a superb article that exposes the government lunacy in California where its climate alarmist propaganda driven Democratic politicians have wasted tens of billions of dollars on energy schemes that are totally useless in having any meaningful impacts on global emissions levels while ignoring the statewide wildfire disaster that is destroying massive amounts of property, thousands of homes and taking hundreds of lives.
The article notes the following Democratic Party California government driven climate alarmist absurd climate actions being taken while ignoring the critical need for aggressive statewide highest priorities and resources commitments to addressing long standing failures by the state in addressing its forest management responsibilities.
“State law mandates that utilities obtain 33% of electric generation from renewables such as wind and solar by 2020 and 60% by 2030.
Utilities must spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year to reduce the cost of green energy for low-income households. PG&E has prioritized political obeisance over safety.
In 2018 PG&E spent $509 million on electric discounts for low-income customers in addition to $125 million for no-cost weatherization and efficiency upgrades for disadvantaged communities.
Utilities also receive allowances from the state’s cap-and-trade program—$7.5 billion since 2012—to pay for other “ratepayer benefits” that reduce emissions.
For instance, the Legislature in 2015 mandated that utilities spend $100 million annually on solar systems in low-income communities.
This is on top of the $2.2 billion in customer rebates for rooftop solar installations, which utilities charged to ratepayers between 2007 and 2016. Under the state’s net-metering program, solar customers also get a break on their bills.
Last year PG&E invested more than $150 million in battery storage and “sustainable” technologies, which was paid for by a special charge on ratepayers. PG&E is also spending $130 million over three years to install 7,500 electric-car charging stations and offers drivers a $800 “clean fuel” rebate.
All of this has been part of a Democratic political strategy to use PG&E to advance their climate agenda without raising taxes.
But Californians have instead paid through higher electric rates —PG&E rates are twice as high as in Oregon and Washington—while utilities have had to redirect capital and ratepayer revenue away from fortifying the grid and tree-trimming.”
“PG&E has prioritized serving its political overlords above all else. California’s return to the dark ages is a direct result of the Democratic political monopoly in Sacramento.”
Democratic Party politicians in Sacramento have created this colossal wildfire debacle mess by their hugely misguided, monumentally incompetent and totally useless climate alarmist policy priorities wasting tens of billions of dollars on globally meaningless actions while ignoring the disastrous failures of the state to deal with its forest management responsibilities.
No doubt the states Democrats will hide their mind-boggling failures and try to shift blame and responsibility elsewhere most likely with the full support of the states corrupt media.
Look at where all of this “renewable” power is coming from. Look at where California got its power from 20 – 30 years ago. Now look at where the high voltage transmission lines are. Not that many of those transmission lines are where all of the power is coming from. Look at all of the multi GW nuclear power plants shut down over the last 20 – 30 years and how they would have elevated the overloading of the lines used by this renewable energy and would have allowed power many counties with Nuclear power. The distribution system was optimized for the use of Diablo Canyon, Rancho Seco, and San Onofre. Now only Diablo Canyon is in operation. And there are no massive renewable sources taking their place. The impact is similar to shutting down all of the Interstate Highways and putting all of the traffic on state highways – ACCIDENTS will increase.
Ironically the only lesson the powers in California will learn is that the fires are due to global warming and climate change and the only solution is to impose even more draconian measures to stop them. Like with any religion when zealots suffer Gods wrath and tragedy strikes they conclude not that maybe there religion is not fit for purpose but they just weren’t devout enough. More prayer will fix it.
A fool and your money is soon parted.
The current fires in California have nothing to do with global warming. Most of the Rocky Mountain states (MT, ID, WY, UT, CO) are having record cold temperatures right now.
California has forgotten that water needs to be well-managed in an area with very dry summers, with reservoirs to trap snow melt in spring in order to provide water through summer and autumn. But the Californians let the spring snow melt out to sea, in order to protect tiny fish like the Delta Smelt.
This is nothing new, since the Mediterranean coast of southern Europe also has very dry summers, but the ancient Romans built aqueducts over 2,000 years ago to bring snow melt from the Alps to sun-baked cities in the lowlands. Why can’t California do like the Romans did?
Great comment.
I think maybe you have already done that and Lake Mead is drying up.
There are studies which include the emissions from the wildfires in the accounting of CA’s carbon totals. It turns out that the 2018 wildfires released 9 times more carbon than was saved through all the expensive reduction schemes the year before.
My favorite of the red-green Democrat regulations is the one that requires any money for hardening of risky lines to come solely from money taken from PG&E executive salaries and shareholder dividends… and there aren’t any dividends. Like having Kafka run Sacramento.
I just now calculated the current Ted Cruz U-Haul one way moving cost ratio for LA to San Antonio versus San Antonio to LA for a 20′ van. $2711 versus $1113 = 2.44X
How much biomass has been burned in this fire season? How much electricity would this produce if converted to wood pellets? The EU regulations for renewable energy sources have created a market for converting Eastern hardwood forests to wood pellets to supply power plants in the EU such as the Drax power plant in GB. Current harvest is 50,000 acres projected to rise to 80,000 acres per year. Maybe a wood pellet burning power plant or ten could alleviate the excess shrubbery in California .
Sorry, R Moore, The UK already has dibs on those forests in the US and Canada and others. I guess you missed this article in WUWT?
It is much cheaper and greener to burn coal instead of biomass i.e. wood pellets. You only think there is no overall increase in CO2 emissions because biomass has been “deemed” CO2 neutral by bureaucratic directive, not by facts or science. It also has many pollutants. Biomass is a loser in every way or Earth.
The Obvious Biomass Emissions Error
Anthony Watts
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/02/07/the-obvious-biomass-emissions-error/
Also, this, from WUWT.
Green Shock: Entire Forests Being Murdered to Produce Wood Pellet Biomass
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/04/18/green-shock-entire-forests-being-murdered-to-produce-wood-pellet-biomass/
April 18, 2018
They should burn coal in clean coal power plants or, LNG and leave the forests for the lumber industry to thin, plus, build roads for firefighters to use to access fires.
Stop and think how stupid it is for the Greens to say plant a tree while chopping down vast acres of forests every day and shipping the wood all the way across the ocean via diesel fueled tankers.
While I’m at it, another lie from the AGW/CCers is that electric cars are clean, green and “pure”.
ELECTRIC VEHICLES EMIT MORE CO2 THAN DIESEL ONES, GERMAN STUDY SHOWS
* Date: 23/04/19
http://bit.ly/2ZYdUXJ
You won’t see that info in the MSM outside the WSJ.
How strange to insist on more wind generated power that then has to be shut off when the wind blows? Oh wait, they’re democrats ..
I see that the CA PUC is all over investigating PG&E, I saw no mention of them investigating the state itself, which has played at least a big a role in causing this disaster as has PG&E. Also, “[t]he state agency that oversees most of California’s global warming programs — the California Air Resources Board — does not include wildfires in its annual inventory of emissions, the official scorecard of the state’s progress on global warming. When state officials talk about how much California has managed to cut its emissions so far, they don’t factor in wildfires.
See http://stopthecrime.net/wp/2018/02/11/huge-wildfires-can-wipe-out-californias-greenhouse-gas-gains/
Who knows, maybe if more money was spent preventing wildfires, California’s CO2 emissions might actually go down a bit more than the state’s grand schemes have accomplished.
Will this have any actual effect on temperature? Of course not.
Who is watching the watch dogs?
“PG&E makes it a priority to bring diverse business enterprises (DBEs)—small businesses and businesses owned by women, minorities, service-disabled veterans and LGBTQ individuals—into our supply chain.
“PG&E’s commitment to sustainability begins with our customers. They have told us—and we agree—that our responsibilities as an energy provider go beyond delivering energy that is safe, reliable, affordable and clean. They also look to us to be a force for innovation and progress, economic development and growth, community investment and vitality, and environmental leadership.”
But hey they’re so diverse and sustainalble………they just can’t deliver energy effectively anymore.
California.
The home of “mob rule”.
“If it feels good, do it. If it feels bad, ban it.”
No thought required.
Clear brush under power lines? That feels bad. A kangaroo rat might want to live there someday.
Consequences? Reality?
Not our fault!
“Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.” – Ronald Reagan
Mosh as CA burns once again do you look down upon the tax paying peasants and say “let them eat cake?”
This response by PG&E is easily explainable if one considers the incentives that the California government has put before them. As soon as Sacramento stepped aside and said that PG&E was liable for the damages for the fires rather than passing a law indemnifying them, they set it up so that starting a fire was an existential threat. Effectively, they told all utilities, “if you start a big fire, we will end you”. Once you do that, it doesn’t matter how angry the customers get, the penalty for starting a fire has become much higher than the cost of enduring some furious residents. This outcome is so predictable that it is laughable that the legislators and governor did not anticipate the logical reaction to their policies.
Interesting point Mike O but completely backwards. Sacramento made PG&E responsible for fire costs by including it in the Inverse Condemnation law.
Setting up a monitoring system and shutting off power was ordered by the state. A federal judge also added an order to PG&E that no consideration to financial or personal losses to customers from a power outage when it comes time to kill power. Furthermore, the PG&E fire monitoring center is manned also with Cal Fire, Calif Emergency Management, and CPUC personnel who must agree for any power to be killed.
Somehow, that never seems to make it into the press.
I live in northern CA and on top of that I am a retired PG&E employee. This whole turning off the lights is beyond reproach. The stupidest idea ever. So you wreck the lives of 100s of 1000s of people from Bakersfield north to avoid the possibility of a much smaller number experiencing a fire. And you do it over and over again. Yeah. That is a great idea.
The article is right on as far as describing what has happened in this state. And the worst part is the public will never know the full story because the media will never tell on their political buddies. Only by reading alternate media will they ever know.
I’m curious about Paradise, California.
As we all know, Paradise was devastated by wildfire in the recent past, and now I’m wondering what the status of Paradise is in relation to future wildfires.
The previous wildfire presumably burned out most of the dangerous vegetation and cleared the land around Paradise, so is Paradise in danger of suffering more wildfires, or did the previous wildfire remove all the fuel and lower this danger significantly?
California is going to have to get serious about clearing vegetation along powerline routes. As another poster suggested, they can use the wood in wood-fired electric powerplants or ship it to the DRAX powerplant in the UK.
There’s a powerline route I pass on the way to town and it is a cleared section of land underneath the powerlines that spans the whole width of the route. There are no trees near enough to fall over and hit the powerlines as they have all been cut down, and the area underneath the powerlines is mowed to keep it clear. It’s like a nice, wide hiking trail underneath powerline routes around here. That’s the way California’s powerline routes ought to look. Get those chainsaws out, fellas and start cutting!
Tom Abbot
I once owned property in Paradise. By looking at Google Earth, I see that the house burned. It seems from the photos that the trees did better than the houses. Much of the understory is fire adapted and will re-sprout from the roots, and will be back strong next year. That is one reason the Native Americans would set fires. The re-growth provides better browse for deer and elk than a mature forest does.
There was another fire in Paradise 10 years ago that burned narrow corridors or fingers and wasn’t as damaging as the recent one. However, the ‘survivors’ didn’t learn from the experience.
How sad it is to think about all my old friends back in Commifornia having to put up with this socialist garbage. Of course most of them still believe in the CAGW hoax and think that the crooks in Sacramento are actually looking out for them. I hope the smell of smoke wakes them from their Progressive dream before it turns into an apocalyptic nightmare! Oops, too late!
California was such a beautiful and productive state when I was growing up there in the 60’s and 70’s. With the coming cold of a solar minimum affecting crops around the world I do not believe we can sit idly by and let these idiots completely destroy such productive farm and ranch land much longer. We are going to have to make California great again by removing the Progressives from power. Unfortunately, I don’t believe the citizens will be ready for a few more years but I am praying and stockpiling ammo, just in case.
If this doesn’t kill agw nothing will
Correct….I worked for the NSW state government transmission line section for many years. Vegetation control around the transmission line conductors took up around 65% of the maintenance budget….Regular inspections, reporting and prompt follow ups are essential, in preventing tree contact with live conductors.
https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2019/10/biomass-fired-electricity-plants-are-more-polluting-than-coal-report/
“The Netherlands has agreed to close its remaining coal-fired power stations by 2030 in an effort to meet the Paris agreements on climate change. The government has also pledged to end the production of gas from under the province of Groningen in 2020.
The government is pumping billions of euros in subsidies into building biomass plants and wood which is seen by the EU as a climate-neutral source of energy because the carbon dioxide is absorbed by newly-planted trees.
According to research by the AD, 628 biomass installations in the Netherlands will get some €11.4bn in subsidies in the coming years, of which €2.6bn is going to the RWE power plants in Geertruidenberg and Eemshaven. And RWE will import thousands of tonnes of wood pellets from the US next year to burn in Dutch biomass power plants in a move that has been strongly criticized by local campaign groups.
Earlier this month, the European Academies Science Advisory Council (EASAC) said that governments should stop wasting billions of euros on subsidising biomass power plants because it is unsustainable. EASAC also said burning wood does not produce very much energy and the net amount of CO2 which is released is greater than when burning coal or gas. A number of regional health boards (GGDs) have also written to economic affairs minister Erik Wiebes warning him to be aware of the impact climate change policies can have on health.”
California Democrats are just like most of the EU politicians.
Robertvd
I wonder how much CO2 is produced harvesting, transporting, pelletizing, and then shipping the pellets across the Atlantic?
I also wonder about the ratio of wood ash to coal ash and what will be done with it. Coal ash has found limited use as an additive to concrete and to apply to icy roads. I wonder what use wood ash could be put to? Making soap?