Guest essay by Eric Worrall
In the wake of last year’s fossil fuel embarrassment, California has announced plans to double down on their renewable energy fantasy.
California doubles down on renewables and storage in new emissions target
Joshua S Hill 15 February 2022
California, the world’s fifth largest economy, is aiming to deploy another 25.5GW of renewable energy capacity and 15GW of new storage and demand response resources by 2032 over the next decade as it tightens its emissions targets again.
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This equates to an upgraded Renewables Portfolio Standard (RPS) of 73% by 2032, with 86% of all generation to be green house gas emissions free.
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“I support the CPUC’s adoption of a lower carbon emission standard than it has approved in the past, which is particularly important when you consider the urgent need to quickly decarbonise California’s economy along with uncertainties in the accounting of carbon emissions in the CPUC’s modelling tools,” said Mark Specht, a senior energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
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“The additional capacity of zero-emitting resources previously ordered should be sufficient to ensure grid reliability and replace retiring fossil-fuelled generation and the Diablo Canyon power plant.”
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Read more: https://reneweconomy.com.au/california-doubles-down-renewables-and-storage-in-new-emissions-target/
California’s effort to increase reliance on renewables comes in the wake of a major green energy failure, which saw California turn to natural gas to keep the lights on.
California, again, leans on natural gas to shore up energy supplies
By Scott Disavino and Nichola Groom
November 5, 20218:08 AM GMT+10Nov 4 (Reuters) – California on Thursday said it would increase the amount of natural gas stored at a Los Angeles-area facility that suffered a devastating leak six years ago, its latest loosening of environmental rules to shore up energy supplies.
In a 4-0 vote, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) approved a plan to boost the capacity of SoCalGas’ Aliso Canyon underground storage facility to 41 billion cubic feet (bcf) of gas, it said in a statement.
That is about 20% more than allowed previously, but less than the 68.6 bcf the CPUC considered in a rival proposal.
After years of restricting the growth of fossil fuel infrastructure, California has increasingly looked to natural gas for power generation this year after drought and wildfires left it with few other options to keep the lights on.
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Read more: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/california-looks-natural-gas-keep-lights-this-winter-2021-11-04/
I’m looking forward to reporting about what happens on the day they switch over from Diablo Canyon Nuclear plant to solar panels. I’m guessing sometime around dusk on the big day they’ll start making frantic calls, inquiring about why their EVs all stopped charging, and posting their panic on social media.
Cell towers and remote site backup social media servers should all carry on working for a while. Cell towers usually have enough backup power to continue operating for a couple of days after the power dies. So we’ll have a few days to learn by California’s example, before it all goes dark.
What?
15% of the electricity produced now by nuclear power.
Article didn’t say or I missed it (I’d like to know).
At this rate California will be having substantial blackouts by 2030 or sooner.
You have to keep an eagle eye on the airconditioning with lithium or it’s more of the same with your unreliables-
The world’s largest lithium ion battery is down, again – pv magazine USA (pv-magazine-usa.com)
The “right of center” state government of New South Wales in Australia has just announced the early shutdown of its largest coal fired power station which generates about 20% of the states electricity. To be replaced by renewables and very, very, very big batteries. According to the state treasurer to be mostly paid for by the NSW tax payers, private industry not willing to waste money on this unicorn?
My recommendation for the poor people of NSW: stock up on torch batteries, your gonna need ’em.
Just as South Australia announces the start of a $2.4billion interconnector to NSW ostensibly to dump our excess wind and solar power east while Hunter Valley coal backs us up-
Department for Energy and Mining | Work begins on SA-NSW Interconnector (energymining.sa.gov.au)
The interconnector to Victorian brown coal isn’t enough two way at present for the quantity of dumping and reliable backup it offers.
We’re run by morons if they can’t see the fallacy of composition here and a white elephant before it’s begun.
You’d think the NSW RE Minister would be delighted another coal plant is going earlier-
Govt anger at NSW power station closure (msn.com)
Crash test dummies are in vogue in NSW. The competition is fierce!!
I see the Origin announcement on Eraring closure has concentrated the minds-
Bob Brown Foundation slams Marinus Link as ISP “white elephant” | RenewEconomy
Basically- Hey you pay for your own expensive storage in your backyard and naff off mooching on ours! The Covid State border control ethos is quickly catching on with dog eat dog and power reliability.
I am always very impressed when these idiots get the units for batteries wrong. I know then that all their calculations can just be accepted at face value because they are totally correct…..
I wonder what we’ll do for power after 5:00pm (in February) when solar output is plummeting and 8:00am the following morning when solar starts to ramp up again. I’ll note that peak demand is at around 7:00pm.
These people are profoundly clueless.
The brains trust have already thought of that with all the V2G EV batteries to back up the grid at night. Apparently they forgot to buzz Elon about that but all in good TOU although Elon’s ahead of the curve with the Long Range battery option for forward thinkers.
Mind you Elon can’t do all their forward thinking for them with their V2Gs out and about with daytime solar duck curve charging ready for night time backup-
Non-Tesla EV Supercharging: Parking Issues Are A Significant Problem (msn.com)
He’s a busy boy sourcing lithium supply contracts around the globe at present if you’ve been paying attention.
We will do exactly what the latest radio ads in Sacramento are telling us to do: go home after work to freeze/sweat in the dark.
In support of careful reading and bigilbob, the first paragraph reports “and 15GW of new storage and demand response resources.”
Demand response resources could certainly include NG.
Demand response is the paid shut off of electrical demand at times of peak demand…
California will have the mother of all duck curves, every day for 25 years, and likely will try do deal with it by having more batteries, which will bankrupt the state
No wonder California is loosing 300,000 successful people per year WITH MONEY, and annually gaining 600,000 illegal, illiterate, unskilled, uneducated, sickly, criminal, drug-addict, impoverished walk-ins.
China and Russia need not do anything to destroy the US
All they have to do is be patient
The California RE idiots are doing it for them!!
California with fossil fuel only surely still has an issue with sharply rising peak demand, requiring additional peaker plants to support at high cost?
Just simply, hard to believe, idiotic. A perfect example of “the inmates are running the asylum”.
Fix California.
Throw out all of the commies, halt the high speed train, build several nuclear plants adjacent to new desalination plants and build the Sites Reservoir to the maximum capacity.
“the urgent need to quickly decarbonise California’s economy” Huh? So California will save the world?
According to https://www.energy.ca.gov California currently generates 45% of its electricity from natural gas. California also currently imports 90% of its natural gas supplies from out of state.
In January 2022, California retail natural gas rate hikes for natural gas were 43% higher than January 2021, which is also 5 times higher than inflation.
All rate structures in California are approved by the CPUC before they can be charged. The CPUC members are all appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
California is the basket case of energy costs for the nation. They do this on purpose to “save the planet”. There is no other reason.
Funny, but about 30 or 40 years ago the Federal government had some kinda price control or fee for moving gas from Louisiana to the frozen north.
When some folks in north Louisiana found out they were paying more from their locally owned well than the folks in St Paul, MN due to the fees and royalties and……. they threatened to blow up the pipelines going north.
Only reason I can see for suppliers to move the evil gas and oil to California from surrounding states is the California people pay a lot more. But what about the planet, man? And wait until all the electric cars can’t charge up enuf overnight and there are brown outs in sunny weather cause the PV’;s have to charge zillions of batteries. Can;t wait.
Gums sends…
Salute!
Need a thread concerning disposal of the toxic and radioactive and biological waste associated with the sources of electricity.
Considering all the costs and complaints of securing nuclear waste, how come we don’t just insert the stuff back where it came from – the subduction zones?
Seems to me we have mapped out all the ring of fire, and have a similar idea of where other stuff is going back to the internal Earth machine to be recycled.
Cannot be that expensive to let the subduction zone do the work, and seems we can down real deep nowadays and even make sure the nuclear waste is be sucked up for recycling.
jez wondering….
Gums asks…
In other news, the latest adds in Sacramento call for people to turn off their appliances between 4 and 9 PM. In other words, get off work, go home, and sweat in the dark because California politicians are fricking idiots who have been ignoring the sun going down for over 20 years.