California has de facto outlawed the crude oil industry in a few years – the supply chain for the products from crude oil to build the EV’s!
Summary: Will EV mandates be one more reason to flee the once “Golden State?”
Published November 1, 2023, at the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow https://www.cfact.org/2023/11/01/californias-ev-conundrums/
Ronald Stein is an engineer, senior policy advisor on energy literacy for the Heartland Institute and CFACT, and co-author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated book “Clean Energy Exploitations.”
Without crude oil that is the basis for most of the products now in society, those citizens that are part of the 80 percent of the 8 billion on this planet earning less than $10 a day, which is more than 6 billion on this earth, may never be able to enjoy the materialistic living styles of those in wealthier countries.
As California is attempting to lead the world toward no crude oil production, worldwide efforts to meet the supply chain demands of extracting 4 billion gallons of crude oil every day from this planet, there may be shortages and inflation in perpetuity to continue to make all the products of our materialistic society, being enjoyed by the current residents in the wealthier countries on this planet.
Meanwhile, the list of conundrums to California’s EV mandate is growing:
- Lack of sufficient number of buyers, outside the elite profile of existing EV owners
- The Governments’ lack of ethical, moral, and social responsibilities, by encouraging the social injustice of subsidies for well-off people who can afford EVs, continues exploiting the human rights of workers with yellow, brown, and black skin in the supply chain that are mining for exotic minerals and metals in poorer developing countries to support the green movement in wealthy countries.
- Conditions have grown so dire for the supply chain of raw materials needed for EV batteries that Washington is cracking down on EV components that have links to Chinese Uyghur slave labor that are helping to build EV’s.
- Due to EV battery fire potentials, questionable means of transporting EV’s from foreign manufacturers to the USA consumers.
- Concerns about occasional electricity from wind and solar being able to charge EV batteries.
- The limited life of the EV battery compared with conventional vehicles, the limitations of EVs during emergencies such as fires, floods, and power blackouts.
- China restricting exports of graphite, a key mineral used for making EV batteries.
- Auto makers will continue to face challenging supply chain issues to make all the parts and components of EV’s as the supply of oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil will be in shorter supply. The typical car today is made with about 260 pounds of plastics.
The crude oil industry’s time in California is limited, and the oil-refining industry is behaving as any industry would in comparable circumstances, by transitioning its operations away from gasoline to activities that will prove to be more profitable in the long run. And as crude oil supply falls further, much higher gasoline prices will become a way of life for Californians, as the conundrums associated with EV mandates may be growing.
Standard economic logic indicates that high California gas prices should encourage fuels supply to be shipped to California from other states. But this doesn’t happen because no other state formulates California’s unique gasoline blend.
In addition, the West Coast fuels market is isolated from other supply/demand centers as California is an energy island. The Sierra Mountains are a natural barrier that prevents the state from pipeline access to any of that excess oil. As such, the West Coast is susceptible to unexpected outages from West Coast refineries as it is unable to refill an unexpected loss in supply by quickly supplying additional products from outside of the region.
If gasoline is imported into California, which does occur when a California refinery goes offline for repair or maintenance, California typically imports gasoline via marine shipments, which usually take three to four weeks to deliver. To meet the demands of the fourth largest economy in the world imports of gasoline into California come from sources that include India, South Korea, the United Kingdom, Russia, and New Brunswick, Canada. This process is expensive and takes weeks for the fuel to arrive at California ports.
California’s regulatory and tax landscape has led to a steady drop in the number of California refineries. In the early 1980s, when California’s population was 24 million, there were 40 operating refineries in the state, which refined over 2.5 million barrels of crude oil per day. Forty years later, with a population of 39 million, the number of refineries dropped by 14, which refines less than 2 million barrels of crude oil per day currently. The reality is that gasoline and diesel supply is decreasing while demand is increasing, is fuel (no pun intended) for continuous price increases.
Refineries are also shutting down because California has imposed a new regulation that bans the sale of gas-powered cars and light trucks by 2035 and the State requires 35 percent of new car sales to be zero-emission vehicles by 2026. It makes no economic sense to invest in new capacity in a state that has de facto outlawed the industry’s existence in a few years.
In addition, refineries are also shutting down because there are incredibly lucrative state and federal tax incentives to produce biofuels, totaling a whopping $1 per gallon, and cease the manufacturing of gasoline and diesel. A Marathon refinery that had a crude oil refining capacity of 166,000 barrels per day is being retrofitted to produce biodiesel and is expected to be producing biofuel next year. Similarly, Global Clean Energy is converting a 66,000-barrel-per-day-capacity refinery in Bakersfield to biodiesel, and World Energy has invested $350 million to convert a 50,000-barrel-per-day-capacity refinery to biodiesel.
California regulators and legislators are getting what they want: less crude oil produced and consumed. And Californians, particularly low- and middle-income households, are paying a dear price for the preferences of those Tesla-driving legislators and regulators as fuel demand remains against a diminishing supply of gasoline and diesel.
You cannot build something from nothing. Thus, the California’s EV conundrums will most likely grow as everything that needs electricity, and every infrastructure, has parts and components that are made from oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil, from the light bulb to the iPhone, defibrillator, and all the parts of toilets, spacecraft, and EV’s.
Ronald Stein, P.E.
Author | Columnist | Energy Literacy Consultant
https://expertfile.com/experts/ronald.stein
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California will become an interesting guinea-pig for the experiment being carried out in the USA. That legiators are unable to understand the technicality of this change and is likely to result in the effective olose-down of California is unfortunate but will provide a touch of realism!
Good luck, USA!
“Good luck, USA!”
Thanks. Those of us with a brain are shaking in our boots.
Is $7/gallon still considered high in California?
In the UK you will pay over $8 at a motorway service station for the same amount of fuel on a longer journey. (Not a fancy Californian fuel, either).
A large fraction of that is tax.
Oil is taxed at source for merely licensing companies to mine it. The same companies are taxed again on their production volume, and on company profits. The consumer is then taxed heavily when they fill the car up.
This isn’t even a comment about the morality of taxation.
It is that the UK government (and probably many others) give the indication that they think their spending programs and general economy’s can survive by strangling the use of fossil fuels.
I will eat James Hansen’s hat when wind and solar taxes pay a net 10% of what the hydrocarbon industry does into the national treasury. (1% is probably equally unlikely. I’m guessing the current value is still in negative territory).
During the French Revolution, someone said let them eat cake!
During wokism, the mantra is YOU WILL EAT INSECTS, OR ELSE YOU WILL GO HUNGRY, WHILE FREEZING YOUR A..
Highly compressed, gaseous hydrogen fuel, dispensed at super-expensive stations, is $14/kg, which is equivalent to $14/gallon.
When hydrogen burns it releases water vapor which is a much stronger greenhouse gas than CO2.
The treasury can always make up the losses by increasing taxes on beer, wine and spirits which the public will increasingly want to drown their sorrows.
In the U.S.A. now, the FedGov works with the Federal Reserve central bank to fabricate new dollars out of electrons.
No need for taxation, they just inflate the money supply by shifting the decimal point to the right on their computers.
Reality may bite sooner when the roads starts to crumble from heavier EV and loss of tax revenues from gasoline and diesel.
Well yes, where are they getting the bitumen from to actually make, and especially, repair the roads.
An interesting little snippet went past recently and it came from, of all places, the people who actually make the stuff used to repair UK roads
They use a bitumen emulsion that’s sprayed onto the offending/crumbling road before it gets toooo bad. ‘Shillies’ are spread over the sticky tar goo. The stones are roughly raked, brushed and levelled then ‘normal road traffic’ is relied upon to further spread and hammer them in.
Shillies – limestone chippings = what might go through an 8mm or less mesh/sieve)
Until that happens though, the road is insanely dangerous – especially for folks on two wheels
And what those loose stones do to the battery compartment of any/all EVs is really scary to think about.
After a few weeks, a ‘gully sucker’ comes along to clear away the loose stones but for the last couple of years, I personally haven’t seen that happen either.
While UK ‘Council Tax’ and costs to car drivers continue to skyrocket…..
The suppliers trade-association for this stuff said that in the last few years they’ve only been asked to supply (annually) sufficient emulsion to repair/resurface 14million square metres of road surface when normally they supply over twice that much.
The cumulative UK road repair bill is now reckoned to be £14 Billion and counting
(The emulsion is quite delicious stuff. It’s basically tar that dissolves in water.
But spread it out on almost any surface and inside a few hours it is THE most sticky black awful stuff you ever came upon. Do not walk on it until its dry and or had some sand or dust or something spread over it – else it really will pull your boots off and only liberal amounts of kerosene or petrol will get you moving again
“Until that happens though, the road is insanely dangerous – especially for folks on two wheels”.
Yup, in my town the state of the roads has got a lot worse in recent years. Especially at the edges.
More than the cars, I fear for my life when cycling some roads because of the potholes. In fact, I have largely stopped doing it for these reasons.
In the US … or at least in the western states, we call that road repair process ‘Chip & Seal.’
If you’re scared about the roads, you should advocate for smaller and lighter vehicles in general.
Or tax electricity used to charge an EV at 26p per kWh.
The rising popularity of EVs is creating a black hole in public finances that, if left unchecked, could see the Government lose out on £32 billion in tax. While some commentators believe only nationwide road pricing can provide the answer, a new report suggests a far simpler solution.
Thanks to the Electric Vehicles (Smart Charge Points) Regulations, which require all chargers installed since July 2022 to include smart functionality, the infrastructure required to implement an ‘EV duty’ is already being deployed.
Quite right too. It is currently another disguised subsidy for those who can afford an EV. I suspect many of the owners thing their electricity is coming from wind power.
And who will pay for the grid upgrades and generation capacity increases needed for the vast power upgrades needed when ICE are banned?
I did a calculation on energy transfer rate of a typical (car) petrol pump. It is approximately 1MW. That is pretty impressive when you consider what might be needed for a whole street to recharge their EVs.
Mind posting you calculation?
Assuming that we’re talking the same language (and that is, of course, problematic) I think you’ve got a large error in you calculation.
1 MW of electrical power would be equivalent to about 1340 horsepower, far in excess of what typical petrol-powered cars or trucks have as total engine output. In the US, automotive fuel pumps typically draw in the range of 5–8 amps at 12 vdc (depending on engine size), corresponding to 0.08–0.13 hp.
Were you perhaps referring to the energy content of petrol pumped into a vehicle per unit time at a service station? Again, in the US, gasoline/E10 has an average energy content of about 118,000 BTU/gal, so conservatively assuming it takes four minutes to pump 20 gallons of gasoline, that equates to 9,830 BTU/sec available power (@100% efficiency) being transferred, or about 10.3 MW of potential power transferred in the 4 minutes needed to pump the petrol.
Something is amiss.
I’ll try reposting a post I have already made but apparently swallowed up. Alert, I’m using metric units. 🙂
I think I’m happy to admit that either my memory or calculations were wrong. Way too low.
From the Engineering Toolbox:
Conventional gasoline energy content is 46.5 MJ/kg
There are 744 kg of gasoline per cubic meter (a cubic meter being 1000 litres).
So there is 744×46.5 MJ per cubic meter or 34.6 MJ/litre.
A US pump is often 50 litres per minute. (Much larger for larger vehicle pumps).
So that is 50 per min/60 seconds which leads to 28.8 MJ per second.
1 Watt=1 Joule per second.
So the pump is cranking out 28.8 Mega Joules per second, which is 28.8 MW.
Let’s assume the car only makes use of 25% of that energy. That reduces it to about 7MW.
(Of course EVs also have their losses in transmission and charging plus infrastructure costs.)
I invite others to check these figures. There are few things I like less than being wrong.
Also, to put numbers into perspective, it is not unusual for an ICE to have a power output way above 100kW. That is 0.1MW.
How long would you be willing to spend fuelling your vehicle if the fuelling rate wasn’t at least 10x greater than the rate of fuel consumption when doing some real work at speed?
Not sure what you mean by your phrase “way above”, but it would be unusual for a typical automobile (i.e. car or SUV) to have an ICE engine rated above 250 hp. That would be equivalent to about 0.19 MW.
“The average horsepower for more standard vehicles is somewhere around 180. More precisely, about 180-200 hp, and, in some instances, just a bit lower than 200. Just to give you a couple of examples, the average for crossovers is 200 hp, midsize autos put out 170 hp, while small SUVs are generally capable of 240 hp.”
— https://www.jdpower.com/cars/shopping-guides/what-is-the-average-horsepower-of-a-car
Even 350 hp is equivalent to only 0.26 MW.
“275 horsepower is where thrills begin, and speed starts to take priority over efficiency . . .350 horsepower in a car is rarely not considered fast; the thrills reach roller-coaster levels here.”
— https://www.guntherkia.com/how-much-horsepower-do-you-need.html
The base engine in the F150 is 290 hp.
The Ford F-150 is classified as a truck, not a “typical automobile (i.e. car or SUV)” as I specifically stated above.
Thanks!
Reading comprehension is not one of the skills you’ve mastered, is it?
Trucks cause the most damage. You are going to replace eighteen wheelers and their loads with something smaller and lighter? Shipping costs aren’t high enough already?
At least you are arguing against replacing vehicles with EVs!
So EVs aren’t a problem anyways, because trucks?
I’m arguing against the bloat in car size in general. Weight of EVs is not an argument if you are in favour of motorized individual traffic getting heavier each year on it’s on – EV or not.
Yes. Evs don’t matter because of trucks. The ratio of damage is like 10,000 to 1. The difference between the weight of an ev and an ice car is inconsequential to road wear. It could make a difference in a thin driveway I guess, but for any road designed to handle trucks it won’t matter.
California is not losing people as fast as New York but is not far behind now.
Western economies rely on growth. When growth falters, the government deficit spending falls onto fewer producers. That just accelerates the demise. A declining economy inevitably brings more crime and becomes self-perpetuating demise. Who will pay for all those government pensions when there are no producers left!
Florida is the fastest growing State in the USA. Probably refuges from the “global warming” that is presently hitting the northern States. Most “global warming” occurs north of 40S from November through January. It takes a lot of energy to evaporate water from the ocean surface and deposit it over land; releasing energy to space as it gets deposited and keeping the place warmer than it would otherwise be. But the white stuff is hard to lift above 0C.
People need a scientist or politician to tell them that they’re moving in the wrong direction.
The big voice of the UN is telling people to move in the wrong direction
California is substituting tax-paying, intelligent, hard working, experienced, educated people with folks from undesirable slums in various foreign countries, who will be sucking tax dollars out of the public purse, as soon as they cross the Biden WELDED-OPEN border
The US is being screwed/destroyed by woke Democrats and Romney/McConnell-style RINOS
I’ve lived in California (Los Angeles area) for 30 years and I have had enough. I really want to move out of state.
Story tip
Fires are the most polluting way to heat British homes this winter
Given the high health and economic burden of pollution from this type of heating, interventions to reduce wood heaters in densely populated areas will be highly cost effective.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/03/fires-are-the-most-polluting-way-to-heat-british-homes-this-winter
Utter nonsense
from that site
If burned in an open fireplace like in the photo on that site. But if burned in a modern wood stove, there is very little air pollution. Amazingly, the state of Wokeachusetts actually promotes switching to the modern stoves and will subsidize them for low income people, like me. My old wood stove’s smoke was blue and smelled. The smoke from the new stove is white and I can’t smell it. It meets the latest EPA standards despite not having a catalytic converter. I only use it if there is a power outage which means my oil furnace won’t work.
Physics, Joseph.
Hot gases….. rise.
Unless in an inversion.
Wood burning old masonry fireplaces, often burning every type of crap scrap wood available, will stink up the entire east central area of the Las Vegas valley in the winter of a cold calm day. Those cold calm conditions usually last 5 to 10 days before a change brings enough wind to blow the valley clear.
The house I currently live in is in that area and will be subject to this a couple of times this winter when the inversion and cold produce BAD air quality. On especially COLD days I have seen smoke come out of a masonry chimney and flow DOWN to the ground.
EPA regulations specified using a manufactured fire place from an EPA approved list “below 2500 feet elevation in the Las Vegas Hydrological basin”. I assumed that the EPA judged that ABOVE the 2500 feet, the smoke would do what you assume, rise out of the valley. I was a plans examiner and MOST builders assumed they could only use “approved” manufactured fireplaces anywhere in the City of Las Vegas. The knowledgeable ones knew the elevation where they could build the old style massive masonry/stone fireplaces for their McMansions, thus providing an more esthetically pleasing (in my opinion) home. An economical disadvantage to the uninformed. I would get calls occasionally from builders asking why one of my coworkers was not approving their plans with such at the proper elevation. The individual, a leftist hack, refused to accept my training of what the actual LAW and REGULATIONS were. I would just tell the builder to call the @ssh@t’s supervisor, after pasting together the Codes, local specific Ordnances and actual EPA regulations for the meeting that would be required. As a leftist, even when forced to follow the rules in place for one plan, he would again reject plans that didn’t suit his sensibilities and force a repeat of the situation. I have no idea of how many custom home builders caved to his BS and did as they were incorrectly told.
Yes I was a “code enforcement” person for a government entity for 24 years. I also taught codes at the local community college for 8 1/2 years. BUT on the first day of classes while covering the syllabus and class expectations I instructed all of my students that WE have no “opinions” about what codes should and should not cover. The national code writing authorities and local code adopting committees wrote the codes, the local governmental jurisdictions adopted the codes and ordinances and we enforced what was adopted, regardless of our opinions of whether the local ordinance removed something that “should have been kept” or added something the “makes no sense”.
Liberals DO NOT, in general, follow that simple rule. That is why the leftists at the EPA continue to push their “mandate” beyond what congress intended and the courts must continually strike down their “made up from whole cloth” regulations, at the expense of those abused by the leftists who must sue to overcome the oppression of the leftist bureaucracy.
The “Waters of the US” legislation was written to use the commerce clause to allow enforcement since the waters COULD BE USED FOR COMMERCE. The leftists continued attempts to use the law to regulate ditches and temporary marshland SHOULD result in the termination of EVERY leftist involved in the pursuit of these regulations and harassment of property owners. The best result, IMO, would be for a task force of the new DOJ to gather evidence and prosecute them via RICO for using their government positions for personal causes, and to use the courts to impoverish them by requiring restitution to everyone, individual or corporation, for the legal costs and loss of use their actions caused.
End rant.
Sure. I’ll have what you are having.
“The smoke from the new stove is white … despite not having a catalytic converter“
After a modern wood stove gets hot, and the catalytic combustor is engaged, there is almost nothing to be seen. Downwind there is some “smell” of gases but they are not particles. The combustors do not last forever, but most are easily replaced.
My Jotul stove is about 8 years old. There is no catalytic combuster. It just uses air. Once it’s hot, the exhaust is perfectly clear. Other than a slight shimmer you can’t see that it’s burning wood. We used to have a catalytic stove. I prefer this type.
Read Tainter ‘The Collapse of Complex Societies’. We are living through it. Its very similar to the slow decline of Rome, the growth of entitlements, the debasement of the currency, the proliferation of controls and regulation, the loss of a sense of legitimacy among the ruling class, odd new cults which sweep society, or at least the chattering part of it. At the same time the real threats are neglected. The slow decline was punctuated by revivals until finally it became a very fast decline.
Its common in collapse theory to invoke incompetent governance or the influence of cults or the erosion of civic virtue. But this is not satisfactory, as Tainter points out: it just leaves unanswered why these things happened at the point of decline and not earlier. You have to look deeper. They are just symptoms.
One of the great puzzles about societal collapse is the cases where the cities and even the countryside seem to have been deserted. The people vanished. Not massacred, not dead of some epidemic. No-one knows exactly why, and they are often cases where there is no written remains, so its just the archeological record.
The answer is in front of us, in the case of California. They walked. Why they walked, why conditions happened which motivated them to walk, who knows? But that’s what they did and what they are doing now. In the case of California it appears to be a sort of collective mania on the part of the governing and opinion forming classes, who are engaging in policies which make the state increasingly unliveable. Why this mania took root, who knows? But its leading to people who can walking, and to their being replaced by a smaller number of people for whom even the present ongoing decline is better than where they are now. So you get both a skill loss and a net decline which has a logic and momentum of its own.
BUT California is a beautiful area geographically and will never be totally depopulated. Those who can afford the excess taxes and stupid regulations, the very wealthy, and those who are willing to serve them to live in such a moderate and safe (less earthquakes, crime and the “homeless”) area will always be there, as long as sufficient water is available to support the population.
ps
I knew an individual who lived in Hawaii for 5 years or so. He spoke of how much ho loved living there, swimming every day after work, etc.
When I asked about his work he told the rest of the story. To afford to live there he worked 5 1/2 days a week, and more if the work was available. He ended up back on the mainland to get a job that provided retirement since all the time in Hawaii he worked off the books for cash. He could not put anything aside for the future, he lived for the present. He was lucky enough to get a government job with a government pension.
Older societies have collapsed when the geological climate turned colder.
I’m not familiar with Tainter. What you describe rings true though.
Part of the difficulty comprehending collapse is we tend to assume government somehow caused prosperity in the first place. There may well have been things done that led to prosperity but outside of China it’s hard to think of an example where it was actually planned. (And China had the advantage of starting from the ruin left by Mao—they had nowhere to go but up.) Luck and circumstance and happy coincidences are how prosperity starts.
The best a government can do is not p*ss away its good fortune. It’s like raising kids; you can’t make them talented, the best you can do is nurture what you find already in them and not mess them up.
Clueless government is the natural order. The only mystery is how societies persist as long as they sometimes do.
‘Part of the difficulty comprehending collapse is we tend to assume government somehow caused prosperity in the first place.‘
That assumption was the basic premise underlying the early Progressive movement in the US. Like any form of socialism, Progressivism needed to continually evolve and expand in order to ‘cover’ its failures, which has resulted in a highly regulated economy and cultural Marxism.
The thin veneer of the Soviet Union lasted about 70 years and only collapsed when the government could no longer murder (physically coerce) enough people necessary to cling to power. Their form of socialism also (as is structurally endemic to all socialist societies) failed to feed people reliably.
China also had the advantage of playing catch-up with the developed world.
They had examples of what worked and what didn’t work. It’s easy to look successful when you’re given the road map ahead of time.
Yikes! A used hardback edition of The Collapse of Complex Societies on Amazon will set me back over two grand!
Maybe the library has a copy. (With that sort of price tag it’ll be in special collections, under lock and key!)
I picked up my own copy many years ago now. There are paperback editions, but they are still pretty expensive. Interlibrary loan may be a source. I checked with OpenLibrary, which usually gives short term loans, but they don’t have it.
Its worth making the effort to borrow a copy. Very thought provoking. But once you have read it, you have got the main point and will probably not want to refer to it repeatedly, so I don’t think its necessary to own it at current prices.
There’s an online copy here:
Thanks for that link.
There are alternatives such as Spengler – Decline of the West and Toynbee – A History which is available as an abridged 2 volume version.
I just looked at the Kindle version, it was $45.92.
“Read Tainter “
Weird, I read Tanter for a moment, and he wrote this…
“Pipeline Politics: Oil, gas and the US interest in Afghanistan“
https://www.frontiernet.net/~rihana/Pages/Tanter.html
Different guy. That is Richard Tainter. The author of ‘Complex Societies’ is Joseph.
As I said, Michel
“Weird, I read Tanter for a moment”
Which then reminded me.
Sorry, didn’t notice it was Tanter! Half asleep. The piece you linked to was quite interesting.
YouTube suggested this video for me to watch. Long story, two of my sons are petrolheads and one is into old cars. In his “fleet” the youngest is about 19 years old. He sends me links to things he finds interesting. As a result I get car related suggestions from YouTube. One last week was Geoff Buys Cars an EV versus Diesel bought from Facebook Market 2 days before the challenge for £2645/$3236/3036€.
For anyone contemplating an EV at £120k then they should watch these videos, there are about four in total now I think, it will take a few hours.
It’s a shame that the powers that be are burying the once Golden State of California. In many ways CA has suffered from “stick in the mud” policies for sometime. I lived in the LA area in the late 90’s for a few years. I could not understand why so many of the roads in the LA area were constantly log-jammed, even at all odd hours of day and night. Having grown up in the Baltimore DC area, I figured I could cross town (based on the pre-GPS Google map time estimates) in about an hour to get to a party. I was shocked to discover that it took me over 2 hours to travel what would have taken about an hour (in my previous home town)!
There were plenty of places where these log jams occurred where there was nothing but empty hillsides next to the roads in question. In other words, the state would not be demolishing peoples’ homes if it chose to widen the road. But no, no improvements were ever made.
I did not realize that even back then, the entire state was already strangled in so many environmental regulations (this before the CAGW fiasco picked up steam) that nothing could be done. Worse yet, the PTB couldn’t understand how much more pollution was generated by vehicles constantly idling vs widening the roads to speed up the passages.
I also couldn’t understand why housing was so pricey. I knew it was before I moved out there, but I was going to be making good money. In retrospect, I never saw anything, not a single house, or apartment building, being constructed, the whole time I was out there. In contrast, having moved back to my birthplace (Baltimore ‘burbs) housing is being constructed (in fits and starts, but it never completely stops) and roads that are clogged get (eventually) improved.
Much like a vine attacking a tree, these EV regulations (and banning of all sorts of gas-powered lawn equipment, generators, etc and gas furnaces) will eventually kill the Golden Tree. The squirrels, birds, insects, etc, are fleeing the tree, because they know it is dying….
” the once Golden State of California “
Mike Stinson’s “The Late Great Golden State” [this is the original]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow9FV3xjkew
Dwight Yoakam’s cover is better known.
California has developed a growing tendency to skip the “look” part in “Look before you leap”.
Ready, fire, aim.
Coal is just wood that nature compressed and heated for easy storage.
Let’s see; the environmental cost of mining/refining/shipping battery components is astronomical, nearly everything in the battery powered vehicles is made from petroleum or produced using organic fuel derived electricity, the actual cost of charging is equivalent to >$17 per gallon, the vehicles are financially out of reach of most drivers, minor crashes require complete replacement of battery packs ($$$$), insurers are dropping coverage of these Rube Goldberg devices, tires are more expensive and wear out more quickly, more road damage occurs due to much greater vehicle weight, charging stations are too few in number, the batteries don’t work well when it’s hot or cold, and they have a nasty tendency to burst into flames, which are highly toxic and hard to extinguish. Battery powered cars (and trucks) are now officially the larger, more expensive, and equally dangerous modern version of “Happy Fun Ball” from the SNL fake commercials. Is Wile E. Coyote in charge of the engineering team?
I don’t know why California elects the likes of Gavin Newsom. He is as phony as they come and is utterly useless at solving anything. He creates problems where none exist. Electric cars are obviously a niche market at the moment. A luxury item for the upper classes with the benefit of government subsidies. They are great for city commutes and that’s it. I’ll stick to my gas powered car.
California decided on image over substance many years ago.
There is no EV mandate or ban on ICE in Califonia.
California is no longer the golden state but the strip mall state. The home of jacked up 4wd pickups not EV.
So what happened to the governor who blocked new fossil power plants? He got recalled never to be heard of again.
In another state governor got the power plants got built. Some of you may remember POTUS Bush.
The last nuke plant scheduled to be shut down will now run longer than the present governor and future Cali governors will be in office. Gov Newsome just went to China promote ‘green’ cooperation. Sitting in a big ass SUV he said he wanted two.
Maybe he did not understand the degree of animosity felt in the US towards China.
My point is that keeping the lights on and the fuel tanks full is something people are about.
There is no EV mandate or ban on ICE in Califonia.
Not quite but it is pretty close. When the ban on selling new ICE vehicles in California kicks in 2035, it then becomes an EV mandate for new vehicles. The Dems are constantly screaming about how democracy is at stake in elections. I did not get to vote on this. This was a decree from wannabe dictator Newsom.
I predict that by 2035 there will be more operating nuke reactors than EV.
Newsom will be driving a Dodge Ram with a Cummins diesel with a gasifirer delivering firewood to the 90% of Cali that is offgrid.
California is becoming so tiresome. All fossil fuel related businesses should band together and confront the California governor and legislature. They should ask do you intend to put us out of business. Yes or no. If no then shut the hell up. If yes we are going to save a lot of time, worrying and money. We will shut down now and be done with you. No more drilling, mining or shipping fossil fuel in any form to California.
California is sure to follow the lead of Germany in attempting to eliminate use of fossil fuels in its economy . . . only it will happen about 10 times faster in California, reflecting the IQ deficit of Governor Gavin Newsom compared to that of the German “leaders” behind its Energiewende policy.
Bring on the popcorn!
Germany has coal, Cali does not.
Germany had loads of “brown coal” (i.e., lignite), not cleaner burning higher energy-content “black” coal (i.e., anthracite). Hence, their need to import anthracite coal* to meet their energy needs despite—perhaps because of—their Energiewende policy.
*Germany’s majority of black coal imports: Russia (50%), the United States (17%), Australia (13%) and Colombia (6%).
On the other hand, California doesn’t really need coal-fired power plants:
“Natural gas-fired power plants typically account for almost one-half of in-state electricity generation. And California is one of the largest hydroelectric power producers in the United States, and with adequate rainfall, hydroelectric power typically accounts for close to one-fifth of State electricity generation.”
—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_California
Cali had coal generation in other states. In 2001, 75% of LADWP power came from coal plants they owned in other states.
Cali still imports 1/3 of their power.
I used to work at a nuke plan t in Cali, the state has been messed up for a long time.
According to the LA Times 21% of new cars sold in California in 2023 were EVs. Seems high.
Does anyone remember the “supply chain crisis” in 2021 when longshoremen didn’t report for work from fear of Covid-19, and hundreds of ships were lined up at sea near California ports waiting to be unloaded?
If Gavin Gruesome has his way, he will create a new supply-chain crisis. For a typical diesel-powered semi truck, the weight of a full fuel tank is a small fraction of the payload, but a battery required to power an electric truck with equal power and torque would weigh almost as much as the payload.
So by 2030, California will have a fleet of electric trucks with smaller payloads, still trying to load the same amount of cargo as now. They also may not have the range to reach the border of another state (Oregon, Nevada, or Arizona) without such regulations, so that valuable time will be lost recharging the trucks overnight.
Since California is a “sanctuary state”, maybe they will import diesel-powered trucks (and their drivers) from Mexico.
So with all these electric trucks supposedly reducing CO2 emissions in California, its ports will be jammed up with cargo ships floating on the ocean waiting to be unloaded. By the way, cargo ships burn “bunker fuel”, which is heavier and dirtier than :”Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel” burned in trucks, and emits more sulfur oxides and particulate matter than ULSD. All those “bunker fuel” fumes from ships near the coast will be blown into the coast by the sea breeze.
Or some of the cargo ship captains will get tired of waiting and sail to Seattle, or to Houston via the Panama Canal.
Way to go, Gavin!