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+10

Nov 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.