I understand this is amazing and totally love my state for doing it, but man seeing 2045 is always a little dismaying as I wish we could be even more aggressive. 2035 for example. I realize I am being too ambitious, but we went to space in a decade why not 100% clean energy in 1.5?
Politicians generally tend to choose deadlines that are beyond their terms. They get the approval of their voting base today without actually having to do much of anything to reach the goal itself.
I'm reminded of Bush calling for the US to return to the moon by 2020 -- a proposal Obama quietly nixed.
I'd much rather we say, "We're going to increase renewables by X% every year, starting now, to reach the goal of 100% renewables by 2045."
Even 2035 is still beyond most current politicians' terms. 100% clean energy will take a lot of work and more importantly determination. The closer you get to the goal, the more it takes to cover another percent. And you never know who comes next and decides to kick all the plans to the curb and subsidize coal (hypothetically speaking o_O). You need to add some buffers.
Another problem is that nobody else (at this scale at least) got there so it's hard to anticipate all the challenges. Germany, normally at 36% renewable energy, managed to reach that magic 100% figure on a winter early-morning this year. But nothing close to sustained generation. And they plan to get to 100% in 2060+. So California, currently at ~44% renewable energy, could be the first to hit the sustained 100%.
Another problem is that everyone defines "100% clean energy" in different ways, by leaving some sectors out of the count. Will this target cover electrical power or also aims at replacing all non-renewable sources of power for all applications?
Indeed. Don't give me an amazing goal plus a far-off horizon. If you want me to take you seriously, give me a concrete smaller goal and a very soon time-frame.
Instead say, "we will drop it by 10% in 3 years." Now you're telling me some useful truth to which I can hold you accountable (ooh, politicians HATE that). Incidentally, 10% in 3 years would be a perfect milestone to 100% in 30 years, so if these politicians WERE being honest (they're not), then they should have no reason to refuse the 10% in 3 years idea.
"This bill would state that it is the policy of the state that eligible renewable energy resources and zero-carbon resources supply 100% of retail sales of electricity to California end-use customers and 100% of electricity procured to serve all state agencies by December 31, 2045."
> retail sales of electricity to California end-use customers and 100% of electricity procured to serve all state agencies
From this I take they don't plan to necessarily eliminate all carbon emitting energy sources but rather just the ones used to produce electricity. This would make the goal a little more achievable but also makes it a moving target. As different industries move from burning carbon based fuel to electricity the demand also increases which will still affect the balance between clean and dirty energy.
There are plans to ban ICE engines and other fuel burning applications so the demand for electricity will see a sharp rise. It's more that achievable to be 100% green in 2045 assuming the energy consumption trend of the past. But the future will probably see that trend go from relatively linear to something exponential for at least a few decades until the switch is done. Covering that difference will be the real challenge.
I read end-users as simply customers that intend to consume the electricity in CA as opposed to those who buy it to potentially resell it across state borders. This will probably be cleared up later.
Going to space probably would've taken a lot longer if there were a ton of legacy low quality low-Earth orbit spacecraft floating all over that we first had to upgrade or remove.
They knew how to go to the moon in 1961, at least in principle. It was "just" engineering. They don't know how to get to 100% renewables, not even in principle. (The 100% plans need a storage technology that doesn't exist, yet.)
I feel the same way about nearly everything in California. For example the first phase of the HSR project, which will serve pretty much no purpose whatsoever, is planned for 2029 which means realistically 2035, which might not even be in my lifetime. Meanwhile, in China, https://twitter.com/CarlZha/status/1034348241402265601
Authoritarian governments don’t have to answer to individual communities so long as the overall population has their basic needs covered and only minorities are dissatisfied.
California is one of the more democratic (small “d” is the relevant one here) of the States, and that generally means compromise, transparency (making horse trading more difficult), accountability and compensation for the dissatisfied, no matter how small of a minority they might be.
If San Francisco and Los Angeles could just dictate terms and agreed that it is better that the 4 or so largest population centers in the State have a direct high speed rail line with each other, you could eschew all of that and get it done in a few years.
I'm with you. It's awesome that we're doing this and I think it will be good for future generations.
Long term infrastructure investments take a long time, and it's weird to me to think that we might not even be around to enjoy the benefit, but needing to be done is needing to be done. I think this is exactly the kind of change in thinking we need, that we should take on such efforts, even if they take a long time, now.
However, I also concur, I wish we could be even more aggressive. It would be interesting to know if there is a staggered approach and if those dates are sooner (didn't RTFA... to be honest, maybe it was in there). Maybe we'll be 65% electric by 2035 or something, that would still be pretty great, right?
It would be nice if there were say goals of over 90% by 2030; that gives you 12 years to build and decommission or convert existing fossil-fuel plants to sustainable alternatives.
The hard problem is the storage and peak handling, hopefully with 90% you could cover that too.
A real space-race goal - the kind that I would really have expected from America - would be to be carbon neutral within a decade. That would initially spur investment in natural carbon sinks whilst massively rewarding innovation in that area (which we desperately need - we have two centuries of carbon that needs removing from the atmosphere).
Heck, it would also be wise to investigate geo-engineering - to understand in detail how our planet works, and develop methods for altering it. Could we develop technology which would allow us to, say, counter a massive volcano (or a super volcano?).
Agreed. Sadly, I believe the way things are going, geo-engineering will be required, not optional. At planerary scale, clearly it's a non-trivial problem, but we probably should be working on it much harder.
I like your inspiration for setting such goals as carbon neutral in America. That's the kind of thinking we need.
These sorts of transitions take a lot of time. There's a lot of infrastructure to build and a lot of infrastructure to decommission.
In addition to the political problems, extensively noted by others here, there are also the social problems.
Power plants and the associated industries are full of low-skill/education workers. Some can be re-trained into other industries, but some cannot.
An example is happening right now in Arizona. With so many coal plants being shut down, the Navajo Nation and other nearby tribes are being devastated.
These are already people who were dirt poor, living in a place that few want to go. There's few opportunities for employment. The one industry they had was supplying coal to utilities as far away as California. They even built a pipeline to flush coal clear across the state to Nevada.
Now all those jobs are going away, and there's zero industry left.
They're trying to build solar farms, but companies like Southern California Edison aren't interested in buying the power because solar plants can be built closer to home, and don't need new transmission lines to be built.
So a bunch of left coast technocrats get to pat themselves on the backs for saving the environment, while further marginalizing the people who saved the environment for them for a thousand years.
I'm more cynical about California than most, but these policies are a positive force for environmental change and history has shown they aren't empty promises.
Like all policy change, it will create winners and losers. While it's unfortunate Navajo Nation may be the latter, it shouldn't mean we stop moving forward.
Or another way of putting it, the Navajo Nation may lose in the short term, but without these transitions, they and everybody else could end up losing much more over a far longer timescale.
I do, however, believe that green power policy should include assistance to the people and communities affected negatively by decarbonization, as the pain to those folks is much higher than it is to wealthy Californians who merely pay slightly higher taxes to get the new energy production and efficiency measures installed.
You wouldn't be able to replace the annual energy output of the Navajo Generating Station just with solar farms built on former NGS land, of course, because coal can be turned into electricity in a much smaller area. But if you consider the 44,000 acre leased area of the Kayenta Mine that supplies NGS with coal, you could actually get more annual energy production from the same area by switching to solar.
It's relatively easy for one person to source clean power themselves, just means that technically your payment goes to a wind farm instead of the grid as a whole, but really doesn't change much for the grid. It's much harder for everyone to get clean power, then you get very advanced issues balancing the variable nature of renewable generation.
In this case I believe it means carbon-free, so Nuclear is still technically viable though very unlikely any new Nuclear will be built. Will be mostly existing hydro, nuclear and geothermal with new solar & wind phasing out gas plants.
I appreciate your enthusiasm, but this is like comparing apples to pitbulls. Both of these goals are big milestones, but fundamentally different.
With space, everything that was created and invested was brand new. There was not too much worrying about existing infrasture. Often, there would be thousands of people working to make 1 individual mission happen. Energy in the US is a lot different. For instance, you have to keep the massive machine that is the electricity transmission and distribution grids running.
Here's a scope of the challenges of 100% renewables, for anyone without a background in this (one should view challenges as opportunities):
First, there's a lot of existing generation that would need to be sunsetted and even more that would need to be created. In fact, given the intermittency of renewables, there would need to be a multiple more of capacity than there is now given the capacity factor, usually divide 1/CapacityFactor (see more on that here: https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy13osti/57582.pdf). So, 4 GW of installed wind capacity is really only expected to output ~1 GW at any point in time, given the intermittencies.
Second, there will have to be a lot of upgrades made to the transmission grid (sending power long distances from large scale renewable generators to population centers), and the distribution grid (sends power to all the buildings and homes in a city). The distribution grid upgrades to be made will have to help it handle a lot more rooftop solar, home batteries, and electric vehicles.
Third, there will have to be a lot more storage installed. Electric vehicles can have a large impact here, but there will still be a need for in-home and grid-scale batteries. Batteries are also just getting to the point where they're economically-feasible in some uses. There is still a ways to go for batteries to be economical enough to be widespread, especially grid-scale. Physical storage of electricity will likely have to grow too (think: pump to a higher lake when prices are low, and let it flow back down and turn a turbine when it's needed).
Fourth, and this is definitely my opinion (and what I'm working on), is that we are going to have to make everything work together more. We can't have all these batteries, solar panels, and other connected appliances and thermostats do whatever they want at the distribution level. We will have to change to time-varying rate structures for end-consumers, but this won't be enough either. Communication and coordination will yield the best results.
I tried to be brief. If anyone has any more questions or thoughts about this, I would love to hear them!
