Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/08/28/ca-emissions-free-electric.html
…
7 Likes
The rebel Bear Flag Republic strikes another blow for the good of humanity.
10 Likes
This will be quite the achievement, especially since most motor vehicles will probably be electric powered by then too.
Complete electrification of motor vehicles adds about 20% to electricity grid demands, compared to today.
2 Likes
That number is… Actually quite low.
5 Likes
My prediction is that if they are to have any chance of even coming close to this goal, they will need to buy most of their electricity from out of state.
I stand corrected, I just read the text of the bill, and that does not seem to be allowed. It still seems unrealistic. It would have been cool if they had voted to make the state electric grid run from 100% clean fusion power. Or from energy beams transmitted from starships in close orbit of the sun.
1 Like
“We decree that after we are all dead someone else will be legally obligated to make a difference.”
3 Likes
Excellent! Now they only need to make that happen 15 years ago.
5 Likes
I misread the title and had hoped it was going to be free electricity in California. Like how other states don’t have crippling income taxes.
After they’re all dead? It’s only 27 years from now, which feels really soon-ish to me.
1 Like
I’ll be close to my life expectancy, and as old as I am I’m still younger than most of the guys in the legislature.
But more importantly, they won’t be in the legislature then. And likely it’ll be too late to matter for global warming.
Don’t get me wrong, in this wretched age the declaration of some decades-off intent is much better than what most others are doing.
3 Likes
Nothing wrong with buying renewable energy from out of state, markets generally are very efficient if well regulated. Having the planet’s 5th or 6th largest economy commit to 100% clean is a big step. Full disclosure, my wife has a job at a clean energy outfit that supplies energy to a half million customers right now. My power is 100% renewable and it isn’t a whole lot more than the coal/nat gas derived electrons. We drive an EV most of the time now and love it (when we aren’t cycling or walking).
I wish it were sooner, but let’s beat it by 5 years CA! We can do it! Yes we can.
I haven’t read it yet but it sounds like what they want is 100% clean electricity generation. Our heat in the winter comes from natural gas, so that isn’t the cleanest even if it is better than coal.
6 Likes
I don’t know, I’ve been a skeptic of renewable energy in the past, especially without Nuclear baseload, but California is already at 32%. It’s seeming more reasonable.
http://www.energy.ca.gov/renewables/tracking_progress/documents/renewable.pdf
The generation part seems pretty doable, the tough part will be the storage and load balancing. But batteries and other tech seems to have been coming along the past few years.
The other part of it is the thing that’s been tough is the past hasn’t been emission reductions, but emission reductions without spending much money.
But AGW is become more obvious and more obviously damaging, the political capital needed for spending a lot of money on emissions reductions is coming around. By 2045 paying twice as much for emissions free power might be a winning political platform.
5 Likes
Realistic or not, it’s necessary.
4 Likes
I would be impressed, but won’t the free market take care of this one without the help of the legislature? The cost lines crossed a couple of years ago, and clean energy is now cheaper than fossil fuels (despite the administration’s efforts to make it more expensive.)
If this was Sim City, those old power plants would all explode before 2045.
1 Like
This is the key point. Even if they only get to 2/3 of the goal in the allotted time (from the current 1/3) in the long term they’re setting an example that much of the rest of the country will have to follow and that other nations can follow. In the short term that alone is an important counterbalance to the national regime’s insane retrograde energy policies.
Conservative naysayers and the fossil fuels industry will attack the move, of course, but these days the best responses they can come up with are variations on the Nirvana fallacy (e.g. “they’ll never make 100% so why even try?”) and measuring costs only in terms of short-term dollars.
2 Likes
Roger That! Green Leader!
3 Likes
I’ve tried for several minutes now to parse this sentence so that it makes sense.
Cheaper to generate at the source when operational, but not necessarily cheaper to deliver 24/7/365 and in all weathers.
I have been watching Germany for a long time, in their efforts to achieve more modest goals. And they include biomass (wood burning, mostly) as part of the clean and renewable sources.
It is a struggle to move to clean non-nuclear energy and still keep the lights on.
I think this is a gesture, like the announcement of free health care for all. Great as long-term goals, but pretty unrealistic in the short or medium term.
