As a resident of California for more than six decades, I am aware that the availability of continuously generated electricity in California is deteriorating and will get worse!
The “Green New Deal” and “Net Zero” policies in California that are supported by Governor Newsom and the Democratic Presidential candidate Kamala Harris have led to the state’s most expensive electricity and fuel prices in America and increasingly high cost of living, housing, and transportation, coupled with an increase in crime, smash-and-grab robberies, homelessness, pollution, and congestion that has caused many tax-paying residents and companies to exodus California to more affordable cities and states.
California’s net move-out number of residents in 2022 alone was more than 343,000 people that left California — the highest exodus of any state in the U.S.
The California Policy Institute counted more than 237 businesses that have left the state since 2005. Among these businesses were eleven Fortune 1000 companies, including AT&T, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Exxon Mobil, and Chevron.
The U.S. Department of Energy recently made a startling admission: U.S. electricity demand will double by 2050, and meeting that soaring demand will require the equivalent of building 300 Hoover Dams.
The last California Nuclear Power Plant at Diablo Canyon, a 2.2 GW plant generating continuous uninterruptable electricity, is projected to close soon. In nameplate only, it would take 1,000 2.2MW wind turbines to generate 2.2 GW, but then, it’s only intermittent electricity vs. the continuous uninterruptable electricity from Diablo demanded by the California economy!
As a result of the “Green New Deal” and “Net Zero” policies and renewables of wind and solar stations built at the expense of taxpayer dollars, California now imports more electric power than any other US state, more than twice the amount in Virginia, the USA’s second-largest importer of electric power. California typically receives between one-fifth and one-third of its electricity supply from outside of the state.
Power prices are rocketing into the stratosphere and, even before winter drives up demand, are being deprived of continuous electricity in a way that was unthinkable barely a decade ago. But such is life when you attempt to run the economy on sunshine and breezes.
Further, these so-called “green” electricity sources of wind and solar are not clean, green, renewable or sustainable. They also endanger wildlife.
California’s economy depends on affordable, reliable, and ever-cleaner electricity and fuels. Unfortunately, policymakers are driving up California’s electric and gas prices, and California now has the highest electricity and fuel prices in the nation. Those high energy prices are contributing to the pessimistic business sentiment. California’s emission mandates have done an excellent job of increasing the cost of electricity, products, and fuels to its citizens.
It’s becoming increasingly obvious that these supposed “green” alternative methods of generating electricity won’t work — especially as electricity demand is projected to double by 2050 due to AI, charging of EVs and data centers, government-mandated electric heating and cooking, and charging grid-backup batteries. Intermittent electricity from wind and solar cannot power modern nations.
These “green” wind and solar projects primarily exist because they are financed with taxpayer money, i.e., disguised by taxpayers as “Government Subsidies.”
“GREEN” policymakers are oblivious to humanity’s addiction to the products and fuels from fossil fuels, as they are to these two basic facts:
(1) No one uses crude oil in its raw form. “Big Oil” only exists because of humanity’s addiction to the products and fuels made from oil!
(2) “Renewables” like wind and solar only exist to generate intermittent electricity; they CANNOT make products or fuels!
To rid the world of crude oil usage, there is no need to over-regulate or over-tax the oil industry; just STOP using the products and fuels made from crude oil!
Simplistically:
STOP making cars, trucks, aircraft, boats, ships, farming equipment, medical equipment and supplies, communications equipment, military equipment, etc., that demand crude oil for their supply chain of products.
STOPPING the demands of society for the products and fuels made from oil will eliminate the need for crude oil.
The primary growth in electric power usage is coming from new data centers housing AI technologies. It is expected that over the next few decades, 50% of additional electric power will be needed just for AI, but data centers CANNOT run on occasional electricity from wind and solar.
How will the occasionally generated electricity from wind and solar support the following:
- America’s military fleet of vehicles, ships, and aircraft?
- America’s commercial and private aircraft?
- America’s hospitals?
- America’s space exploration?
Despite Governor Newsom’s and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’s support for the “Green New Deal” and “Net Zero” policies in California, it’s time to stimulate conversations about the generation of continuously generated electricity to meet the demands of America’s end users.
First published at America Out Loud News.
Ronald Stein is an internationally published columnist and energy consultant, and a policy advisor for The Heartland Institute.
