Tag: renewable-energy

Why are People Leaving California?

California climate is delightful. Many people or their parents move here to escape the humidity, the cold, the hurricanes and the tornadoes found everywhere else in the United States. The price we pay for this has finally become too much for most of us.

 In Central Phoenix, the average list price for single-family homes is $455 per square foot.

The median sale price of a home in Los Angeles is $1.1M, and the median sale price per square foot is $643, according to Redfin. 

Gasoline in California, according to AAA, which tracks national gas prices daily, costs an average of about $4.78, compared with $3.16 nationally. The cost of electricity in the state is now the highest in the continental U.S., at 30.22 cents per kilowatt hour.

The notoriously high cost of gas in the state is the result of a lot of factors — we tax gas to pay for road infrastructure and a less-polluting fuel mix in the summer months. Last year, Sacramento decided to move harder, faster toward its goal of a carbon-less future, adding disincentives for refineries and incentives for EVs that the California Air Resources Board has predicted will add 47 cents a gallon at the pump.

Overall, California’s zero-carbon climate policies — pushing EVs as your next car purchase and heat pumps to cool and heat your house — rely largely on electricity that in turn depends on expensive, and intermittent, energy sources, such as wind and solar. Come hell or high water, California’s leaders are trying to regulate, tax and incentivize their way to electricity that is 100% carbon-free by 2045.

In fact, recent analyses say California will face “acute electricity shortages” over the coming decade. Not least among the reasons: a dragged-out, exorbitantly expensive and unpredictable permitting process; the difficulty in finding appropriate locales for wind turbines and solar farms; and, ironically, objections from locals and environmentalists who don’t want renewable facilities in their backyards. Case in point: Moss Landing, where a toxic fire in a battery plant, coupled with plans for offshore wind turbines, have turned locals against green policies.

California can only prosper if it can develop affordable, reliable energy from all sources, including the state’s fossil fuel supplies. Without a change of direction, the trajectory is building toward a neo-feudal future — a state widely divided between the few rich and the many struggling.

Source for some of this article from a Joel Kotkin column in the Los Angeles Times.

California energy officials vote to extend Diablo Canyon nuclear plant operations

But is it safe?

Pacific Gas & Electric’s Diablo Canyon Power Plant is the only operating nuclear plant in California. Gov. Gavin Newsom supports keeping the plant along the coast near San Luis Obispo operating past its planned shutdown date of 2025.

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

BY TONY BRISCOE STAFF WRITER for the Los Angeles Times

California energy officials have voted to extend the operation of the Diablo Canyon Power Plant through 2030, extending the life span of the state’s last nuclear plant an additional five years.

The California Public Utilities Commission approved a proposal to keep Diablo Canyon’s twin reactors online, overturning an earlier agreement to close the plant in 2025.

Three commissioners — Alice Busching Reynolds, John Reynolds and Karen Douglas — voted in favor. Commissioner Darcie Houck abstained and Commissioner Genevieve Shiroma was absent.

Thursday’s decision is expected to preserve a large bloc of the state’s zero-emission power supply. But it also raises concerns over the high cost and potential safety issues associated with operating an aging nuclear power plant.

The state utilities commission acknowledged that the costs associated with the plan were still unknown but were expected to exceed $6 billion. A federal safety review will also be conducted.

State energy commissioners emphasized that the extension should serve as a bridge to renewable energy and that the plant was not expected to operate beyond 2030. The decision, they said, was intended to bolster the reliability of California’s grid, which has narrowly avoided rolling blackouts during heat waves in recent years.

“The short-term extension of the power plant as proposed is a transitional strategy to help California weather the challenges of the energy transition, including the weather and climate extremes that we have experienced … and the cost challenges that we face in scaling up the clean energy transition so quickly,” Douglas said ahead of the vote. “So this is an opportunity for us to help bridge some years.”

Pacific Gas & Electric Co., the plant’s operator, lauded the commission’s decision, saying it will help provide the state with a dependable, emission-free source of energy.

“We’re grateful for the opportunity to answer the state’s call to ensure electrical reliability for Californians,” said Suzanne Hosn, a spokesperson for PG&E.

At a state meeting filled with heated discourse, supporters argued that California needed the power supply from Diablo Canyon to avert outages and meet the state’s climate goals. The plant supplies about 9% of the state’s electricity and 17% of the state’s zero-emission power.

“It was methodically determined that Diablo Canyon is in fact integral to the California electricity reliability,” said Brendan Pittman, a Berkeley resident, who supported the proposal. “It contributes substantially to California’s zero-emission targets and the costs for continued operation are not, quote, too high to justify.”

But a chorus of critics warned that the extension could bring rate hikes from PG&E.

Opponents also argued that the plant’s proximity to several fault lines makes it susceptible to earthquakes, and a significant risk.

The plant, which sits along the Pacific Ocean about 10 miles outside of San Luis Obispo, opened in 1985. A 46-page report by Digby Macdonald, a professor at UC Berkeley’s Department of Nuclear Engineering, suggested one of the plant’s nuclear reactors “poses an unreasonable risk to public health and safety due to serious indications of an unacceptable degree of embrittlement,” or deterioration due to prolonged exposure to radiation.