Amid the worst budget crisis in its history, the state of California is set to make things worse at the behest of the wind and solar industries.
The California Air Resources Board (CARB) is set to increase the state’s so-called renewable portfolio standard (RPS) to 33% by 2020, up from 20% — meaning that one-third of the electricity produced in the state must come from so-called renewable sources like wind and solar, according to a report in Restructuring Today.
To meet that standard, the utility industry will need to spend an estimated $115 billion over the next 10-plus years. Given that only about $23.5 billion in financing was available annually for renewable projects nationwide before the financial crisis, the new standard would require that California utilities obtain about 50% of available funding each year.
CARB chairman Mary Nichols, a Democrat appointed by Gov. Schwarzenegger and a former Clinton administration EPA appointee, admitted to Restructuring Today that,
It’s going to be a challenge to reach that goal without negatively impacting reliability or leading to huge cost boosts for consumers.
A California Senate consultant told Restructuring Today that since the state’s budget crisis has been “temporarily” resolved, the bill containing the new standard is likely to pass and be signed into law this September.
The new standard will essentially require that each man, woman and child in California borrow about $3,108 in principal alone to pay for it — that is, the privilege of paying higher electricity prices for no environmental gain.
Look at the Sulfur Dioxide, Nitrogen Oxide and CO2 produced lbs/MWh produced, they are ranking close to last in the US. Which is good I would guess, (except for CO2 which is nonsense!). But that isn’t enough for the greenies, they scare their useful idiots until they cry, please kill our economy, please raise our electric bills, please send more green capitalist lobbyists to Sacramento to steal our money…
California has no coal-fired power plants. In fact, they made a law not allowing them. They get their power generation from natural gas, hydro (in-state and out-of-state), nuclear, and minor wind+oil. I believe the lefties also banned any future nuclear plant construction.
I forgot…they do purchase power from out-of-state coal-fired power plants, but I believe they just passed a law to tax the heck out of this power in the near future.
Can I say they are digging themselves into a hole deep enough to say “Howdy” to the Chinese?
What fools, what suckers the Cali people are!
I checked the numbers.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/st_profiles/california.html
Look at the emissions, already Cali ranks near the bottom for most. And then go to Table 6 near the bottom. Cali uses very little coal, mostly Natural Gas with Hydro/Nuc/Renewable adding to the mix. You are going to replace you “clean and efficient” Combined Cycle Gas Turbines with inefficient, expensive and high CO2 emitting Open Cylce Gas Turbines!!!
These facts are meaningless to Greenies.
http://www.climatesceptics.com.au/downloads/wind-power.pdf
The facts are that California’s pollution problems are caused by very densely populated areas. I doubt very much the coal plants are in the populated areas where the pollution is. In fact, with modern pollution control methods and scrubbing there is minimal pollution from a coal plant, and even less from natural gas. I live in Pennsylvania, where we make over 50% of our electricity from coal, and we have very little pollution, in fact we export coal-produced electricity. But again, in highly populated areas like Pittsburgh and Philadelphia we have some unavoidable pollution from cars, houses and industry. Also, no coal plants are shut down or replaced by renewable energy, NONE! The power they generate is intermittent and varies randomly forcing a significant constant backup to meet the daily needs of users. Renewable Energy is a SCAM!
Check your facts. You’re either unaware or lying about “no environmental gain”. Do you like the air quality in CA overall? Eliminating Electric Utilities use of coal for some portion of it’s production is a good thing and definitely an environmental gain.