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California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045
- ebikelaw 8y agoWhy not 2025?
- jdpedrie 8y agoWhy not next Wednesday? edit: /s
- briandear 8y agoPhysics. And arithmetic.
- stcredzero 8y agoWhat are the politician's reasons?
- rhacker 8y agoI would assume it would be better to use 30%-40% effecient panels that will come out in 10 years than forcing everyone on the current 23% tech.
- ebikelaw 8y agoEfficiency is pretty much irrelevant when the land in question is worthless. You just cover more land. With current utility-scale equipment you need only 300000 acres of PV to generate all power demanded in California today.
- tedsanders 8y agoIt is extremely unlikely that commercial cells will be high-efficiency multijunction in 10 years. Silicon has been dominant for decades, and its lead in cost-effectiveness has only grown.
- kitsunesoba 8y agoThis was my thought. Fully clean power by any deadline is great, but I would’ve expected something more aggressive from CA. This seems rather tame.
- jmcgough 8y agoWe probably need to make significant improvements to the grid in order to support this. Solar power doesn't feed into the grid at a consistent rate, so we need to be able to store large amounts of energy for off-hours.
- ebikelaw 8y agoDo we need a quarter century to make that happen? California built Shasta Dam in 8 years with a population 7 times smaller than today's and with early Industrial Age technology. How long could it possibly take to install some pumps at Whiskeytown to pump water back into Shasta during the daytime? The Pacific AC Intertie goes right over both lakes already.
- dragontamer 8y agoOkay, I like pumped hydro as much as the next guy but... one pumped hydro dam isn't enough for the entire state of California. Assuming 1GW pumps, that means you can pump a GW-worth of power during the day, and tap ~800MW of power at night (assuming 80% efficiency due to evaporation and other conversion losses). It seems like the Shasta Dam is currently ~700MW and plans to be ~2GW soon. To give you the scale of power demands. ----------- Its estimated that California's current Solar capacity is ~30GW btw. Soooo... you'll need like 8 to 15 dams the size of Shasta to absorb that power. Well, you wouldn't need to absorb all of it. You'd need to absorb just enough to run California at night. But still, you can see the amount of electrical usage California already has, and how much storage it needs. Especially if solar continues to grow. Solar + Wind is nifty, because Wind generates most power at night, while Solar generates most of its power during the day. But even with a team of different plants working together, the energy storage problem is serious. That's just the day-night cycle. Weather cycles (ex: hot, but cloudy days) are probably harder to plan for. ------------ EDIT: Anyway, pumped-hydro HAS to be part of the plan. Its one of the few Giga-scale storage methodologies we have. But even then, Gigascale isn't enough. Realistically, California (or really, the world in general) just needs to builds its economy around the concept of "negative cost energy". Sometimes, there will be energy out there that needs to be absorbed by someone. IIRC: Germany has aluminum plants which spin up to absorb the cost. People can plan to charge their electric cars during negative-cost energy times, or run their AC-units on overdrive to store some extra cold air. That's the sort of thing that will be sustainable in the long term. Pumped Hydro (and other energy storage tech) will capture what we can to use later. But building out a "smart grid" which can take advantage of negative-cost energy would be the most obvious way to take advantage of solar. Peak Solar only lasts for an hour or two. But for those two hours, negative cost energy costs will become a thing.
- Eire_Banshee 8y agoBecause not every engineering problem is a software problem. You cant just pop some adderall and code all weekend to fix things like this.
- true_tuna 8y agoWe are going to need some more big batteries. Don’t we pay our neighbors to take our excess during peak times?
- dublin 8y agoGet a clue and do the math. (Seriously, this is a one-to-two hour google for info and apply third-grade arithmetic back-of-an-envelope project.) Batteries are NOT the answer - the quantity of batteries required is astronomically beyond the world's battery production capacity, even in Musk's most fevered dreams. Seriously - the mining impact of REALLY trying to build enough batteries to stabilize an area the size of CA would increase mining pollution worldwide by an order of magnitude or more...
- Nasrudith 8y agoPutting aside the lithium mining myths (it works via brine evaporation making it damn clean compared to most mining) less storage is needed than you think thanks to wind power. Actual voltage stabilization requires shockingly little of energy storage compared to the size of the grid as demonstrated by the Australian battery project generating millions per day via stabilization services and doing it so quickly it outran the instability detection. Wind turbines actually produce more power at night - as to be expected with wind being caused by temperature differentials. Texas for one has a lot of wind power to grid export thanks to its geography.
- sctb 8y agoCould you please stop being so thorny? It doesn't make your point any clearer, it just makes the discussion worse.
- jrockway 8y agoBig batteries are a solved problem. You use electricity to pump water uphill. When you want the electricity back, you let it run back downhill through a turbine. This does not require mining lithium either, btw.
- Tuxer 8y agoOnce again, making me proud to pay CA taxes. If they do not take large hydro into account when calculating this 100%, I wonder what we'll do with the dams. Destroy them to let the rivers free-flow again? Dams would have been a great store of energy for this project by pumping the water up during the day using solar/wind. Tesla Energy must be salivating at all those batteries that will need to be constructed.
- guelo 8y agoI think you misread. Hydro will be allowed under this bill.
- Tuxer 8y agooh I must have, I read this sentence "The state currently gets about 44 percent of its power from renewables and hydropower." as continuing with the current thought that hydro wasn't 100% clean. Pump it up then.
- twright 8y agoWill hydro be viable if the rainfall gets worse? Lake Mead is about 40% capacity, I can't imagine other dams are doing much better.
- toomuchtodo 8y agoThere is a proposal to convert the Hoover Damn and Lake Mead into pumped storage. https://www.utilitydive.com/news/los-angeles-considers-3b-pumped-storage-project-at-hoover-dam/528699/ https://www.utilitydive.com/news/los-angeles-considers-3b-pu... https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/07/24/business/energy-environment/hoover-dam-renewable-energy.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/07/24/business/ener...
- seanmcdirmid 8y agoI thought they were already used as pumped storage? I know the grand coullee has the ability to pump water up into its reaovoir, at least they talked about this in a high school class I took 25 years ago.
- corradio 8y agoThat's very interesting. Right now California seems to run about 40-60% renewable according to https://www.electricitymap.org/?page=country&solar=false&remote=true&wind=false&countryCode=US-CA https://www.electricitymap.org/?page=country&solar=false&rem...
- toomuchtodo 8y agoCalifornia is at a bit of a tipping point. It has so much renewable energy, it has to pay other states to export their excessive energy because they don't have enough storage [1]. So you have to decide if you're going to subsidize utility scale energy storage to help drive it below the cost of fossil and peaker generators (which, it appears, California is prepared to do). It also helps that renewables are quickly approaching 1-2 cents/kwh at utility scale, as more of your cost can be storage (as your generation is almost free). China is ending subsidies of their solar manufacturing industry [2], which is going to push down the cost of panels, increasing the rate of uptake. You will see California meet their 100% renewable mandate much sooner than they're targeting. A side effect is this is going to cause extensive losses to investor owned fossil generators. C'est la vie. [1] https://www.zmescience.com/science/california-renewable-energy-18082018/ https://www.zmescience.com/science/california-renewable-ener... [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-solar/chinas-solar-subsidy-cuts-erode-the-impact-of-trump-tariffs-idUSKCN1LF18K https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-solar/chinas-solar-su...
- village-idiot 8y agoI won't shed many tears for the death of fossil fuel power plants.
- dublin 8y agoYour face may be dry, but it will be in the dark. There is quite simply NO KNOWN TECHNOLOGY that can cost effectively meet peak demands other than fossil fuel plants. The people that build the natural gas peaker plants that California will MUST have for grid stability will make a fortune, and be painted as the "bad brown energy guys" even though they'll actually be saving the entire grid from collapse.
- yspeak 8y agoAnother subsidy for Tesla. All PR hype as it is an impossible goal unless you want to live in a very expensive Stone age and will do nothing of significance for global warming. More reasons to leave California.
- adamsea 8y agoBaloney. https://www.google.com/search?q=economics+of+clean+energy+california&oq=economics+of+clean+energy+california&aqs=chrome..69i57.10071j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=economics+of+clean+energy+ca...
- internet_user 8y agoDoes aneutronic p-b11 fission count as clean in California?
- phkahler 8y agop-b11 fusion. I'd count that anywhere someone can make it work for large scale energy production.
- jzoch 8y agoI 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?
- ebikelaw 8y agoI 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 https://twitter.com/CarlZha/status/1034348241402265601
- SllX 8y agoAuthoritarian 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.
- sixdimensional 8y agoI'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?
- jtchang 8y agoI actually had no idea how much of CA's energy came from renewable sources. That is actually astounding. In many ways CA is ahead of the nation.
- eikenberry 8y agoIs nuclear part of the bill? It is clean but I don't see any mention of it either way in the article other than in the graph of current sources.
- RobLach 8y agoWhenever I ride around Berkeley, CA I see a sea of "nuclear-free zone" signs on roads filled with Prius traffic. It's not so easy to understand the real agendas here.
- godzillabrennus 8y agoFunny enough, there is a solution for more safely disposing of nuclear waste that is coming out of Berkeley. http://www.deepisolation.com http://www.deepisolation.com They are a company to pay attention to IMHO.
- nickik 8y agoNuclear waste is not an actual problem and the only reason there is no 'solution' is because it has turned into a political shit show. Worrying about nuclear waste at the beginning of the nuclear age when most of that waste is actually valuable fuel is downright idiotic.
- Alex3917 8y ago> Nuclear waste is not an actual problem If you're comfortable eating food grown in the soil grown around uranium processing plants then by all means go ahead.
- sannee 8y agoI am fully comfortable with that (not parent though) and have even done so on several occasions. You do realize we can detect contamination by radioactive elements in quatities many orders of magnitude lower than could conceivably cause any harm right? On the other hand, I live in Europe and our local government has yet to produce a complete environment monitoring fail such as the Flint incident in the USA.
- justaaron 8y agoexcellent
- ghouse 8y agoFor those who think data is beautiful, here is real-time information regarding the majority of California's grid: http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.aspx http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.aspx
- knowaveragejoe 8y agoVery cool, though I'm curious about the classification of large hydro(and maybe even nuclear) outside of renewables?
- vondur 8y agoI believe ever since we had the rolling blackouts in the early 2000's we've been purchasing more and more energy from power plants in Utah, as regulation in the state makes it difficult to build new ones.
- dmode 8y agoI don't believe it is true. I believe CA generates more electricity than is needed and actually pays other states to take it off the grid
- vondur 8y agoLooks like we buy a lot of power from Intermountain Power, who are in Utah: https://www.ipautah.com https://www.ipautah.com
- ghouse 8y agoIntermountain will be converted from coal to gas: http://www.ladwpnews.com/information-regarding-proposal-to-reduce-fossil-fuel-generation-at-intermountain-power-project/ http://www.ladwpnews.com/information-regarding-proposal-to-r...
- vondur 8y agoThat is true, but I believe there are more than one coal powered plant in the Intermountain system. My main point is that California will just switch to purchasing power from other areas and claim that they are using all clean energy. I 'm assuming they don't consider natural gas as clean energy.
- jorblumesea 8y agoIt's unfortunate the US response to climate change is completely localized and basically dependent on blue states. Not saying this is a bad thing but climate change is a huge global issue and requires at least a coordinated national response.
- craftyguy 8y ago> and requires at least a coordinated national response. The federal government has proven for at least the past decade that they are incapable of delivering a coordinated national response.
- jorblumesea 8y agoThe government incompetence is intentional. There's a coordinated effort from the Right to make sure the government doesn't function in order to make the argument that the government doesn't function. The disfunction is largely manufactured in order to serve political purposes. Then they can budget cut and privatize everything while talking about "clean coal" and how climate change is a Chinese hoax and "states rights" etc etc. It is hardly a coincidence the biggest road blockers in Congress are also the ones arguing to privatize infrastructure for their rich friends.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- tathougies 8y agoMany US states are comparable in size to typical nations, so its not clear to me why this localized response is worse
- jorblumesea 8y agoClimate change is a national/global issue and requires a national/global response. California going green while Virginia stays with coal while Florida floods is objectively bad for the nation. The carbon footprint of the nation isn't going to be balanced by only a few states taking serious measures. We are a union under the federalist system and we're all in this together, despite what people seem to think.
- tathougies 8y agoCurrently, I buy all my electricity from renewables. The price I pay per kwh is lower than conventional generation. However, the state of California has given PG&E a monopoly on electricity distribution, and PG&E charges me the difference between the generation charge from renewables and its own generation charge as a 'distribution fee'. This fee is waived, if i used PG&E generation. Until California kicks out PG&E's monopoly and lets me pay the actual fair market price for my renewable electricity, I find it hard to take these initiatives as anything more than virtue signalling. A better method for my county would be for the state to get rid of PG&E's ability to selectively charge the distribution fee. Then, private market forces would basically make everyone switch to renewables. Of course, the legislature wouldn't get the chance to appear virtuous. In fact, they'd look like villains for allowing this ridiculous pricing structure to begin with (and they really do knowingly allow it -- after talking with my state senator and representative, they told me they know this is the case, but 'the PG&E lobby is strong'.. give me a break).
- amluto 8y agoI don’t really see how California could practically kick out PG&E’s monopoly. There won’t magically be a bunch of competitors that string is their own power lines. CA could potentially take over entirely and run its own system, which might not be totally crazy. Some cities (e.g. Palo Alto and Los Angeles) already do this.
- tathougies 8y agoThe legislature directly controls PG&E's pricing. They can legislate it out of the market, or at least legislate out this particular pricing snafu.
- tedsanders 8y agoThe legislature does not control PG&E's pricing. Periodically, PG&E submits rate cases to the CPUC. The outcomes of these rate case submissions dictate what PG&E is allowed to charge customers. The CPUC is a quasi-executive agency established by the state constitution: https://ballotpedia.org/California_Public_Utilities_Commission https://ballotpedia.org/California_Public_Utilities_Commissi...
- walrus01 8y agoWriting as a person that's recently built some PV: The problem of building enough photovoltaics to meet demand is solved. High quality 60 and 72-cell PV modules at sub $0.50/watt and massive scale cheap ground mount and roof mount systems are not rocket science. With sufficient zoning and regulatory incentives it's possible for roof mount PV in California to entirely meet the state's energy needs in megawatt-hours per day. There are a LOT of empty roofs out there. There is also a lot of nearly useless, non arable desert land that is relatively low cost ($/acre) that can be covered in fixed ground mount photovoltaics. Go drive around out in the area around Twentynine Palms... The problem is energy storage. Batteries need to get better and have much longer cycle lifetimes. Economies of scale driven by things like the Tesla gigafactory will help. But we will need other, new things like pumped storage hydroelectric and possibly vanadium flow batteries as well. The $/Wh stored ratio is still very high, and the cubic density for energy stored is very low (Wh per cubic meter).
- dublin 8y agoOr you could realize that natural gas is a far superior energy storage mechanism, and the cleanest fuel available. Fracking, and the consequent reduction in natural gas prices, is directly responsible for the US dropping its CO2 production faster than any other major country...
- walrus01 8y agoNatural gas is a possible short-term temporary solution. If PV continues to drop in price as it has historically, [1] at a point in the near future it will become economical to crack hydrogen from seawater. If your $/kWh cost is astronomically low it doesn't matter how electricity intensive it is. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=photovoltaic+price+chart&num=100&client=firefox-b-1&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjbh57nupXdAhVCCDQIHbFUBjsQ_AUICigB&biw=1824&bih=1017&dpr=1.58 https://www.google.com/search?q=photovoltaic+price+chart&num...
- Dylan16807 8y agoHow do we use natural gas to store energy?
- tedunangst 8y agoHypothetically, if I build a big coal power plant across the border to power a giant light array shining on solar cells on the CA side, does that count?
- chrisseaton 8y agoThese kind of 'I'm technically correct' arguments don't work with the law as they do in programming - Judges just say 'that's obviously not what is intended'.
- EduardoBautista 8y agoAre you sure? If that was the case, legal loopholes wouldn't be as effective as they are now. Laws are taken literally. You follow the letter of the law, not the spirit. At least that's the case in the USA.
- chrisseaton 8y agoYes there's a lot of 'reasonable person's interpretation' of things, such as 'solar power'. A Judge would just say no reasonable person would interpret that as a solar power.
- tedsanders 8y agoSometimes, sometimes not. One example of judges not taking a law literally is the Aereo case. Aereo was a company that aimed to provide over-the-air TV as an on-demand internet service. They tried to get around paying retransmission fees by hosting small personal antennas that would transmit to small personal receivers for each customer. The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that since they were basically performing the same services as a cable company, the retransmission fees applied, regardless of the pointless technical setup with individual antennas and receivers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Broadcasting_Cos.,_Inc._v._Aereo,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Broadcasting_Cos.,_In....
- tedunangst 8y ago"Technically correct" is actually an issue with alternative energy. A lot of tax credits out there for stuff that meets some legal standard but doesn't accomplish anything. Somewhat older link: http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,493241,00.html http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,493241,...
- johng 8y agohttps://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckdevore/2018/05/07/texas-produces-five-times-the-wind-power-as-california-at-almost-half-the-price-blame-regulation/#6a315025438c https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckdevore/2018/05/07/texas-pr...
- jwr 8y agoI think another great move would be to start dealing with excessive energy consumption. Compared to what I'm used to in Europe, California is wasting crazy amounts of energy. Poorly insulated homes, old and inefficient AC/heating units, vertical-drum washing machines (!!!), poorly designed gas stoves, oversized cars, monstrous gas-guzzling trucks, energy waste is all over the place. People behave just as if energy were free.
- coolspot 8y ago+ heated ceiling instead of floor in many apartments.
- wang_li 8y agoCompared to Europe the US is doing better on carbon reduction seeing as the US went down and Europe went up. I'm not disagreeing that everyone should try to improve and the items you mentioned can be looked at, but comparing to Europe the US looks pretty good.
- llukas 8y agohttps://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?locations=EU-US https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?location... Looks pretty good on what metric?
- tomnipotent 8y agoMisleading chart. It's showing the average across the EU and not the total.
- garmaine 8y agoWhy should we care about the total? EU and US are different sizes to begin with. Per capita seems to be appropriate here.
- tomnipotent 8y ago
- westurner 8y ago1. Hawaii 2. California 3.
- ThomPete 8y agoI am still baffled by the focus on private housholds and private consumption when it comes to the discussion of clean energy and emissions. The reality is that private households have very little to do with our problems and even less to do about them. Stop eating cow sound great but it's not going to do anything of any impact. Most emissions (70%) come from very few companies (around a 100 or some). Instead of making life more expensive and difficult for normal citizens why not focus on those companies instead. That you can actually do something about. http://fortune.com/2017/07/10/climate-change-green-house-gases/ http://fortune.com/2017/07/10/climate-change-green-house-gas...
- abtinf 8y agoHow will normal people be affected if you severely restrict the activities of those 100 companies?
- ThomPete 8y agoThat depends on how you do it. How were normal people affected by putting in carburetors in cars so they didn't spit out lead into the air? Edit: My bad I meant catalytic converter not carborators (katalysatorer in Danish)
- skookumchuck 8y agoCarburetors have nothing to do with lead emissions. Lead emissions come from lead being added to gas to raise its octane, and hasn't been added for years.
- ThomPete 8y agoI might be wrong but as far as i know they were added while there were still lead in the gazoline. Anyway it didn't hurt the normal person it helped them because techonology.
- deleted 8y ago
- ousta 8y agoThey should find how to create electricity from poo as it is their first renewable material
- skookumchuck 8y ago"California would need to install more than 200 times as much energy-storage capacity than it has now to make up for the loss of gas plants," They wouldn't need near as much if they abandoned the silly fixed 24/7 consumer electric rates in favor of rates that vary based on the supply.
- hulton 8y agoClean Coal is the Future.
- BrandonMarc 8y agoPoliticians giving themselves a ~ 30-year runway is a farce. Promise you'll reduce it by 10% in 3 years, and I'll take you seriously. This is garbage. Just like the return to the Moon promised by Regan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump ... always "15 to 20 years from now" ... and NEVER happens. By the way - 10% in 3 years would be a perfect milestone to 100% in 30 years.
- mmanfrin 8y agoCalifornia generally has a good track record of hitting longer-term environmental goals. 2045 is a long way out, but it is a length that will allow for unclean plants to see through to their end-of-life, rather than kneecapping current plants/projects. I suspect the intent was to signal to energy producers that CA won't make their current investments worthless (otherwise it would drive away developers who have put investments in to our grid). In other words, this was a "keep investing, but new plants need to be clean" move.
- jorblumesea 8y agoI agree with the sentiment but this is probably a more realistic goal. Germany, which is far more organized than the US in many respects, is failing to hit its climate goals for 2020. It's just harder than people think. Same with public projects going over budget. The budget was never realistic in the first place.
- truculent 8y agoI think "realistic" kind of depends on your goal. If you want to make it under 2C, I don't believe this is particularly realistic (i.e. not soon enough). If you want to avoid controversial actions and major changes to people's loves, sure it maybe too soon.
- saas_co_de 8y agoAlways be suspicious when politicians pass legislation that doesn't take effect until after they leave office.
- Brakenshire 8y ago
- truculent 8y agoNot soon enough though, is it?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- alexnewman 8y agoI’d bet 10x harder than 99% and 100x harder than 95% and 1000x harder than 66%