California Moves to Green Energy; Is CCE the Right Way? | Jim Phelps

Thank you my friend MAJ Dale E. Wilson, Ph.D. for posting the video

Background from {[latimes.com/environment/newsletter/2021-02-11/California-pledge-clean-energy-boiling-point]}
California pledged to achieve 100% clean energy. That was the easy part
By SAMMY ROTHSTAFF WRITER
FEB. 11, 2021 6 AM PT
This is the Feb. 11, 2021, edition of Boiling Point, a weekly newsletter about climate change and the environment in California and the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox.
In the seven years I’ve been reporting on energy and climate change, California has come a long way.
When I started, state law mandated 33% renewable energy by 2020; utility companies hit that goal two years early and have since been tasked with reaching 60% renewables by 2030 and 100% carbon-free by midcentury. Gov. Gavin Newsom recently ordered an end to the sale of gasoline-fueled cars by 2035. Dozens of cities are trying to phase out gas heating and cooking in new buildings.
Like them or hate them, those are major steps to slash emissions. But just as important are all the steps California has yet to take.
I wrote about some of those this week, in a story that explores the tricky path to 100% clean energy. The focus is a proposed undersea transmission line that would bring offshore wind power to Los Angeles, and why state officials haven’t shown much interest — even though the undersea cable could help shut down gas-fired power plants and reduce the risk of blackouts.

“We’re very frustrated with the lack of serious planning for offshore wind in California,” said Nancy Rader, executive director of the California Wind Energy Assn., an industry trade group. “We’re just banging our head against the wall.”

I’d encourage you to read my story, but the key takeaway is this: Just because California has committed to 100% clean energy doesn’t mean it will be easy, or that officials are doing everything that needs to be done to make it happen.

Let’s break that down a little bit.
Much of the state’s climate progress thus far has been enabled by increasingly low-cost solar and wind power. But as you may be aware, the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow 24 hours a day. Sooner or later, we’ll need clean energy sources that can fill in the gaps — and after two evenings of rolling blackouts last summer, it’s looking more like sooner than later.
This isn’t a newly discovered problem. I wrote about it back in 2015, explaining that in the view of some experts, a bill to increase the state’s renewable energy mandate “doesn’t do enough to promote clean energy sources that can generate electricity around the clock.” Still, even critics were confident California would “eventually diversify its clean energy sources.”

Half a decade later, that mostly hasn’t happened.
State officials are finally compelling utilities to invest in lithium-ion batteries that can store solar power for use after dark. That should help avert blackouts, at least to an extent. But in the meantime, Newsom’s administration is scrambling to keep the lights on this summer, in part by extending the shutdown deadline for four fossil-fueled power plants in Southern California. And the Public Utilities Commission is slated to vote today on a proposal that critics say would offer an additional lifeline to gas plants.

What California isn’t doing is building offshore wind turbines that keep spinning after sundown. Or, for the most part, geothermal plants that churn out clean electricity around the clock. Or energy storage facilities that bank large amounts of power for extended periods without sun or wind. Or new transmission lines that connect renewable energy facilities with power-hungry cities.

Major infrastructure projects aren’t the only solution. State officials could also go big on small-scale clean energy options such as rooftop solar, residential battery systems and “demand response” programs that pay people to use less electricity. As I wrote last month, those technologies could reduce the cost of fighting climate change while also helping families keep the lights on.

Greater cooperation with other Western states is another alternative. Wyoming is blessed with some of the nation’s strongest and most consistent onshore winds, and a regional energy market could make it easier for California to tap that out-of-state supply.

To be clear, I’m not personally endorsing any of those concepts, all of which have drawbacks and detractors.

Geothermal plants and offshore wind turbines are a more expensive way of generating electricity than large solar farms. Power lines can slice through sensitive ecosystems and interrupt unspoiled views; some long-duration storage projects, too, have been criticized as environmentally destructive. California’s rooftop solar incentives have thus far mostly benefited the wealthy.

As for regional cooperation, El Paso Electric last week became the latest utility to agree to join a California-led “energy imbalance market” that now covers much of the American West. But the program is relatively limited. A more comprehensive regional market has thus far been stymied by several obstacles, including mistrust between blue-state and red-state politicians.

So fitting together the puzzle pieces of 100% clean energy will be politically challenging. There are so many competing interest groups, from organized labor and ratepayer watchdogs to climate activists and renewable power companies — not to mention the oil and gas industry. No elected official wants to be blamed for putting people out of work, or causing energy prices to rise, or destroying the environment in the name of protecting the environment.

But if I’ve learned anything over the last seven years, it’s that achieving California’s climate goals will require doing things that seem politically impossible today.

Maybe that means finding a way to build lots more solar farms despite the hard-fought land-use conflicts. Maybe it means rewiring the electric grid to give rooftop solar a leading role, or pioneering some nascent technology like renewable hydrogen or carbon capture, or investing in offshore wind, or importing out-of-state wind energy from Wyoming. Or maybe all of the above.

State officials are trying to figure out the best strategies. The California Energy Commission, the Public Utilities Commission and the Air Resources Board released a draft report in December examining the options for reaching 100% clean energy.

I’ll have more to say when the report is finalized. But I spoke this week with Karen Douglas, who has served on the Energy Commission since 2008. She said officials are working to identify where solar farms can most easily be built and to lay the groundwork for offshore wind by resolving conflicts with the military. She pointed to her agency’s “Lithium Valley” initiative to spur the development of geothermal power plants near the Salton Sea that could also produce large quantities of lithium.

“We do have some breathing room, and some time and opportunity to take a step back and work with stakeholders — and also frankly with local governments up and down the state — on how to realize some of the renewable energy potential that we have in California,” Douglas said."

What's Wrong with Wind and Solar?
Are wind, solar, and batteries the magical solutions to all our energy needs? Or do they come with too high a price? Mark Mills, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, analyzes the true cost — both economic and environmental — of so-called green energy.
Script:
Have you ever heard of "unobtanium"?
It's the magical energy mineral found on the planet Pandora in the movie, Avatar. It's a fantasy in a science fiction script. But environmentalists think they've found it here on earth in the form of wind and solar power.
They think all the energy we need can be supplied by building enough wind and solar farms; and enough batteries.
The simple truth is that we can't. Nor should we want to—not if our goal is to be good stewards of the planet.
To understand why, consider some simple physics realities that aren't being talked about.
All sources of energy have limits that can't be exceeded. The maximum rate at which the sun's photons can be converted to electrons is about 33%. Our best solar technology is at 26% efficiency. For wind, the maximum capture is 60%. Our best machines are at 45%.
So, we're pretty close to wind and solar limits. Despite PR claims about big gains coming, there just aren't any possible. And wind and solar only work when the wind blows and the sun shines. But we need energy all the time. The solution we're told is to use batteries. Again, physics and chemistry make this very hard to do.
Consider the world's biggest battery factory, the one Tesla built in Nevada. It would take 500 years for that factory to make enough batteries to store just one day's worth of America's electricity needs. This helps explain why wind and solar currently still supply less than 3% of the world's energy, after 20 years and billions of dollars in subsidies.
Putting aside the economics, if your motive is to protect the environment, you might want to rethink wind, solar, and batteries because, like all machines, they're built from nonrenewable materials.

Consider some sobering numbers:
A single electric-car battery weighs about half a ton. Fabricating one requires digging up, moving, and processing more than 250 tons of earth somewhere on the planet.
Building a single 100 Megawatt wind farm, which can power 75,000 homes requires some 30,000 tons of iron ore and 50,000 tons of concrete, as well as 900 tons of non-recyclable plastics for the huge blades. To get the same power from solar, the amount of cement, steel, and glass needed is 150% greater.
Then there are the other minerals needed, including elements known as rare earth metals. With current plans, the world will need an incredible 200 to 2,000 percent increase in mining for elements such as cobalt, lithium, and dysprosium, to name just a few.
Where's all this stuff going to come from? Massive new mining operations. Almost none of it in America, some imported from places hostile to America, and some in places we all want to protect.
Australia's Institute for a Sustainable Future cautions that a global "gold" rush for energy materials will take miners into "…remote wilderness areas [that] have maintained high biodiversity because they haven't yet been disturbed."
And who is doing the mining? Let's just say that they're not all going to be union workers with union protections.
Amnesty International paints a disturbing picture: "The… marketing of state-of-the-art technologies are a stark contrast to the children carrying bags of rocks."
And then the mining itself requires massive amounts of conventional energy, as do the energy-intensive industrial processes needed to refine the materials and then build the wind, solar, and battery hardware.
Then there's the waste. Wind turbines, solar panels, and batteries have a relatively short life; about twenty years. Conventional energy machines, like gas turbines, last twice as long.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqppRC37OgI



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Green energy can be used as backup power for communities within cities, yet for cities like LA and San Francisco need nuclear power to sustain 100% coverage 100% of the time. Surely, California will relook its energy strategy again shortly.

I doubt it, it's about newsome making money, he's one dumporat that doesn't give a hoot about anybody other than his own wallet.