Floating Offshore Wind – An Environmental Catastrophe
Floating Offshore Wind – An Environmental Catastrophe
Last week we examined California’s plans to install between 2,500 and 10,000 floating offshore wind turbines approximately 20 miles off the coast of San Luis Obispo and Humboldt counties. The estimated cost to install 25 gigawatts of capacity, which equates to 10 gigawatts of steady power if adequate storage assets are available, is at least...
By Edward Ring
Floating Offshore Wind – A Financial Catastrophe
Floating Offshore Wind – A Financial Catastrophe
When it comes to looming financial and environmental catastrophes, nothing can compare to floating offshore wind. It is energy policy at its worst. In an analysis earlier this year (WC #36), using cost estimates published by a European energy consulting firm, I estimated the total project cost for floating offshore wind off the California coast at, best...
By Edward Ring
Comprehensive Water Policy Recommendations Released
Comprehensive Water Policy Recommendations Released
A study released in May, The Magnitude of California’s Water Challenges, anticipated annual statewide water supply losses in the coming decades as follows: ending groundwater overdraft 2-3 million acre-feet (MAF), less from the Colorado River 0.5-0.8 MAF, climate change 1-3 MAF, and increases to required environmental flows 1-2 MAF. The total losses? 4.6 to 9 MAF...
By Edward Ring
How Many People Will Water from the Delta Tunnel Support?
How Many People Will Water from the Delta Tunnel Support?
According to the California Department of Water Resources (CDWR), “The Delta Conveyance Project would yield about 500,000 acre feet of water per year, which is enough for about 5.2 million people.” Let’s put that into perspective. Over the past ten years, on average, California’s farms have required 33.4 million acre-feet per year, and California’s cities have...
By Edward Ring
Quantifying California’s Brave EV Future
Quantifying California’s Brave EV Future
Earlier this spring Motor Trend published a brief report with a title that revealed more than a little editorializing: “Guess Which State Is Exploring Replacing Gas Taxes With Surveillance?” And of course, that state is California. Let’s quickly dispense with some editorializing of our own, so we can move on to the numbers. “Surveillance” is already here. New cars,...
By Edward Ring
California Policy Czars Ignore Water-Supply Solutions in Plain Sight
California Policy Czars Ignore Water-Supply Solutions in Plain Sight
The state is spending billions on water-rationing and tens of billions on a giant tunnel even though far better measures exist to keep faucets flowing. Chronic water scarcity in California is indeed the new normal, but it’s not because of climate change. Even if the state is destined to experience lengthier droughts and reduced snowpack,...
By Edward Ring
California’s Water Economy: The Three Biggest Choices
California’s Water Economy: The Three Biggest Choices
If water strategy in California had to be distilled down to just three projects with the greatest impact, the answers might vary a great deal depending on who was asked. But in terms of quality of life impact, the ongoing implementation of State Water Resources Control Board to “Make Conservation a Way of Life” is...
By Edward Ring
California’s Water Economy: An Overview
California’s Water Economy: An Overview
If energy powers civilization, water gives it life. One of the biggest challenges of our time is to develop the means to deliver both of these essentials in abundance, while also keeping them affordable and ecologically sustainable. We believe this is possible with common sense solutions that balance the needs of people with the needs...
By Edward Ring
California’s Energy Economy: Challenges and Opportunities
California’s Energy Economy: Challenges and Opportunities
Last week’s Energy Overview (WC #48) provided links to a few of the most useful and authoritative references available on energy use globally and in California: the Statistical Review of World Energy, Lawrence Livermore Laboratory’s Energy Flow Charts, fuel inputs to California from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and reports on California energy use with...
By Edward Ring
California’s Energy Economy: An Overview
California’s Energy Economy: An Overview
As we complete our first full year of offering information on California’s energy and water policies, it seems appropriate to accept the following challenge: Identify just 20 links to sources that contain the most useful and revealing quantitative facts about energy and water in California, with a brief explanation accompanying each link. To accomplish this, over the...
By Edward Ring
Salmon Restoration Must Address Bass Predators
Salmon Restoration Must Address Bass Predators
As reported in the Fresno Bee earlier this week, “More than 20,000 San Joaquin Valley residents could be left high and dry, literally, by Sacramento politicians intent on using $17.5 million that had paid for water trucked to their homes to help fill California’s gaping two-year $56 billion deficit.” To begin with, there shouldn’t be a...
By Edward Ring
Can an Abundance Agenda Unite Business?
Can an Abundance Agenda Unite Business?
Scarcity and high prices are not an inevitable fact of life in California. They are the result of political choices. For nearly 50 years, and with escalating severity that shows no sign of abating, politicians in California have enacted legislation that is explicitly responsible for unaffordable housing, unreliable and expensive energy, and chronic shortages of...
By Edward Ring
Forest Thinning Adds Millions of Acre-Feet to California’s Water Supply
Forest Thinning Adds Millions of Acre-Feet to California’s Water Supply
Practical solutions to California’s energy and water shortages will always have a better chance of being implemented if they adhere to the limitations placed upon them by the climate lobby. Thankfully there are numerous solutions, strategic in their impact, that would fulfill this criteria. Sadly, however, most of them remain controversial. Examples of climate compliant...
By Edward Ring
The Abundance Mindset
The Abundance Mindset
If energy powers modern civilization, then water gives it life. And in California, for at least the last 20 years, with escalating severity, life has been tough. There isn’t enough water to go around. Water scarcity is not being forced upon Californians by climate change. Like so many other fundamental challenges Californians must endure –...
By Edward Ring