While California continues to enact draconian climate laws and regulations that hinder the state’s economy, Texas has taken the lead in driving clean energy production. New data from energy think tank Ember reveals that after trailing the Golden State for years, Texas is now outpacing California as the nation’s leading producer of power generated from...
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...
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...
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...
With chronic uncertainty over water allocations for farm irrigation, and relentless and escalating regulatory assaults on its oil industry, the biggest economic sectors of Kern County are threatened. The irony is thick. Food and fuel are the prerequisites for civilization – the enabling foundation for California’s entire much broader and often spectacular economy – and...
The regulatory war on oil production in California is well documented. The motivations of California’s state legislature in some cases may be well intentioned, but the regulations coming down right now are designed to destroy the oil industry in the state within a few years. Investment in energy infrastructure, including extracting and refining oil, takes...
When searching for new sources of renewable energy in California, harvesting the waste streams from our cities, farms, and forests is a logical option. But how much waste do these sources produce each year, and how much energy would they provide? Answering this question at a summary level, while retaining some shred of credible and...
After the deluges of 2022-23, and the rainfall season so far this year delivering an above normal snowpack and above normal rain, the drought in California is over. Even the situation on the dry Colorado is much improved, with Lake Powell and Lake Mead collectively at 42 percent of capacity, up from only 32 percent of capacity at...
The California Energy Commission (CEC) has set planning goals for floating offshore wind turbines, calling for between 2 and 5 gigawatts of “nameplate capacity” operating by 2030, and 25 gigawatts by 2045. Note “floating.” Unlike off the East Coast, or the North Sea, deep waters in California lie immediately offshore. So offshore wind in California...
Californians pay some of the highest prices for energy in the United States. Gasoline last year averaged $4.89 per gallon, and diesel fuel $5.07 per gallon, both the highest in the country. Electricity rates had California 45th in the nation in 2023 at $0.27 per kilowatt-hour, the worst of every major state with the sole exception of Massachusetts, which...
State leaders are setting an example that the world—and Golden State residents—can’t afford to follow. Determined to save the world from climate change, California has nearly shut down its oil and gas industry, though the Golden State currently gets 50 percent of its total energy from oil and another 34 percent from gas. The state’s most recent...
California’s central planners are determined to stay ahead of the entire world when it comes to renewable energy and achieving “net zero.” It is an expensive and intrusive experiment, and we’re the lab rats. But that doesn’t mean every renewables innovation is bad. And for the hardened skeptics, we can put it another way: At...