Achieving California’s goal of net zero by 2045 requires rapidly transitioning away from combustible fuel. It’s a risky strategy. If the transition happens too fast, Californians confront energy shortages and high prices. When it comes to electricity, Newsom has so far managed to avoid an acute crisis by sensibly prolonging that transition. In 2023, he delayed the...
To paraphrase and utterly subvert one of Karl Marx’s best-known quotes, a “spectre” is haunting Silicon Valley—the spectre of authentic abundance. All the powers of woke California have entered into an unholy alliance to exorcise this spectre: public sector unions, the environmentalist lobby, the crony capitalists, Antifa radicals, and Reddit trolls. They’re going to lose....
An opinion piece in the Santa Barbara Independent, published last week, heralded the decision by the Santa Barbara County board of supervisors to phase out oil drilling, which as the authors put it, “will save lives, reduce air pollution, and help meet our climate goals.” Meanwhile, a study about to be publicly released by James Rector,...
For the most part, California’s farmers grow food, not fuel. But the fuel required to operate farm equipment is diesel fuel, increasingly refined from food grown on America’s great plains. Digging into this reveals a rabbit hole of such depth and complexity that I’ll skip to the conclusion before evaluating just a few critical details....
Access to adequate supplies of gasoline and diesel fuel for Californians is in dire peril, and the signing of SB 237 on September 19 will do very little to change that. To rescue the industry, far more sweeping legislation is required. First, to put this in perspective, note that fully 50 percent of California’s raw energy inputs still...
Last month, for the uninitiated, we devoted a newsletter to the topic “Tips to Understand Our Convoluted Yet Obligatory Units of Water.” It attempted to summarize some essential facts and relevant units for anyone who wants to monitor state water policy. Now it’s time for those of us who fancy ourselves members of the energy...
Those of us following water politics and the water industry have become familiar with the most common units of water volume and water flow. Professionals in the industry make constant use of terms, often reduced to acronyms, forgetting that the rest of us may have no idea what they’re talking about. When it comes to...
Silicon Valley veterans view Sacramento’s obsession with renewables mandates with pragmatic detachment. Blessed with disposable income sufficient to make them indifferent to the price of gasoline or electricity, they view life on the bleeding edge as an opportunity for California to lead the world into the electric age. They’re not wrong. Heartless, perhaps. But not...
When we talk about EVs, it is reasonable to suggest that at their current level of price and performance, whoever wants to use one has already made the purchase. After a decade of rapid year-over-year growth, EV sales in California in 2024 were actually a bit lower than they were in 2023. There aren’t enough...
Last week I received an email from a representative of a company planning to build a large scale green hydrogen production facility in California. In reviewing the details announced in this email, which was almost certainly sent to other analysts and journalists, I saw an opportunity to take another look at the challenges facing any...
According to the California Energy Commission, in 2024 daily oil consumption in California averaged not quite 1.4 million barrels per day. Meanwhile, daily refinery capacity in California is just over 1.6 million barrels per day. There is a 16 percent buffer between how much oil we use every day, and how much oil we are capable of refining. That...
It is nearly impossible to read a policy document on the topic of energy or water that won’t make frequent references to carbon. In California, the race to achieve a “carbon neutral” economy by 2045 has spawned a carbon accounting industry that calculates the carbon impact of absolutely everything we do. Certain numbers have become...