California unions killed the Democrats’ last-minute push to force the state to adopt 100 percent renewable electricity production by 2046, over worries the nation’s highest utility costs are killing jobs.
Governor Jerry Brown and Senate President pro Tem Kevin de León were pushing hard to pass Senate Bill 100 in the final hours of the legislative session. The bill would require 44 percent of all retail electricity sold in the state to come from renewable energy and zero-carbon sources by 2024; 52 percent by 2027; 60 percent by 2030; and then 100 percent by 2046.
The Democrat party-line legislation would have accelerated the requirements of SB 350. That legislation, passed in 2015, requires 50 percent of all retail electricity sold in the state to come from renewable energy and zero-carbon sources by renewables by 2030.
But it appears that the state’s powerful union sector is feeling the heat from its members and employers, angered that energy-rich California now has the “lower 48’s” highest average electric utility rates for residential, commercial, industrial and transportation at 17.55 cents per kilowatt hour. They quietly killed the legislation, which had already passed the State Senate, by making sure it did not come to an Assembly floor vote.
To put a perspective on the current comparative cost burdens that the state’s families and businesses suffered last year, Californians paid 62 percent higher electrical costs than the national average for electricity. But even worse on a regional basis, Californians paid 124 percent more for electricity than residents of Washington State, and 98 percent more than residents of Oregon.
Because energy-rich California used to have electricity costs that were below the 1960 national average of 1.8 cents per kilowatt hour, the state was a large electricity exporter.
But under a government-mismanaged deregulation of utilities in the 1990s, the Democrat-controlled legislature demanded the public utilities commission implement a “Long Term Procurement Process.” Rather than encouraging the building of more efficient power plants, the California regulatory scheme prevented building new efficient power plants by forcing utilities to rely on the unreliable availability and predatory prices for imported electricity.
After California suffered a 2000-era energy crisis, the state forced utilities to comply with a Renewables Portfolio Standard in 2002. The movement to renewables started slowly, but since 2010 about 80 percent of new electrical production has come from highly subsidized renewables, according to the Hass Energy Institute at the UC Berkeley Business School.
Proponents of strong renewable standards claim new purchase contracts for renewable energy are only priced “modestly above those for a new conventional natural gas power plant.” But renewables such as solar and wind have intermittent availability. For evenings and whenever the skies are overcast or the wind is calmed, California utilities must pay to have an equivalent percentage of natural gas electrical generation available to offset 100 percent renewable sources.
Breitbart News reported extensively about Governor Brown’s hopscotching around the world to sign climate change agreements with some of the world’s worst polluters, such as Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and China’s General Secretary of the Communist Party Xi Jinping.
With only 16 months left before he is termed out of running for governor for a second time, Brown is running out of time to drive up California electrical prices.
This article was originally published by Breitbart.com/California
Follow the money trail. All of sudden the unions want money more then they want to kiss Leon, Newsom, Brown, et al what they sit on.
This is all predicated on the idea that CO2 in sunlight heats the atmosphere and it does not! See “CO2 Is Innocent” at https://sciencefrauds.blogspot.com for a short paper with all the equations and math fully explained for those who are not science trained. Copy and take it to a Chemistry teacher or anyone who has had college Chemistry for authentication. The demo costs less than $7 and you get to drink the soda from two 2.5 liter soda bottles. I prove what I say, Adrian Vance
Google “Two Minute Conservative” for more.
Just one of many reasons I’ll be an ex-Kalifornian by year end. I’ve personally given up on my state of residence for 55 years. Kalifornistan will have to collapse before anything positive can or will happen.
Brown, deLeon and Mary Nicholls of CARB should be jailed for running up the cost of electricity in Kaliforniastan on the basis of “green energy”. As Vance says below, CO2 is NOT a pollutant but a necessity for growing food and forests. Why do greenhouses run at 1000PPM CO2? Because thing grow faster! We are in a CO2 shortage right now at 400PPM. WE should be INCREASING CO2 output, not curtailing it. The USN proved that humans (sub-mariners) worked quite well at 8000PPM CO2. And those fools like Brown, Gore, Decaprio and deLeon need to realize that a World that is 2 degrees warmer (not a rarity) is better than 2 degrees colder. And why won’t Brown and deLeon do a cost/benefit study on their “green” nonsense?
California residents are no longer residents, we are surfs. We are hear only to support government.
I never thought that I would ever write this: yay for the unions! Sanity exists. This is good news for all Californians, and I’m hoping that our rising electricity costs (due to these absurd renewal-energy targets) will now be getting more attention from the electorate.
Has anyone noticed that no one ever calculates the raw costs (not the ethereal ‘benefits’) of moving to a 100% renewable energy? If there ever was honest accounting, electric rates would need to double, triple, quadruple, or more to cover the duplication of generating resources, the sad, inadequate state of battery storage technology, the initial capital to construct all the new infrastructure, including a completely rebuilt grid capable of mass, bi-directional exchanges of electricity, the private investment in rooftop solar and community solar projects, plus the various tax credits (Federal and state) funded by ratepayers and taxpayers.
But policy makers trying to jam this stuff down the throats of people around the country do not want to have an honest conversation about cost and affordability of electricity, hence, no one has done this analysis.