Despite being one of the leading promoters of green energy, Gavin Newsom, governor of California, acknowledged that neither solar nor wind power is reliable, especially in summer when heat waves are inevitable.
The Democratic governor has insisted that California will run on "100% clean electricity" by 2045, and therefore is focusing on creating measures to move away from fossil fuels. However, when summer arrives, the situation becomes more complicated, as the citizens of the country's most populated state turn on their air conditioners at the same time and renewable options are in short supply.
To make up for the state's power deficit and avoid blackouts, officials turn on huge diesel generators. But even so, California has faced power outages in recent years, especially during the early evening hours when solar electricity is not plentiful.
"We laid out the markers on solar and wind, but we recognize that’s not going to get us where we need to go," Newsom said during a press conference in which he acknowledged that there is a reliability problem with these types of energies.
Now the governor is looking to get more renewable energy by using the state's purchasing power to convince private companies to build power plants that use heat from subway spaces and winds blowing in from the coast. However, according to reports, these are precisely the types of power that utilities do not buy because they are too expensive and take too long to build.
"Renewable energy is proven to be a failure, both unreliable and expensive, and only free government money and mandates put on the utility companies keep them afloat," Daniel Turner, executive director of the organization Power The Future told the news outlet Just The News.
California's renewable-heavy grid vulnerable to rolling blackouts, Newsom looks to buy extra energy https://t.co/bBEVyEbVqE
— Just the News (@JustTheNews) June 4, 2023
Other states at risk of blackouts
California is not the only state in the country to be affected by green energy inefficiency. In fact, recently the country's main power grid watchdog warned that there is a high risk of electricity shortages in much of the nation during the summer months. All this is due to the drive to eliminate fossil fuels.
"The elevated risk profiles that we're seeing are driven by a combination of conventional generation retirements seen over the last couple of years, a substantial increase in forecasted peak demand and new loads coming — we are electrifying more than we ever had in the past," explained John Moura, director of reliability assessment and performance analysis at NERC (North American Electric Reliability Corporation).
