California lawmakers are considering a groundbreaking new energy goal: getting 100 percent of the state’s electricity from clean sources like solar and wind — in less than 30 years.
For a state of California’s size, it’s an ambitious reach. California is second only to Texas in its energy appetite.
As debate over the measure wore on in Sacramento this summer, another debate raged over the benefits and risks of going completely green, one that could shape California’s future as well as other states.
On one side: Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University.
“We absolutely do not need natural gas or coal,” says Jacobson. “The costs of solar are so low. The costs of wind are very low.”
To know where Jacobson is coming from, you only have to glimpse the license plates on his two electric cars.
“One is GHGFREE: greenhouse gas free,” he says, inside the garage of his Palo Alto home. “And the other is WWSERA ,which means wind-water-solar era.”
Jacobson has authored study after study on a 100 percent renewable future, including one focusing on California. His work informed state lawmakers, when, earlier this year, they introduced SB 100, a bill that would set a goal of going all-renewable by 2045.
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