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Two years ago, Gov. Jerry Brown signed an ambitious law ordering California utility companies to get 50 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2030.

It looks like they may hit that goal a decade ahead of schedule.

An annual report issued Monday by California regulators found that the state’s three big, investor-owned utilities — Pacific Gas and Electric Co., Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric Co. — are collectively on track to reach the 50 percent milestone by 2020, although individual companies could exceed the mark or fall just short of it.

Bitcoin’s incredible price run to break over $7,000 this year has sent its overall electricity consumption soaring, as people worldwide bring more energy-hungry computers online to mine the digital currency.

California drivers normally catch a bit of a break this time of year when gas stations switch over to winter blends, which usually run about 12 cents a gallon less than summer-blended fuel.

But this year, the switch will coincide with the rollout of a state law to increase the price of gasoline by 12 cents a gallon.

In essence, the hike in the gas tax will nullify the reduction in price associated with the transition to winter fuel.

It takes a lot of juice to grow pot indoors, so Sacramento’s major electric utility is gearing up for the heavy demands of recreational marijuana growers come January.

That’s when growing cannabis for non-medical purposes becomes legal in California, though cities and counties retain some control.

Sacramento city officials have moved quickly to welcome the new industry by accepting dozens of applications and issuing permits for pot farms in warehouses citywide.

The Sacramento Municipal Utility District is getting ready, too, by doing research it hopes will conserve energy and reduce the load on aging infrastructure. SMUD researchers are testing LED lighting and air-conditioning systems in cooperation with the city’s current crop of legal, medical pot producers.

ven now, after Scott Pruitt’s EPA move to unravel President Obama’s marquee domestic green initiative, the Clean Power Plan, American energy-related emissions are projected to drop in 2017, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA). So what’s at work here? If the Trump Administration is so skeptical of climate policy, why aren’t the projections matching the doomsday rhetoric? In large part, what’s happened to U.S. emissions since their recent peak in 2007 has occurred despite—not because—of federal policy.

The Clean Power Plan was never put into place, as it was still working its way through legal challenges before Pruitt announced his intention to dismantle it. Therefore, we can’t give President Obama’s green aspirations credit for this recent drop in emissions.

Instead, the drop occurred due to market forces, specifically the displacement of coal-fired power generation by cheap, plentiful natural gas provided by the shale boom. Fracking’s flourishing has made our dirtiest form of electricity production less economical, and because natural gas plants emits half as much carbon as their coal counterparts, this shift has also made our energy mix more climate friendly.

San Diego Gas & Electric filed a request with state regulators late Friday afternoon, asking for an 11 percent rate increase in 2019 and running through 2022.

The utility estimates a typical residential customer using 500 kilowatt-hours of electricity each month would see an increase of $6.13 and a typical customer using 25 therms of natural gas would spend $7.57 more on a monthly bill.

If granted in full, the proposal represents a $218 million increase over 2018 rates.

A California Energy Commission committee is urging the state to reject a proposal to build a new natural gas plant in Ventura County.

Called the Puente Energy project, the 262-megawatt power plant would be owned and operated by NRG, a Houston-based electricity company. NRG contracted with Southern California Edison to supply power to the utility.

In what the regulators themselves called an “unusual” statement, the two-member committee said that the proposed plant, set for construction on Mandalay Bay in Oxnard, conflicted with state laws and goals for communities and the environment.

A bungled transition from coal to clean energy has left resource-rich Australia with an unwanted crown: the highest power prices in the world.

New Yorkers pay half as much as Sydneysiders to keep the lights on, despite Australia boasting among the world’s largest coal and natural gas reserves, as well as ideal conditions for clean power generation. A decade of political dithering and climate policy missteps have set its patchwork power system adrift, ratcheting up manufacturing costs and hurting consumers with a doubling in electricity prices since last year and rising risks of blackouts.

Energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions decreased by 89 million metric tons (MMmt), from 5,259 MMmt in 2015 to 5,170 MMmt in 2016. Although real gross domestic product (GDP) increased 1.5% over that period, other factors contributing to energy-related CO2 emissions more than offset the growth in GDP, leading to a 1.7% decline in energy-related CO2. These factors include the following: •A decline in the carbon intensity of the energy supply (CO2/British thermal units [Btu]) of 1.7%

•A 1.4% decline in energy intensity (Btu/GDP)

Combining these two factors, the overall carbon intensity of the economy (CO2/GDP) declined by 3.1%. Emissions have declined in 6 out of the past 10 years, and energy‐related CO2 emissions in 2016 were 823 MMmt (14%) below 2005 levels.

Germany will miss a European Union renewable energy target by a wider margin than previously predicted, a study showed on Wednesday.

The BEE renewable energy association’s analysis found that energy from green sources would account for 16 percent of German power consumption by 2020, short of an EU target of 18 percent for Germany.

Caldeira says studies show reaching 80 percent renewable energy is well within reach. Even hitting 100 percent is technically possible. “We could do it,” he says. “It would just be very expensive.”

Expenditures for delivered energy in the United States in 2015 totaled $1.127 trillion, a 20% decrease in real terms from 2014, according to recently released data from EIA’s State Energy Data System. Adjusted for inflation, total energy expenditures in 2015 were the lowest since 2004. Total energy expenditures, expressed as a percent of the United States gross domestic product, were 6.2% in 2015, the lowest since 2002.

Nuclear plants in New York will continue to receive payments collected from all in-state load serving entities (LSE) in recognition of their clean energy contributions. Those payments, which might be as high as $8 billion over a ten year period, may also be as low as zero during years in which the average wholesale price of electricity rises to a level at which selling power becomes profitable for the qualifying plants. In a decision filed July 25, Judge Valerie Caproni dismissed the motions filed by various electrical generators and trade groups of electrical generators that challenged the constitutionality of the New York Public Service Commission’s decision to create a Zero Emission Credit program.

There’s a limit on how much renewables will be able to do, going forward. Wind and solar are intermittent by nature, and can’t be relied upon to replace more consistent energy sources like nuclear power or coal en masse. Germany’s reactors would have made a nice foundation on which to build this renewables revolution, but Merkel’s mind seems made up. But however hard she tries to position herself as the virtuous green, the fact remains that German emissions rose last year, while America’s fell three percent (thanks to cheap, abundant shale gas displacing coal). Words matter, but so do numbers, and the data tells us that lately—whatever Trump is trumpeting—the United States is doing more to combat climate change than Germany.

A new analysis by the National Center for Public Policy Research found that Gore’s Tennessee home “guzzles more electricity in one year than the average American family uses in 21 years.” In one month last year, the report found, Gore’s home consumed more electricity than the average family uses in 34 months. The electricity used just to heat Gore’s swimming pool would power six homes for a year. And this is after Gore spent tens of thousands of dollars installing “green” upgrades, which he was embarrassed into doing when his energy-hogging home first came to light a decade ago. In fact, according to the NCPPR report, Gore’s home used more electricity last year than it did in 2007, before he installed all those energy-reducing features.