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California currently imports about 33 percent of its electricity from outside of the state. Of that 33 percent, 6 percent is from coal. This is compared to the 25 percent of energy imported into California in 2010 from outside states and it’s clear California is headed in the wrong direction. California will need to flip the trend in energy importing and begin to produce enough energy to become self-sustaining. Not an insignificant task.

California is also the third largest oil and gas producing state, despite what Californians may tell you. California produced on average 500,000 barrels of oil per day in 2014, third to Texas and North Dakota. This means several things. One, that California will need to eliminate its oil production in the state by 2045, leaving behind accessible and profitable hydrocarbons in the ground. Secondly, the rest of the United States will no longer have its third largest oil producing state, meaning potentially higher gas prices at the pump around the nation. This could be minimal if a reduction in oil production is gradual, but it will certainly have an impact.

The oil and gas industry supports approximately 456,000 jobs in California, many of which will be eliminated if the state transitions to 100 percent renewable energy. This equals $38 billion in Californian’s pockets from well-paying oil and gas jobs and accounts for 3.4 percent of the states GDP. In addition, California receives a kick back for all oil produced in the state, equaling $21 billion in revenue. These numbers ignore the positive impact of a burgeoning renewable energy sector and the jobs, GDP, and tax revenue it will generate. However, throughout such a significant change in a large state’s energy system, there will be an interim period where there are likely to be negative economic consequences.

While Germany has succeeded in increasing the share of wind and solar in German electricity production to over 30 percent, the average German household spent 50 percent more on electricity in 2016 than 2007. German firms open new manufacturing facilities not in Germany, but in Slovakia and other countries with much cheaper electricity. Even with all this, German carbon dioxide emissions grew in 2015 and 2016, while those in the U.S. fell by an average of two percent per year.

Republicans were not just casually supporting this bill. After countless negotiations with the governor, industry groups, taxpayer associations and community groups, Republicans have finally attained an equal seat at the legislative table. To echo the California Manufacturers Association, the California Chamber of Commerce, and countless other groups that share the common interest of the taxpayer, a free-market based cap and trade program is much better than a costly “command and control” alternative.

A transition from fossil fuels to mitigate the impacts of climate change will require large amounts of metals and rare earth elements that could create environmental challenges, the World Bank has warned. Technologies needed to meet the Paris climate agreement from wind, solar, and electricity systems are “more material-intensive” than our current fossil-fuel supply systems, a report by the bank said. The mining or extraction of metals and rare earth elements could create environmental problems in terms of energy, water and land use, the report said.

California is poised for a swift transformation of its electricity landscape — and that could bring tumult if preparations aren’t made soon to maintain quality and avoid reliability problems like rolling blackouts, the state’s leading energy regulator is warning. After decades of dominance by investor-owned utilities, electricity markets in the state are becoming more competitive. Ratepayers today have a growing number of choices for powering their lights, laptops and electric cars — from installing rooftop solar panels and consumer-scale batteries to joining increasingly popular government-run electricity programs known as community choice aggregation, or CCA. Currently, investor-owned utilities such as San Diego Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric together buy and sell more than 75 percent of the state’s electricity. Their collective share could plunge to 10 percent within the next five years, with CCA programs causing most of the change, according to the state’s most aggressive forecast. More conservative estimates still show major shifts away from the utilities.

Wall Street investors have gone cold on one of the main mechanisms banks invented to fund the green-energy revolution. The business structure, known as the yieldco, feeds dividends from operating solar and wind farms to investors. Yieldcos raised $7.9 billion in public equity in 2014 and 2015 but only $1 billion since then, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. The shift is further fallout from the collapse of yieldco promoter SunEdison Inc. and has changed the way clean-energy developers finance themselves. In years past, they started yieldcos to buy projects once they were operating, recycling the capital into new installations. Now, they’re turning to a large and deepening pool of buyers — insurance companies and pension funds — to provide funding and sometimes take control of income-producing assets.

Europe has a long history of playing fast and loose with its emission numbers, especially when it comes to carbon captured by forests. The EU considers burning biomass (read: wood chips) to be carbon neutral, under the logic that if felled forests are replanted, there’s “no harm, no foul” in the long run. That’s a problematic assumption, though, for a long list of reasons. For one, the mere acts of cutting down trees, transporting them, and then processing them into wood pellets all produce emissions. For another, oftentimes the trees that are cut down aren’t replanted, and those purchasing this “green” biomass often don’t do their due diligence to ensure they’re sourcing their wood from responsible foresters.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who campaigned four years ago as someone who would stand up for Department of Water and Power ratepayers, is pushing a proposal to give six raises within five years to more than 9,000 workers at the utility.

The salary agreement, backed Tuesday by Garcetti’s appointees on the DWP board, would provide raises of least 13.2% and as much as 22.3% by October 2021, depending on inflation. Beyond that, the pact would deliver a 4% boost over two years to the base pay of hundreds of DWP electrical distribution mechanics, also known as linemen.

California energy regulators say the state could benefit from sharing more electricity with its neighbors during heat waves such as this week’s, but a proposal to do so has stalled after the election of President Trump. . . . “We will reduce costs for everybody. We will reduce pollution. We will improve system reliability, and these are all reasons to do this,” says Cavanagh. Last August, Gov. Jerry Brown wrote to leadership in the Legislature that he would look to pass a proposal earlier this year. “I have directed my staff, the Energy Commission, the Public Utilities Commission and the California Air Resources Board to continue working with the Legislature,” Brown wrote. “The goal is to develop a strong proposal that the Legislature can consider in January.” That still hasn’t happened, although the governor has maintained he still supports regionalization.

Decommissioning nuclear plants in Europe and North America from 2020 threatens global plans to cut carbon emissions unless governments build new nuclear plants or expand the use of renewables, a top International Energy Agency official said. Nuclear is now the largest low-carbon power source in Europe and the United States, about three times bigger than wind and solar combined, according to IEA data. But most reactors were built in the 1970s and early 80s, and will reach the end of their life around 2020. With the average nuclear plant running for 8,000 hours a year versus 1,500-2,000 hours for a solar plant, governments must expand renewable investments to replace old nuclear plants if they are to meet decarbonization targets, IEA Chief Economist Laszlo Varro told Reuters.

In November last year, the European Commission’s Clean Energy Package proposed a 30 percent energy efficiency target for 2030. . . This was, as it turns out, wishful thinking, at least in this Council. Several Member States are pushing for even weaker targets. A vote on this is expected for next Monday. In particular, proposals are being prepared to water down the provisions in Article 7 of the Energy Efficiency Directive (EED), which delivers about half of the entire savings of the Directive and is a key driver for energy efficiency in Europe.

. . . If accepted, these proposals will reduce the current ambition levels by more than 80 percent and perhaps as much as 100 percent depending on the amount of excess savings and how Member States apply these proposed terms. 

How much does it really cost Californians to use renewable energy, and who’s going to pay for it? That’s the question raised by Southern California Edison’s proposed rate hike of nearly 13 percent.

The list of people who are upset about the increase includes the members of the International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 12. “SCE’s habit of raising rates on its ratepayers indiscriminately has to stop,” wrote union official Ronald J. Sikorski in a letter to the California Public Utilities Commission. “Working families can’t afford it and neither can seniors on fixed incomes.”

But Edison says the money is needed to upgrade its infrastructure to handle the many demands of California policies, like mandates for 50 percent renewable power by 2030, and a goal of 1.5 million plug-in electric vehicles on the road by 2025 (up from about 285,000 now).

But that electricity trend has changed recently. American households use less electricity than they did five years ago. The figure below plots U.S. residential electricity consumption per capita 1990-2015. Consumption dipped significantly in 2012 and has remained flat, even as the economy has improved considerably.

So what is different? Energy-efficient lighting. Over 450 million LEDs have been installed to date in the United States, up from less than half a million in 2009, and nearly 70% of Americans have purchased at least one LED bulb. Compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) are even more common, with 70%+ of households owning some CFLs. All told, energy-efficient lighting now accounts for 80% of all U.S. lighting sales.

E10 fuel (90% gasoline/10% ethanol) has a source energy, which is reduced due to extraction, processing and transport, to become the primary energy fed to E10 vehicles. As a result, the energy fed to the tank has to be multiplied by 1.2639 to obtain source energy.

Electrical energy has a source energy, which is reduced due to extraction, processing and transport, to become the primary energy fed to power plants, which convert that energy into electricity, which after various losses, arrives at use meters. As a result, the energy fed to the meter has to be multiplied by 2.995 to obtain source energy.

The below “40 mpg, EPA combined” table shows, high-mileage E10 vehicles, including hybrids, such as the 52 mpg Toyota Prius, have greater energy efficiency than EVs, and only slightly greater CO2 emissions than EVs. It would be much less costly and quicker to significantly increase the US hybrid fleet, than to build out the EV fleet, which is still in its infancy, and would require major, expensive changes to supporting infrastructures.

To start, despite a huge workforce of almost 400,000 solar workers (about 20 percent of electric power payrolls in 2016), that sector produced an insignificant share, less than 1 percent, of the electric power generated in the United States last year (EIA data here). And that’s a lot of solar workers: about the same as the combined number of employees working at Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Apple, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, Pfizer, Ford Motor Company and Procter & Gamble.