Texas has 11,592 turbines and an installed wind capacity of 20,321 megawatts, according to the American Wind Energy Association: three times as much capacity as the next state, Iowa. (California is third.) For the 12-month period ending in October last year, wind provided 12.68% of Texas’s electricity production – equivalent to powering 5.7 million homes.
“At the first meeting of the Trump Leadership Council — an advisory group consisting of top CEOs from major companies — President Donald Trump asked these business leaders what was their biggest problem. I expected the answer to be America’s anti-growth tax system. The CEOs almost all listed the federal tax code as an albatross, but not the heaviest one. But I was surprised to learn that most insisted he biggest restraint on growth is federal red tape and regulation. Manufacturers, energy firms, financial services, agriculture interests — across all industries — federal rules were seen as mindless, inefficient, costly and incomprehensible.”
The change of gear is recent. One car in a hundred sold today is powered by electricity. The proportion of EVs on the world’s roads is still well below 1%. Most forecasters had reckoned that by 2025 that would rise to around 4%. Those estimates are undergoing a big overhaul as carmakers announce huge expansions in their production of EVs. Morgan Stanley, a bank, now says that by 2025 EV sales will hit 7m a year and make up 7% of vehicles on the road. Exane BNP Paribas, another bank, reckons that it could be more like 11% (see chart). But as carmakers plan for ever more battery power, even these figures could quickly seem too low.
“Almost sixty years ago, officials at California’s transportation department unveiled a plan to build a six-mile freeway extension in Los Angeles County. They are still working on it.”
The 13 percent increase in natural gas rates took effect in August, but consumers didn’t feel the pinch until December, when residents turned up their thermostats in the face of a particularly cold and wet season. Electricity rates were raised three times in the past year. Combined, electricity and gas rates for PG&E customers are an average of 21 percent higher than they were a year ago, said utility spokesman Donald Cutler.
Senate Bill 617 enhanced guidance and oversight of agency analysis of major regulations in California. However, based on our review of the analyses of major regulations conducted so far, the analyses still do not consistently follow best practices. These limitations make it difficult to understand trade‑offs associated with different regulatory options and determine which options are most cost‑effective. In addition, certain analytical requirements appear to provide limited value and there is no statewide requirement for agencies to conduct retrospective reviews.
High energy costs then translate into high costs of food and supply since suppliers have to buy electricity and gas, Mayes said. Because of the high costs, companies that offer good-paying marketing jobs don’t want to expand into California. This makes it hard for people with limited education to find high enough wages. “We don’t have the jobs that pay for those who didn’t go to Stanford or UCLA or didn’t go to Berkeley or didn’t get a degree in computer science and life science,” he said.
The Trump order aims to prevent such waste by requiring the agencies to repeal two old rules for every new one they publish. . . the text of the order suggests that for every dollar of new cost imposed on the private economy, each agency will have to find two dollars of burden to relieve. . . many civilized countries use such budgets to manage the regulatory state and stay competitive. Canada requires every rule that creates another hour of paperwork for business compliance to be offset one for one. The United Kingdom and Australia have harder versions that require the costs of new rules to be offset by deregulation of comparable net value.
Upward of 60 restaurants around the Bay Area have closed since the start of September alone, with many citing difficulties like the cost of finding and keeping good employees, rising rents, new requirements for providing health care and sick leave, and doing it all while competing with the slew of new dining options.
Saltsman wrote: “Despite the challenges of doing business in California, Salem (unlike some of his competitors) is still committed to making his products domestically. ‘I’m an American – I want this country to do well, to succeed….’ He told me he’s not opposed to raising wages – but that the entire burden can’t rest on small business owners. ‘I need the government to meet me halfway. In California, unfortunately, that kind of compromise doesn’t exist.’”
Overhauling the environmental law, the California Environmental Quality Act, is a perennial issue at the Capitol, and the measure benefiting the Warriors arena was one of the most high-profile CEQA reforms in recent years. But the failure of the 2011 legislation to meet its stated goals reveals the difficulty lawmakers have had in making meaningful changes to the law.
The California Legislature enacted a dizzying array of new bills last year — with Gov. Jerry Brown signing more than 900 into law. With job growth stagnant and small business optimism unclear here in California, hundreds of new laws and regulations on the books this year present new burdens and risk of non-compliance for businesses across the state.
It would take even more – much more – to make up for lack of construction in the last decade – a dearth that’s driven housing costs to sky-high levels and given us the nation’s highest level of poverty. . . Two new proposals, one imposing a new tax on real estate transactions and another abolishing state income tax deductions for second home mortgage interest, would generate perhaps $600 million a year for affordable housing – enough for around 1,800 units, or just 1 percent of the state’s overall need.
“Two years ago, California Senate leader Kevin de León pushed through a law requiring the state to generate half of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030. On Thursday, he said there was a mistake in the legislation, SB 350 — it didn’t go far enough.”
As the graph shows, the vast majority of plug-in electric vehicle sales in the US have been in California — with Georgia, Washington, New York, Florida, and Texas making up the anemic vanguard.