California Mandates 100 Percent Renewable Energy By 2045
Fighting climate change is a laudable goal, says Devin Hartman of the R Street Institute, a free market think tank. Unfortunately, California has picked the most expensive way to do it.
“The top down planning approach to renewable expansion is going to be really expensive, and is going to be a lot more than the per unit costs we have seen to date,” says Hartman. “That is going to happen despite the fact that the per unit costs of producing energy from renewables will continue to go down.”
The problem says Hartman is that energy grids require demand and supply to be balanced instantaneously, something renewables like solar and wind—whose energy production is based on when the sun is shining or the breeze is blowing—have difficulty doing.
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“When other countries are going to look at California and see they’re decarbonizing, but they’re driving out industry, there’s huge political turmoil because their rates are going up so much. That’s not really climate leadership,” says Hartman.
He points to places like Texas which have taken a lighter-touch approach to energy regulation, instead leaving it mostly up to private investors responding to price signals to determine when and where renewable energy investments get made.
The result has been the Lone Star state now gets nearly 20 percent of its power from wind and solar (the vast majority of that being wind) while also seeing its electricity costs decline in real terms.
This, Hartman says, is both more economically sound and ultimately more politically sustainable solution to cutting carbon emissions.
“If we can demonstrate, as the Texas model is, that we can drive pollution reductions in a way that benefits our economic self-interest, that’s a model that the world is more likely to follow. That’s what climate leadership is about.”
