While rational energy policies are being followed elsewhere, even in regions that had loudly and proudly gone “green,” California can’t kick its net-zero obsession. Or maybe the right word is “won’t,” because the state refuses to deviate from its reckless plans.
Europe, which is grinding through the pain of “The Fall of the Holy Renewable Empire,” has reached a point of enlightenment. It “now has the political will to develop nuclear power infrastructure after years of favoring renewable energy investments, government and industry officials” said during an industry conference last month in Brussels, according to S&P Global.
Reuters reports that “major European energy companies” have “doubled down on oil and gas in 2024.” The plan is “to focus on near-term profits, slowing down – and at times reversing – climate commitments in a shift that they are likely to stick with in 2025.”
“The retrenchment by oil majors,” Reuters adds, “comes after governments around the world slowed the rollout of clean energy policies and delayed targets as energy costs soared following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.”
Blaming the Russia-Ukraine war is a convenient way for those “governments around the world” to back off a technology that isn’t ready to deliver energy as promised. It’s also wrong. The cost of fossil fuels actually spiked after the invasion, which should have been a signal that it was time to “double down” on wind and solar energy.
But both are unreliable sources, a fact that their advocates are reluctant to admit out loud.
If California lawmakers had been in the mood to take a taxpayer-funded holiday “fact finding” junket that would actually help, they should have gone to Puerto Rico, where the flip of a light switch is an exercise in hope. There was no power for 1.3 million, more than one-third of the island’s population, on New Year’s Eve. There they would have seen the future of California, which has the highest residential and commercial electricity rates in the country with the single exception of Hawaii, if it doesn’t accept the mistakes it’s been making and changes course.
Rather than complain that consumers are expecting too much – trusting that power will be there when it is needed should not be the same as an asking for a miracle – Puerto Rico’s new governor, Jenniffer Gonzalez, has proposed a practical solution for the territory that has handicapped itself with a law that requires 100% of its energy production to come from renewable sources by 2050.
Sworn in on the second day of 2025, Gonzalez wants the U.S. commonwealth to break away from “some of its clean energy targets in favor of using more liquefied natural gas,” Bloomberg reports. Unlike her Jennifer G. counterpart in the U.S. – the Energy secretary who is blindly committed to renewables – Gonzalez believes “we should diversify our energy basket,” because Puerto Rico “cannot continue to lose companies because of lack of energy.” No company can work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, she says, “in different shifts with just solar energy.”
There’s no such wisdom among California’s ruling class. It still plans to ban natural gas appliances and new automobiles that burn gasoline, and to overall cut greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero by 2045, even though, says environmental attorney and Breakthrough Institute senior fellow Jennifer Hernandez, state “leaders are increasingly comfortable acknowledging that the state’s climate policies will harm the poor and benefit the wealthy.”
Those policies include “certain” climate initiatives that “add costs that disproportionately burden lower-income people,” according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office. The state cap-and-trade program, for instance, inflates the price of every gallon of retail gasoline by about 27 cents “because gasoline manufacturers choose to pass their compliance costs on to consumers,” while programs promoting solar adoption raise costs for ratepayers who don’t have solar, which tend to be those in the lower-income brackets.
Give California credit, though, for extending the lives of a few natural gas generating plants, as well as that of the Diablo Canyon nuclear station in San Luis Obispo County.
Doing so was a tacit acknowledgement that officials are going too hard and too fast in their pursuit of energy sources that don’t emit carbon dioxide. Yet they aren’t moving their eyes off the target that is now just 20 years away. If they’d only take a moment and refocus on Europe – or even Puerto Rico – they could avoid the fast-approaching headaches.
