Wanna see what summers will be like once the Biden-Harris administration passes the Sanders-AOC Green New Deal? Just look at the blackouts in California.
Yes, it’s been hot in parts of California—just as it is in Texas and several other states this time of year—which is why responsible utility management and political leadership would have been prepared. But it’s hard to be prepared for reality when you’re living in a dream—a dream that we are anywhere close to supplanting fossil fuels with clean energy.
California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, is not happy. “Let me just make this crystal clear: We failed to predict and plan these shortages—and that’s simply unacceptable,” according to Bloomberg News.
“Failed to predict”? California Democrats and environmentalists, megaphoned by the media, are constantly warning the rest of us that climate change will mean hotter summers. So what’s their excuse for being unprepared?
Even so, the governor wants to find someone to blame. Bloomberg says he “called for an investigation into why officials failed to anticipate the need for blackouts.”
The investigation should start with his irresponsible leadership—but you know it won’t.
The problem is that the primary way to mitigate the electricity shortages would have been to have a supply of natural gas ready to fill the gaps. But Newsom and his fellow Democrats and environmentalists wanted to prove to other states, and the world, that a rapid transition to clean and renewable energy sources is possible.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Democrats in the legislature are forcing electric utilities to use more renewable sources—with a goal of making renewables 60 percent of the state’s electricity generation by 2030.
Remember that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal requires 100 percent by 2030, making California an under-dreamer by her standards.
These blackouts are a self-inflicted wound. As Bloomberg points out, “Part of the problem is California’s rapid shift away from natural gas. About 9 gigawatts of gas generation, enough to power 6.8 million homes, have been retired over the past five years as the state turns increasingly to renewables.”
The Wall Street Journal agrees: “Today, California faces very different circumstances after spending much of the past two decades greening its power supply with large-scale wind and solar farms. The state has almost eliminated coal-fired generation and has been reducing its reliance on natural gas in favor of renewables, particularly solar power.”
When an electricity shortage occurs California siphons off fossil-fuel produced electricity from other state grids. But when a heat wave is hitting those other states, they don’t have much electricity to share.
And so thousands of Californians have to do without electricity in August, thanks to their elected leaders.
Keep that in mind as speakers at the virtual Democratic Convention, including AOC, assure us that 100 percent clean energy is within our grasp. Next summer, under Biden-Harris, we could all be suffering rolling blackouts.
August 18, 2020