Earlier this month, California skilled one among its worst warmth waves in historical past. Sacramento reached an all-time excessive temperature of 116 levels, the most popular in almost a century. Thousands and thousands of Californians obtained emergency warnings to cut back their electrical energy utilization to keep away from rolling blackouts that might’ve left entire communities with out energy. This catastrophic warmth wave follows a summer season of historic drought and wildfires throughout the state.
Wildfires, droughts and extreme warmth waves will turn out to be much more frequent as California continues to expertise the results of runaway local weather change. Though the state is taking modest steps to impress our buildings and autos, power demand will rise considerably over the following few years. California policymakers can’t backslide on renewable power lest we threat better publicity to the life-threatening results of the local weather disaster. In an effort to keep away from this looming catastrophe, the state should double down on renewable power whereas taking commonsense, local weather pleasant steps towards grid resiliency.
The drastic improve in excessive local weather occasions we’ve seen over the previous few years has been severely exacerbated by the state’s continued reliance on fossil fuels, particularly oil and gasoline. Almost 40% of California’s whole electrical energy is generated by oil and gasoline. Throughout instances of disaster, equivalent to excessive local weather occasions, California’s power grid should rely even additional on polluting, non-renewable fuels to fulfill the elevated demand from clients.
There are a couple of particular actions California’s Legislature might take to ramp up our funding in renewable power, make our grid extra resilient and reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. Particularly, California’s state finances should make investments closely in zero emission resiliency options equivalent to battery storage and responsibly deliberate pump storage. At one level throughout the newest warmth wave, California’s batteries offered greater than 3,000 megawatts of energy, exceeding the capability of the Diablo Canyon nuclear energy plant.
Moreover, the Legislature ought to move legal guidelines that can permit transmission to be upgraded and constructed shortly with out compromising environmental evaluate. Upgrading transmission can add better capability to the grid and permit for extra renewable assets to return on-line faster to energy California properties, hospitals and colleges.
Gov. Gavin Newsom should additionally use his authority to handle this disaster. The governor ought to promote demand response packages on the Public Utilities Fee, which might financially compensate Californians for lowering their electrical energy use at instances when there may be vital pressure on the grid. He ought to direct his businesses to additional incentivize distributed power assets, residential battery storage and vehicle-to-grid improvements that can flip our electrical automobiles into resiliency measures.
California should take pressing and concrete motion to handle the disastrous state of our power grid. If we proceed to depend on polluting power sources for the state’s energy wants, this September’s warmth wave might look comparatively delicate in a couple of years time. California has a repute as a local weather chief throughout the nation. It’s previous time our power infrastructure displays that.
Brandon Dawson is the California Director of the Sierra Membership.
