California: Where Clean Means Unreliable

California has issued a press release claiming that it can reach its goal of "100 Percent Clean Electricity" by 2045.

Anyone who has read Michael Shellenberger's excellent Apocalypse Never will be nonplussed.

Why?

If by clean, one takes the powers that be there to mean carbon-neutral, such a reader might recall that California could have achieved that goal already:

Between 1976 and 1979, [Governor Jerry] Brown and his allies killed so many nuclear power plants that, had they been built, California would today be generating almost all of its electricity from zero-pollution power plants. (loc. 4283)

Interestingly, the press release does not even contain the word nuclear. The "summary report" it links to does -- but only twice. These are:

California would build more of these if it were serious about (1) producing energy and (2) reducing pollution. (Image by Doc Searls, via Wikimedia Commons, license.)

• "Nuclear, existing power plants only," within the graphic titled "Renewable/Zero-Carbon Technologies Modeled;" and
• Within a caption under "Modeling Results," which shows Existing and Projected New Resources for various power types. The caption reads in relevant part: "New hydro and nuclear resources were not candidate technologies for this round of modeling and could not be selected."

Given that California's only nuclear plant, Diablo Canyon, is scheduled to close around 2024, I think that it's a sure bet that nuclear power, a safe, reliable, carbon dioxide-free technology -- and the only thing remotely ready to assume the duties of fossil fuels -- is off the table. (There is not a peep about it under the closing section, "Recommendations for Further Analysis.")

At this point, it is worth recalling the words of Keith Lockitch of the Ayn Rand Institute, who said of environmentalists:

It is only on the premise that the environmentalist movement is truly driven by a concern for human well-being that its vehement attacks on carbon-based fuels (without which human life as we know it in the developed world would be impossible), its cavalier lack of any alternative plan, and its active opposition to proposed alternatives (whether real ones like nuclear or hydro, or fantasized ones like solar), make no sense.

While California's new energy policy does (at least for now) allow for fantasy alternatives, it is truly a reckless plan, if concern for human well-being is the measure. And if not that, the people there should start asking what their government really is concerned about.

Even according to the stated goal of reducing emissions, the fact that California has shut down all but one of its nuclear plants and apparently won't even consider that option shows that officials there are not serious -- even about what they claim to be after. As energy advocate Alex Esptein puts it plainly in reply to the question What is the biggest obstacle to low-carbon energy? "The green movement, including most of the anti-fossil fuel movement, which opposes reliable nuclear and hydro while insisting on unreliable solar and wind."

-- CAV

P.S. The full report notes that California "effectively has a moratorium on new in-state nuclear power." While concerns over safety and costs are cited as the reasons for not discussing nuclear power, Californians would do well to reconsider the first, and look into the causes of the second. A good place to start would be the podcast, "Steps Toward Decriminalizing Nuclear."