California Governor Says 100 Percent Clean Electricity Not Enough, State Must Go Carbon Neutral (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Monday, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill mandating that the state's utilities move to 100-percent zero-emission electricity generation by 2045. Brown also issued an executive order today requiring the state to become carbon neutral by 2045, that is, mandating that the state remove as much greenhouse gas from the atmosphere as it puts into the atmosphere. One of the most interesting aspects of the zero-emissions bill signed today is that it also specifies that California can't increase the carbon emissions of another state to get cheap electricity. It appears that buying electricity from a coal plant in Nevada is fine if that electricity had been supplied prior to the bill's passing, but seeking out new out-of-state natural gas-fired plants to buy from would not be allowed. The bill's ambitiousness is compounded by the executive order that Gov. Brown signed today. The order requires California to become carbon neutral by 2045. "The achievement of carbon neutrality will require both significant reductions in carbon pollution and removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, including sequestration in forests, soils, and other natural landscapes," Brown's executive order states (PDF).

Comments

Re:Carbon neutral not enough

[GameboyRMH]

More seriously, carbon neutral is not enough and the state must go carbon negative. Everywhere will.

Re:Carbon neutral not enough

[K. S. Kyosuke]

State must go Paleo.

Perhaps, but Silicon Valley is more likely to go Neo.

Re:You first, Jerry...

[JackieBrown]

It's planned for long after he is out of office. This is one of those glory grabbing bills

Imports should count against carbon neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

If they don't balance their state's carbon neutrality against what they import, then it's a shell game. Let someone else have the burden of using massive amounts of carbon to create their "neutral" infrastructure.

Nuclear power plants.

[b0s0z0ku]

Time to build more nuclear power plants, re-open San Onofre, and extend the life of Diablo Canyon. Nuclear energy is both clean and reliable, especially when combined with renewables.

Re:Nuclear power plants.

[Crashmarik]

Time to build more nuclear power plants, re-open San Onofre, and extend the life of Diablo Canyon. Nuclear energy is both clean and reliable, especially when combined with renewables.

You are correct on the logic and facts unfortunately for the people of California you are wrong about what is actually driving this. This isn't about clean power, lets face it Nuclear doesn't need renewables at all it's cheap especially when we are talking about existing installations that just need to be maintained and fueled. It also doesn't have the disadvantage of creating rolling blackouts.

What nuclear doesn't do, is put money in the pockets of people backing California politicians and because it has been smeared, it would actually mean they would need to take a stand and fight for the benefit of the people of the state.

Do you really see any CA politician fighting for the benefit of their constituents instead of just trying to pit them against each other while robbing them ?

Re:Nuclear power plants.

[jwhyche]

Nuclear looks good

Then nuclear looks great when you stop letting smelly hippies use fear mongering to dictate policy. I just watched a documentary on the future of nuclear power. Research is starting to pick up on small design reactors, molten salt cooled reactors, and melt down proof reactors. Reactors that don't use water to cool them down. Reactors that use the laws of physics to stop a melt down before it even starts. Designs for self correcting reactors.

We would have had these designs in place and running 15 years ago if research hadn't ground to a halt thanks to hippie protesters. If the research could have continued Fukushima would never have happened. So thank you smelly hippie. Fukushima is another one you caused.

Re:Nuclear power plants.

[drinkypoo]

Research is starting to pick up on small design reactors, molten salt cooled reactors, and melt down proof reactors.

These have been promised literally my whole lifetime, yet still nobody has come up with a good design for one. If you think molten salt is a good idea, just imagine what happens when that system fails. And it will, because of corrosion. (That link is pro-nuclear, yet even it states that alloys have only been "relatively effective" at reducing this corrosion.) And small reactors are economically inefficient because there are both scalable costs and fixed costs.

We use water as a coolant for basically everything for many, many reasons. And fission is a bad idea for many, many reasons as well. We already have a fission reactor to make use of, and you can gather energy from it with extremely simple devices. They are called solar panels, and unlike nuclear reactors, you can deploy them anywhere without causing hazards for anyone but the installers. And if you install them in intelligent locations, they don't even do much of that.

The latest 5 year plan from the Cali politburo

[schwit1]

You have a state that is headed for fiscal bankruptcy, the cost of living is so high the middle class is leaving in droves and you have one of the worst K-12 education systems in the nation.

The bottom line is that California is on a path to duplicate the failures of Venezuela and they are working on energy emission plans for 2045.

Re:The latest 5 year plan from the Cali politburo

[frank_adrian314159]

You know, conservatives have been saying stuff like this since the 1970's. California still seems to keep ticking along,though.

Re:The latest 5 year plan from the Cali politburo

[b0s0z0ku]

Tax hikes on the rich are a good thing. Bring 'em on - not like the rich are leaving CA's nice climate any time soon.

K-12 is about middle of the road.

Sales/income tax are proportional to income and spending. State income tax isn't a big deal at middle income levels. Sales tax exempts food and clothing (necessities). Just buy more stuff like computers and furniture used, for cash, on Craigslist. Amazing how well you can live on others' leftovers.

Cars? Get an Insight Hybrid. Nice midsize sedan, well north of 50 mpg, not covered by the "zero emission" tax. What more do most people need.

Re: Actually, it takes 100% lossless cycles!

[c6gunner]

I don't want to live forever with a fixed set of resources. I want to live a reasonably long time with an ever growing pool of resources.

Very cynical

[aepervius]

With such cynical thought, nobody need to try to do any long term planning because it is automagically "glory grabbing bills".

Re:Very cynical

[CrimsonAvenger]

With such cynical thought, nobody need to try to do any long term planning because it is automagically "glory grabbing bills".

Not necessarily, but probably.

If the Bill required that something specific be done NOW, as well as into the next three decades, then it would (or at least could) be fine.

That said, a new law automagically supersedes an older law. So, a Bill NOW that requires nothing be done for ten years is a Bill that has ten chances of being erased before anything in the Bill affects anything other than the CA's legislature....

Note that the Bill in question is more the latter than the former. It doesn't seem to require that anyone in CA do ANYTHING for a long time. Which means it's just grandstanding to look good come the next election....

Re:Very cynical

[apoc.famine]

If the Bill required that something specific be done NOW, as well as into the next three decades, then it would (or at least could) be fine.

Which it does. What does it require to be done now?

Fucking planning.

Do you honestly think that the utilities in CA can flip a switch and all of their fossil fuel plants will magically turn into solar plants with battery or molten salt storage? This is a huge project. One of the bigger ones that CA has ever engaged in.

Of course it doesn't require anyone to do anything for a bit. It's going to take a few years to even figure out what to do, let alone how to do it.

Re:Very cynical

[blindseer]

Which it does. What does it require to be done now?

Fucking planning.

Then write a law that requires the utilities in the state to produce those plans. Perhaps require plans be submitted to the governor, or whatever executive agency that might be appropriate, and have some means to hold the utilities to those plans. Punishing the utilities with fines for not meeting goals is likely to simply provide them an excuse for not meeting future plans, they simply say they couldn't do it because of a lack of funds. So creating this will not be easy.

This is a law with no requirement to produce those plans. There's no enforcement of the goal. At least none that I could see. I can set a personal goal of eliminating the CO2 output of the state of California by 2045. That means about as much as this promise from the governor. Given that he's likely to be out of office by then, and given his age likely dead, this means nothing.

I'll repeat that, this means nothing.

This is nothing more than a goal for which some future governor and future members of the legislature will have to put into motion. The people in government today did nothing, made no promise to do anything themselves towards this goal. It's just a request to their replacements in the the government to meet some arbitrary goal. They are under no obligation to respond to this request and even if the law had some kind of enforcement mechanism then the next people in office can simply negate it.

This isn't a plan, and does not even require a plan be produced. They made some happy mouth noises to make people in the state feel better about themselves. Or rather, those that don't bother to think this through can feel better about themselves. The people with the intellectual and emotional maturity to actually realize what this means will simply roll their eyes and move on. Nothing has changed and the California government did nothing of any value.

This is a fine example of how government works today. They waste time on this bullshit so they can pretend they are important. If they took their jobs seriously then this law would never have even been proposed. This is an ineffective law from ineffective people.

Re:Carbon neutral not enough

[werepants]

We choose to shit out more carbon than we use. We choose to shit out more carbon than we use in this decade and do the other things, not because these shits will be hard, but because these shits will be easy, because laying turds will not require our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are not willing to accept, one we are willing to postpone, and one which we intend to leave for someone else to deal with, and the others, too.

FTFY... we shit out the carbon because it is easy. Not shitting it out is the hard part.

Re: Carbon neutral not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that you consider legislating the value of Pi to be equally as stupid as legislating a reduction in pollution is just.. I have no words to express how truly mind boggling that is.

Double bullshit

[blindseer]

I call this a case of double bullshit.

First, the governor is making a plan so far in the future that he will not be responsible for making it happen. No politician can make such a promise because their actions cannot dictate the actions of a future executive or legislature. A goal in 2045 is, by my math, 27 years in the future. Unless he plans on staying in office that long I don't believe him in having any intention to attain this goal. On top of that the guy is 80 years old, so even if he thought he could stay in office for 25+ years then he must also have a plan to live well beyond his 100th birthday.

Had he made an energy plan for the remainder of his term, or even to the end of being re-elected on more time, then I'd take him seriously.

Second, he's shutting down all the nuclear power plants. No other energy source we know of has a lower CO2 output per energy produced than nuclear power. By shutting down the last of the nuclear power plants, and having no plans to build more, makes this plan of 100% carbon neutral power a load of bullshit. If he was serious about this plan then he'd include in the plan nuclear power, as unpopular as it might be to do so. Saying he'll do everything in his power to lower CO2 but use nuclear power tells me that he sees nuclear power a greater threat to the state, nation, human species, or whatever, than nuclear power.

If nuclear power is a greater threat than CO2 then I have to wonder just how much of a threat CO2 is to anyone. Someone explain this to me. How much of a threat is CO2? How much of a threat is nuclear power? How can nuclear power be a greater threat? If we can't have nuclear power to solve the problem of our CO2 emissions then why should I take any threat of global warming from CO2 seriously?

This is bullshit for a politician to make any promise of government action beyond the end of their term. This is bullshit to make any plan of lowered CO2 from energy production that does not include nuclear power. This is double bullshit to make both promises at the same time.

Re: Carbon neutral not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

Words express it perfectly, there's even a children's book about an Emperor who tries to command the tide to stop coming in.

The point is that California has a habit of trying to Legislate fantasy into reality.

Won't happen

[sjbe]

Time to build more nuclear power plants, re-open San Onofre, and extend the life of Diablo Canyon.

Got any other fantasies since that one isn't going to come to pass? Nuke plants aren't going to get built in the US any time soon so get over it. That's just the political reality of them.

Nuclear energy is both clean and reliable, especially when combined with renewables.

Nuclear energy is only clean in the sense that it doesn't produce significant carbon and particulate pollution. But it still generates substantial amounts of rather nasty waste products for which we have no proper means of disposal. Saying nuclear is cleaner than fossil fuels is the very definition of damning with faint praise. I actually agree that I'd rather we use nuclear than fossil fuels but I'm not about to get ridiculous and claim it is clean.