California: shift to renewable energy

In mid-July, I wrote a post about Sweden and its shift to green energy. Bloomberg had an article up about how Sweden's economic growth could be hurt while it shifted to green energy.

I recently was scanning CalMatters for articles that might address pension issues. Instead of finding any interesting articles on pensions, I instead came across a three part article on energy. The first asked if California could keep the lights on. The second looked into cyber-sabotage and the final looked at how to get to the future.



The first one caught my attention, because I figured it might have a similar discussion around economic growth as the Bloomberg article did. Though there are some comments about potential economic impacts, it wasn't as deep as the Bloomberg article went. Still, it was an interesting read. Here are some highlights:

California’s energy-efficiency regulations have helped reduce statewide energy use, which peaked a decade ago and is on the decline, somewhat easing pressure on the grid. The major utilities are ahead of schedule in meeting their obligation to obtain power from renewable sources. 

Some of the possible advances resemble souped-up science projects: pumping compressed air underground to store for later use, harnessing tidal energy in the San Francisco Bay, collecting the water that flows through hydroelectric dams and, with that middle-of-the-day solar power, pumping it back up to the facility’s turbines. 

It is interesting that energy usage has declined over the decade. And there are some interesting technological advances being considered. Yet, though the article does mention the shift to electric vehicles, it really doesn't dig into the level of energy needed to power those vehicles and if all these innovations would result in the necessary energy required for folks to drive. Articles like this though does help build my understanding of what is going on in this shift to green energy.