Can California Move Fast Without Breaking Things?
Energy Gang9 Apr 2021

Can California Move Fast Without Breaking Things?

California is the proving ground for every major change that President Biden wants to accelerate nationally: 100% carbon-free electricity, fossil fuel phaseouts, climate-resilient grid hardening.

The state wants to make 100% of retail electricity sales carbon-free by 2045. To that, it’ll need to match its best year ever for renewable energy installations -- for 25 years more years in a row. It’ll amount to $4.5 billion in yearly spending.

California is moving fast. Is there such a thing as too fast?

This week, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer Sammy Roth joins us to talk about California’s fast, sometimes-messy, and still-evolving energy transition.

Plus, tensions over public lands. It’s going to take a lot of investment, difficult choices, and grit to hit California’s zero-carbon goals. It’s also going to take a lot of land.

That’s putting the Biden team in a dilemma: how to balance a historic build-out of wind and solar farms with protection of public lands?

Plus, we look at the details of Biden’s “once in a generation” plan to reconstruct the economy one seawall, EV charging station, and transmission project at a time.

Resources:

  • Sammy Roth’s “Boiling Point” newsletter
  • Sammy’s article on the collision over renewables on public lands
  • Sammy’s article on California’s pathway forward to 100% clean power
  • E&E News: How Biden’s $2T infrastructure plan would overhaul the grid
  • NYT: Biden’s $2T plan to reshape the economy


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