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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