Renewable Energy

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California Continues to Push Renewables Despite Energy Storage Problem

Gov. Gavin Newsom deserves credit for recognizing that California’s irrational leap toward a fully renewable electricity grid by 2045 was moving far too fast. At the same time, he deserves criticism for continuing to aggressively push the transition. Newsom has recently backed delays in retiring four natural gas plants as ...
Blackouts

CAPITAL IDEAS: When June Gloom Lasts All Year

DOWNLOAD THE BRIEF The overcast days of June Gloom, a month of cloud and fog cover along the usually sunny Southern California coastal regions, can be a bit depressing. It’s a natural phenomenon that can’t be controlled. The same can’t be said about the man-made darkness ahead that will affect ...
Blackouts

Energy Shortfalls In California? Who Would Have Ever Thought That?

Policymakers continue running along the diving board over an empty pool, determined to turn California green by outlawing any electricity-generating source that isn’t wind and solar. It’s not that they don’t know better. They do. Yet they refuse to deviate from their agenda. Last year, the California Public Utilities Commission ...
Blackouts

California, Sunny With A Near-100% Chance Of Blackouts

In Gov. Gavin Newsom’s revised budget released last week, he asked for $5 billion to shore up the state’s electrical grid, calling energy reliability “an endless struggle” in California. And endless will it ever be as long as policymakers continue to pursue, with zero flexibility, an all-green energy portfolio by ...
Blog

Climate Change: Adapt Or Mitigate?

Along the Sonoma County coast, CalTrans is relocating a stretch of Highway 1 farther inland in response to the ocean taking out about a foot per year of the cliffs overlooking the Pacific. This concept is often referred to as managed retreat, where entire communities and neighborhoods are forced to ...
Climate Change

To Help The Earth Let’s Acknowledge The Limits Of Alternative Energy

Earth Day is this week. A day set aside to celebrate “the planet’s clean natural resources”, which is now synonymous with alleviating the costs associated with global climate change. Since alternative technologies are viewed as clean resources that will solve the problem of global climate change, the website earthday.org claims that, consumer demand for ...
CEQA

UC Berkeley Case Shows Why Comprehensive Reform Badly Needed to End CEQA Abuse

By Chris Carr The California Supreme Court last week declined to stay a lower court order in a case involving a housing and classroom complex under construction on the UC Berkeley campus. This will effectively shut the door to one of America’s finest public universities for thousands of prospective students. ...
California

New Report Shows How “CEQA Gauntlet” Hinders Housing, School, Infrastructure, Climate Projects

With 3,000 prospective UC Berkeley students facing rejection due to a California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) lawsuit, the nonpartisan Pacific Research Institute today released “The CEQA Gauntlet,” a new research project detailing how CEQA adds expense and delay to – and in some cases halts – critical California projects including ...
Climate Change

The Wrong Solutions: Climate Change Policies Increasingly Embrace Unreality

Advocates and public officials blame a growing number of seemingly unrelated phenomena, from tornadoes to medical problems, on climate change. As the list grows, they call for policies to tackle the putative crisis, while overlooking the flaws in their preferred solutions. Consider, for example, the rush into electrification to leverage renewable energy as ...
Blog

New Study Further Proof that Electricity Competition is Key to Lowering Costs, Emissions

A new study from the University at Texas, Austin documents the state of electricity competition in the U.S. with a state-by-state scorecard ranking the competitiveness of each state’s market. PRI’s Electricity Reality Report and accompanying study has shown how electricity competition is key to giving Americans the reliable, affordable, and ...
Blog

California Continues to Push Renewables Despite Energy Storage Problem

Gov. Gavin Newsom deserves credit for recognizing that California’s irrational leap toward a fully renewable electricity grid by 2045 was moving far too fast. At the same time, he deserves criticism for continuing to aggressively push the transition. Newsom has recently backed delays in retiring four natural gas plants as ...
Blackouts

CAPITAL IDEAS: When June Gloom Lasts All Year

DOWNLOAD THE BRIEF The overcast days of June Gloom, a month of cloud and fog cover along the usually sunny Southern California coastal regions, can be a bit depressing. It’s a natural phenomenon that can’t be controlled. The same can’t be said about the man-made darkness ahead that will affect ...
Blackouts

Energy Shortfalls In California? Who Would Have Ever Thought That?

Policymakers continue running along the diving board over an empty pool, determined to turn California green by outlawing any electricity-generating source that isn’t wind and solar. It’s not that they don’t know better. They do. Yet they refuse to deviate from their agenda. Last year, the California Public Utilities Commission ...
Blackouts

California, Sunny With A Near-100% Chance Of Blackouts

In Gov. Gavin Newsom’s revised budget released last week, he asked for $5 billion to shore up the state’s electrical grid, calling energy reliability “an endless struggle” in California. And endless will it ever be as long as policymakers continue to pursue, with zero flexibility, an all-green energy portfolio by ...
Blog

Climate Change: Adapt Or Mitigate?

Along the Sonoma County coast, CalTrans is relocating a stretch of Highway 1 farther inland in response to the ocean taking out about a foot per year of the cliffs overlooking the Pacific. This concept is often referred to as managed retreat, where entire communities and neighborhoods are forced to ...
Climate Change

To Help The Earth Let’s Acknowledge The Limits Of Alternative Energy

Earth Day is this week. A day set aside to celebrate “the planet’s clean natural resources”, which is now synonymous with alleviating the costs associated with global climate change. Since alternative technologies are viewed as clean resources that will solve the problem of global climate change, the website earthday.org claims that, consumer demand for ...
CEQA

UC Berkeley Case Shows Why Comprehensive Reform Badly Needed to End CEQA Abuse

By Chris Carr The California Supreme Court last week declined to stay a lower court order in a case involving a housing and classroom complex under construction on the UC Berkeley campus. This will effectively shut the door to one of America’s finest public universities for thousands of prospective students. ...
California

New Report Shows How “CEQA Gauntlet” Hinders Housing, School, Infrastructure, Climate Projects

With 3,000 prospective UC Berkeley students facing rejection due to a California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) lawsuit, the nonpartisan Pacific Research Institute today released “The CEQA Gauntlet,” a new research project detailing how CEQA adds expense and delay to – and in some cases halts – critical California projects including ...
Climate Change

The Wrong Solutions: Climate Change Policies Increasingly Embrace Unreality

Advocates and public officials blame a growing number of seemingly unrelated phenomena, from tornadoes to medical problems, on climate change. As the list grows, they call for policies to tackle the putative crisis, while overlooking the flaws in their preferred solutions. Consider, for example, the rush into electrification to leverage renewable energy as ...
Blog

New Study Further Proof that Electricity Competition is Key to Lowering Costs, Emissions

A new study from the University at Texas, Austin documents the state of electricity competition in the U.S. with a state-by-state scorecard ranking the competitiveness of each state’s market. PRI’s Electricity Reality Report and accompanying study has shown how electricity competition is key to giving Americans the reliable, affordable, and ...
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