On California’s facetious “green energy” push: why should residents pay handsomely for other states’ natural gas?

Ronald Stein, founder of Energy & Infrastructure of PTS Advance, talks about California’s highly publicized transition to renewable energy. Shutting down natural gas power plants only increases residents’ electricity costs and proliferates electricity importation from states with reliable power plants.

Trends throughout the state are aimed at banning the use of natural gas hook-ups to for cooking, heating, and cooling, and washing and drying clothes imposes a regressive energy tax on low- and middle-income consumers. Prohibiting the direct consumption of natural gas in furnaces, stoves, clothes dryers, and water heaters forces consumers to buy electricity, which in California is four times as expensive as natural gas on an energy-equivalent basis.

The growth of EV’s and the banning of natural gas hookups will further add to the electrical demand from the grid. The inability to replace the closure of continuously uninterruptable electricity from nuclear, natural gas power plants, and hydroelectric plants with intermittent electricity from renewables of industrial wind and solar will cause the state to import more and more of its electricity and most likely continue to inflate the cost of electricity to residents and businesses.

Seems that the Public Advocates Office which is an independent organization within the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) that advocates solely on behalf of utility customers and has a statutory mission to obtain the lowest possible rate for service consistent with reliable and safe service levels has become as dysfunctional as California’s energy policies. If the state wants to do a better job at providing continuous uninterruptable power to its residents, they need to build power plants “in” California, which means natural gas, nuclear, or hydro, all of which are the exact power plants that California wants to be rid of. Can you see the dysfunctional conundrum the state is in?

This article originally appeared in Fox & Hounds Daily.

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