A cold, rainy winter in California has exposed the challenges that can arise when a poster child for the clean energy transition isn’t fully ready to make the leap from fossil fuels.
California residents who rely on natural gas have complained of monthly energy bills approaching $800, Governor Gavin Newsom has called for an investigation into prices, and manufacturers of everything from steel to cement have said the only way to cut costs would be to move to another state.
The problem: limited storage, damage to a key pipeline and a surge in demand have sent the state’s natural gas prices to multiples of what it fetches elsewhere in the country. While California has long been at the forefront of the push into cleaner energy, its ambitions belie its reality – on some days, gas-fired generation can still make up more than half of electricity supplies in the region, and it burns more of the methane-rich combustible each year than France.