Opinions
There will be no silver bullet. Although difficult for a man in his position, he could have mentioned that meeting these needs while achieving environmental goals will require considerable investment, sacrifice and compromise.
It has been estimated that achieving the greenhouse-gas emissions goals of AB32, the state's Global Warming Solutions Act, will more than double average retail electricity prices in California.
Although politically popular, technologies such as wind and solar carry heavy liabilities in addition to being two to five times more expensive than average nuclear, coal or gas:
-- These technologies are intermittent and volatile - every megawatt will require another megawatt of baseload resources to backfill, support and regulate it.
-- They are small-scale and land-intensive - replacing one plant's output (Diablo Canyon) with solar would require more than 25 times the entire U.S. solar output and would require at least 40 square miles of solar panels.
-- They require significant new transmission lines across environmentally sensitive and scenic parts of the state.
As Darbee pointed out, we will need a wide variety of solutions to meet California's energy needs and these must include, in addition to renewables and energy efficiency, improving and expanding baseload resources: repowering and cleaning up old gas plants, clean coal, and nuclear relicensing and expansion on existing sites.
CHRISTOPHER DANN
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