It’s sometimes said that America has to exist because we need somewhere to put all the crazy people. For their part, Americans might retort that that’s why they have California.
If we’re living in a Clown World, then California is surely the most copious clown car honking and hooting around the Big Top.
After all, only in California would you have a government that announces that it is mandating electric cars in the near future — and within a week, beg people not to charge their electric cars because there isn’t enough electricity.
How it started:
California, the country’s most populous state and the center of U.S. car culture, is banning the sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles starting in 2035, marking a historic step in the state’s battle against climate change.
CNBC
But the ban doesn’t start in 2035, it starts in just four years, when one-third of new cars will have to be electric. The ban will get progressively more prohibitive.
And here’s how it ended, less than a week later:
This follows a previous similar Flex Alert just a few weeks ago — and has been extended again, today.
Starting tomorrow […] the power grid operator expects to call on Californians for voluntary energy conservation.
During a Flex Alert, Californians are implored to:
Set thermostats to 78 degrees or higher, avoid using large appliances and charging electric vehicles, and turn off unnecessary lights.
Lowering electricity use during that time will ease strain on the system, and prevent more drastic measures, including rotating power outages.
CAISO
If California can’t even charge the just under 2% of cars that are electric now, how on earth will they manage when they reach the Utopia of replacing their entire vehicle fleet?
Duh! Build more wind turbines and solar plants, dummy!
Yeah, about that.
Using the state’s own estimates, California will need 17 GW of additional electricity to power all those electric cars […]
The California Energy Commission calculates that the state will require 4.6 GW (min.) of electricity to fuel 7.5M EVs. Hence, to power 29M more EVs it would require a minimum of ~17 GW additional power and likely much more.
If we need 5.5 GW per 7.5M EVs, then we would need 21 GW of new electricity to power 29M more EVs. And that assumes no increase in population, and no increase in electricity use, including for cooking and heating, even though the state is trying to encourage the latter.
If you’re wondering how many more wind turbines and solar panels they’ll need to produce an extra 21 GW of electricity, well… it’s a lot.
An average wind turbine produces somewhere around 500-900 W. That’s 1-2 million turbines, just to generate the new electricity. On top of that, there’s the existing consumption for everything else. And that’s providing California doesn’t increase its population and nobody converts gas heating and cooking to electric.
They could go nuclear of course, but like green-besotted governments everywhere, California is closing its nuclear plants. To generate enough power for its planned EV rollout, California would need to build 20 new, full-size nuclear plants.
To produce the same amount of electricity from solar and wind as from nuclear would require 379x and 421x more land, respectively. That’s simply not going to happen because the projects would kill so many threatened birds and desert tortoises that they’d risk extinction.
Michael Shellenberger
This is why the Climate Cult never talk numbers and dollars when it comes to their lunatic policies. The numbers are just horrific.