California is embarking on an ambitious program to mandate zero-emission vehicles (which today means electric vehicles, in practice), while also converting the electricity supply to renewables (mostly solar and wind, plus storage technology to be determined). An article by Andrew Stuttaford in National Review, “Volt Farce“, makes clear just how daunting the combination of those two tasks is: electricity production will need to double to accommodate all those new electric vehicles, at the same time non-renewable electricity production is phased out. Some 6 gigawatts of new, renewable production capacity will have to be brought on-line each year for the next 20 years — an unprecedented pace. (For comparison, peak total statewide demand in 2022 was about 52 gigawatts, one afternoon during a brutal September heat wave.) Over a million new public chargers will need to be built and installed.
Then there’s the grid, which connects power producers to power consumers. Nationwide, the grid is already stressed, and there’s a large backlog of planned transmission lines. Needing much more electricity than today, in different places and times of day, while also fundamentally changing the way electricity is produced, is going to put unpredictable, but large demands on a grid that is barely keeping up today.
There is one potential bright spot: renewable generation has to be complemented with storage, since (as its detractors enthusiastically point out) the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow. But each electric vehicle comes with a big battery that stores energy. Today, electricity flows only one way: from the grid into the car. But in principle, a plugged-in, parked car could give up some of its stored electricity to the grid in times of high demand. An army of parked, plugged-in electric cars could do double duty as a storage buffer, providing energy where and when it’s needed and charging when supply exceeds demand. Stuttaford points out, though, that “the technology is new and has not been tested in electric cars”.
All in all, a major challenge, with lots of ways for big, expensive things to go wrong. What could possibly be motivating California to undertake it? Stuttaford has an answer: “central planners”. They have decided we must all live with this project, and “central planners have a way of brushing unpleasant and inconvenient questions without bothering to come to an answer”. As for its prospects for success, they’re dim: those nasty central planners again. “When central planners are involved — and have no doubt, that’s what’s going on here — pessimism is the appropriate frame of mind.” (Delays in upgrading the nation’s grid seem to have more to do with a lack of central planning than an excess of it, but never mind.)
And what could be motivating those central planners? There is an obvious answer: the increasingly disastrous consequences of the human production of atmospheric carbon dioxide. The science keeps getting clearer: immediate and drastic action is needed to avert global catastrophe — exactly the kind of immediate and drastic action California is proposing to undertake.
But you won’t learn that from Stuttaford’s article. The word “climate” does not appear in it. Neither does “warm” or “warming” or “carbon” or “carbon dioxide”, except indirectly in noting that the electric grid is “already shaky … undermined by the decarbonization process”.
It seems like a significant omission. If Stuttaford doesn’t think there is any need to decarbonize, he should say so — and explain why he thinks he’s right and the world’s experts on the subject are wrong. If he thinks we do need to decarbonize, but there’s an easier way, he should at least hint at what that might be.
Just leaving us readers hanging doesn’t feel right. When your house is on fire, you don’t write articles about how hard it will be for the fire trucks to get up the driveway.