Green energy has emerged in recent years as the future of the world. California has taken several steps in the direction of going green in the form of many clean energy policies. The main goal of this is to lead in the fight against climate change. Some examples of California’s new mandates include the Zero Emission Vehicle Mandate (ZEV), which requires that all newly sold cars be emission free by 2035. Another bill passed was the Senate Bill 100 (SB 100), which states that all energy sources have to be from renewable sources by 2045.
Although these are certainly admirable goals, major infrastructure constraints, technological difficulties, and financial limits make them unrealistic and perhaps unattainable.
ZEV
Cars and vans contribute around 27% of carbon emissions in California. The ZEV aims to reduce that number in. The state of California essentially wants to reach zero emission and adopt clean hybrid plug-in vehicles by 2035.
Perhaps the most important problem in this plan is the lack of charging infrastructure and the problems the state may face when trying to build these charging stations. California is heavily dependent on electric vehicles in the ZEV plan, and if all these vehicles turn electric, more and more electric charging stations would have to be integrated into the state’s infrastructure.
This can prove to be another challenge, as the state is already preoccupied with projects such as a high-speed rail project costing roughly $100 billion to fund. Adding on a charging station project–where each station costs roughly $30,000 to $200,000–would further put a strain on California’s resources in combination with the rail project.
In addition to this, California’s mostly isolated power grid (meaning the connections between California’s and the national grid are limited), proves further challenges in the ZEV mandate. With an already weak power grid leading to frequent blackouts in some areas, adding an additional strain in the form of charging stations would perhaps lead to a complete power failure, which would cost lots of money to fix.
California instead can invest in other options to fight climate change, such as promoting public transportation and more research in green energy instead of building numerous stations, which causes disturbances to both the budget of California and infrastructure.
They can actively promote the use of public transportation instead of brute-forcing policies on green energy vehicles. With a combination of improving public transportation to make it more attractive to users, and promoting the use of it via expanding, California can effectively reduce its carbon footprint, without needing green energy vehicles
By promoting public transportation, the need for individual transportation is decreased, leading to overall less carbon emissions as one vehicle is efficiently transporting many.
California is already focused on some projects. These projects include improving public transportation, and investing $2 billion to fund better transit infrastructure. Part of the plan even involves building zero-emission buses in San Benito County, a step towards a green planet without forcing everyone to drive electric cars. Although building zero-emission bus charging stations will have to happen, it is a significantly less challenging step than integrating thousands or millions of charging stations to account for every single personal transportation vehicle.
Altogether, it would be more beneficial to focus on projects such as this, instead of trying to cram charging stations everywhere and telling citizens to switch their cars.
SB 100
SB 100 aims to have all renewable energy sources by 2045, in the state of California.
One of the biggest problems with SB 100 is storing renewable energy. While renewable batteries such as lithium-ion are steadily improving, they are still inefficient at storing energy.
Energy storage is a big concern when other renewable sources of energy, such as wind turbines, aren’t generating enough power on a day with no winds. With unreliable means of storage, California is yet again at risk of energy shortages during unpredictable weather conditions that renewable energy sources depend on, such as wind.
During these times, they will likely rely on backup power sources such as hydroelectric power or natural gas plants. The true problem, however, with renewable energy lies in its unreliability. In August and September of 2022, major blackouts and power emergencies caused by heat waves occurred. This motivated California to keep natural gas plants that were supposed to go offline to keep running due to fear of major blackouts. This further showcases the unreliability of renewable energy and how it may not be a feasible plan for the future.
SB 100 is a fairly reasonable plan. However, they are starting out way too aggressively. It would be wise to invest in research on renewable energy to improve the storage capacity and ability of these sources. After improving on these technologies, then it is possible to try to put this plan in action. With a good foundation, this plan may be even possible, but with unreliable sources, there are just too many things that could go wrong.
Although ambitions such as SB 100 and ZEV are admirable, they seem to be unattainable and unrealistic steps on the way to a green California. It would instead be wise to invest into more research and keep some natural gas plants running until California finds a way to have reliable renewable energy in emergency situations.
