California To Let Gas Power Plants Remain Open To Provide “Reliable Electricity”

I noted last week that this might happen, and it has, because even though these low cost, low land footprint power plants “contribute to ‘climate change’ (scam)” they are reliable, unlike all the solar and wind

California to let gas plants stay open as time runs low for climate action

State officials threw a lifeline to four fossil fueled power plants along the Southern California coast, deciding the facilities are still needed to provide reliable electricity even as they contribute to the climate crisis.

Tuesday’s vote by the State Water Resources Control Board to let the gas plants keep operating past the end of this year followed brief rolling blackouts over two evenings last month, as a heat wave caused air conditioning demand to soar, and California found itself short on electricity supplies.

Energy regulators are still investigating the causes of the power shortage. But they said allowing the coastal gas plants to stay open a few more years would help prevent more outages as California continues its transition to cleaner energy sources — an ironic solution given that climate change almost certainly exacerbated the recent heat wave.

The four facilities were supposed to shut down by Dec. 31, 2020 under a regulation requiring coastal power plants to stop using ocean water for cooling, a process that kills fish and other marine life. But Tuesday’s decision granted a three-year extension to natural gas plants in Huntington Beach, Long Beach and Oxnard, and a one-year extension to a Redondo Beach plant.

Oh, come on, now. Unreliable energy, which is also a lot more expensive, is a small price in order to save the state for the climate crisis, isn’t it? The same people who voted for all this should be more than will to deal with some rolling brownouts and blackouts to Save The Planet, right?

The Public Utilities Commission and the California Independent System Operator began warning last year that the state might face power shortages on hot summer evenings, when electricity demand remains high even as solar farms and rooftop solar panels stop generating electricity. That prediction seemed to come true on Aug. 14, when the Independent System Operator ordered utilities to implement rolling outages for 75 minutes, and again on Aug. 15, when the energy shortfall lasted 20 minutes.

Hey, this is good practice for climate cultists for what’s to come as they get rid of reliable energy. Why is this making them unhappy? This is what they’ve agitated for. They should want to suffer for their beliefs…oh, right, they just want Other People to suffer.