• CA’s Green Energy Swan Turning Into Ugly Duckling; $5 Gas in CA? Lack of Cap-and-Trade Price Ceiling Could Bring It;
• Santa Barbara Picks Drilling Over Greening;
• Green Actions Cause One-Third of Human Caused Earthquakes; Study Questions Whether Fracking Causes Earthquakes;
• New Fracking Website Posted Online by Western Petroleum Association

California’s Green Energy Swan Turning Into Ugly Duckling

In the upside down world of California energy, no longer are the hot summer months or the occasional winter cold snap the only peak period of hourly risk to the state’s electric grid. The new daily peak hours of each day from 4 pm to 7 pm during the “shoulder months” of March, April and May and September, October, and November are the new peak month/hour times. What is causing this shift in peak time power is California’s transition to solar energy as the major source of base load power during day.…

[The following is a weekly digest of California energy news excerpted from Calwatchdog.com.  This inaugural report will be followed by updates from the world’s 8th largest economy every one-to-two weeks, depending on  developments.   MasterResource welcomes Mr. Lusvardi to our team (bio below).]

California Dems pass pro-fracking bill; CPUC Blacks-Out Green Power Prices from Consumers; Rooftop Solar to Cost Other Customers $1.1 Billion per Year

A Pro-Fracking Bill Disguised as an Anti-Fracking Bill

Can you imagine California’s Democratic-controlled legislature and Governor Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown passing a pro-fracking bill?  Neither could the mainstream media in California that reported state officials had passed an anti-fracking bill on Sept. 20 sponsored by State Senator Fran Pavley (D, Los Angeles County), the leader of the green voting block in both houses of the legislature.

State Senate Bill 4 (SB 4) was reported by green reporter Chris Clarke on his Re-Wire blog at the KCET public television website as requiring:  (1) a scientific assessment of fracking, (2) frackers to apply for permits, (3) fracking to continue while state crafts further regulations, (4) fracking permits to be provided to nearby property owners within 30 days; and (5) regulation of injecting acid into the ground, not fracking per se. …

The first great requisite of motive power is, that it shall be wholly at our command, to be exerted when, and where, and in what degree we desire. The wind, for instance, as a direct motive power, is wholly inapplicable to a system of machine labour, for during a calm season the whole business of the country would be thrown out of gear.

– W. S. Jevons, The Coal Question (London: Macmillan, 1865), p. 122.

If only the legion of energy experts and specialists in the colleges and universities, U.S. Department of Energy labs, and environmentalist organizations understood William Stanley Jevons of the 19th century and Vaclav Smil today. If so, they would understand why:

• Renewable energy is failing at times of peak demand (see the Duck Curve post this week).