California PUC Distributed Energy Resource Plan

"The number of [diesel] backup generators—sometimes known as BUGs—in the San Francisco Bay Area and in Southern California has grown dramatically in the past few years...backup generation of all types rose by a significant 34 percent over the last three years in the Bay Area alone. In the South Coast area—Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino counties—the growth rate has been 22 percent. About 90 percent of this backup generation is diesel, 6 percent is fueled by natural gas, and 3 percent by liquefied petroleum gas."

"The total diesel capacity in California is now big enough to power 15 percent of the  state's electric grid, which has about an 80-GW capacity. As of 2021, in those two districts alone, there are 23,507 BUGs with a capacity of 12.2 GW, or 87,223 MWh per year."

John, is a California powered by diesel generators part of your "formula for moving the state to net-zero greenhouse gas electricity by 2045"?

What about Gov. Newsom's rushed installation of 150 MW of natural gas generation in September, to keep the lights from going out in California?

What about SB 423, the bill he signed soon thereafter, which defines firm zero-carbon resources as “electrical resources that can individually, or in combination, deliver electricity with high availability for the expected duration of multiday extreme or atypical weather events and into the electrical grid and the transition to a zero-carbon electrical grid"? Now, California is defining a "zero-carbon resource" as any resource that "will facilitate integration of eligible renewable energy resources" - kind of confusing, eh? Do "we" now consider methane to be a zero-carbon resource?

It's certainly not part of my formula for moving the state to net-zero greenhouse gas electricity. I'll go out on a limb, and say it's not part of any rational formula for lowering carbon emissions - that it was wholly predictable, given the miserable, ongoing failure of solar and wind to provide reliable electricity to power our grid, our Governor's lucrative investments in natural gas, and his steely determination to replace Diablo Canyon Power Plant with that fossil fuel.

"Distributed Energy Resources" sounds more like a formula to concentrate California's collected wealth in the governor's personal bank accounts, at the expense of the environment. Doesn't it?