Epic Drought Impacting California’s Clean Energy Goals

...Reduced rainfall means that California reservoirs are continuing to shrink, with water levels at just 52 percent of their historic average. That’s not just a problem for California’s $42.5 billion agricultural industry, which grows and produces much of the country’s fruits, nuts and vegetables. It is also is cutting into the state’s electricity generation. That’s because California sources a significant portion of its electricity generation from hydropower, so less precipitation means less electricity. Before the drought, California routinely generated about 20 percent of its electricity from hydropower during the period of January through June. But for the first six months of 2014, according to the U.S. Energy information Administration (EIA), that productivity has been slashed in half, to just 10 percent. To make up for the shortfall, California’s renewable energy industry has picked up some of the slack. Wind now accounts for more electricity generation than hydro – in part because of the drought, but also because of greater installed wind capacity. Solar, too, is making a big contribution. On clear sunny days, by midafternoon, solar can supply the state with 14 percent of its power needs. But California has also needed to rely much more heavily on natural gas to cover for lost hydro. From January through June of this year, natural gas power plants were generating 16 percent more electricity than average. This wouldn’t be necessarily be a problem if California didn’t have ambitious plans to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. Replacing clean hydropower with more natural gas can lead to a spike in the wrong direction. Complicating matters further is the closure of the San Onofre nuclear power plant. When the plant closed, California lost about 18 billion kilowatt-hours of carbon-free electricity. As Forbes notes, the electricity from that one plant is equal to all of the solar and wind in the state combined. With the plant offline, the state lost a lot of ground on its journey towards a low-carbon future...more