For a fleeting moment, California achieves 95% clean electricity.
For four seconds April 24, climate-friendly sources supplied 95% of the main energy grid’s needs
Something remarkable happened last month: California hit nearly 95% renewable energy.
Let’s say it again: 95% renewables.
For all the time climate advocates spend talking about 100% clean power, it sometimes seems like a faraway proposition, whether the timeframe is California’s 2045 target or President Biden’s more aggressive 2035 goal. But just before 2:30 p.m. April 24, one of the world’s largest economies came within a stone’s throw of getting there.
There are several caveats. For one thing, that Saturday’s 94.5% figure — a record, as confirmed by the California Independent System Operator — was fleeting, lasting just four seconds. It was specific to the state’s main power grid, which covers four-fifths of California but doesn’t include Los Angeles, Sacramento and several other regions. It came at a time of year defined by abundant sunshine and relatively cool weather, meaning it’s easier for renewable power to do the job traditionally done by fossil fuels.
And fossil fuels actually were doing part of the job — more than the 94.5% figure might suggest. California was producing enough clean power to supply nearly 95% of its in-state needs, but it was also burning a bunch of natural gas and exporting electricity to its Western neighbors. It’s impossible to say exactly how much of the Golden State’s own supply was coming from renewables.
That said, what happened last month is definitely a big deal.
“It sends chills down my spine. It’s amazing,” said Elliot Mainzer, chief executive of the California Independent System Operator, which runs the state’s main power grid. “These types of transitions aren’t always pretty. But we’re getting a lot of renewable generation online, making a real dent in the state’s carbon emissions.”
The 94.5% record may have been fleeting, but it wasn’t some isolated surge.
Most of that afternoon, the renewables number topped 90%, with solar and wind farms doing the bulk of the work and geothermal, biomass and hydropower facilities making smaller contributions.
Add in the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant — which isn’t counted toward California’s renewables mandate — and there was enough climate-friendly power at times to account for more than 100% of the state’s electricity needs.
So California has lots of clean power. The important thing now is making sure the puzzle pieces of the grid fit together on hot summer evenings, such as the ones in August 2020 when insufficient supplies after sundown led to rolling blackouts.
State officials are taking many steps to avoid a repeat of last year’s emergency, some of which are more controversial than others.
They’re also beginning to focus on the longer term. Mainzer’s grid operator recently urged the California Public Utilities Commission to order electric companies to add 10,000 megawatts of power by 2026 — about oneeighth of the state’s entire generating capacity — in
part to make sure there’s enough supply on the grid when Diablo Canyon closes.
“That’s not an inconsequential investment,” Mainzer said.
Although some of the clean energy solutions for California are almost certain to carry a high upfront price tag, others are much less expensive. In fact, some produce immediate savings.
Case in point: the Western Energy Imbalance Market, also known as the EIM.
It’s a unique program that makes it easier for utility companies across the American West to share extra electricity, with a goal of saving money for ratepayers and reducing planet-warming emissions. It allows outof-state utilities to participate in California’s real-time electricity market, where they can buy power to fill in last-minute gaps between supply and demand.
So if California has more solar power than it can use on a sunny afternoon — a growing trend each spring —
it can send some of that cheap electricity to Arizona, which then might be able to burn less coal. Or if the wind is ripping in Wyoming — home to some of the country’s strongest, most consistent gusts — California can tap into that clean power rather than firing up a gas plant.
A key barrier to this type of cooperation in the past was mistrust: Red states worried about blue states shoving renewable energy down their throats, and blue states worried about red states forcing them to buy dirty energy. And nobody wanted to risk finding themselves short on electricity in a pinch because some outof-state utility made a higher bid for their power.
But in the seven years since California launched the Western EIM, that mistrust has started to fade.
There are now 14 electric grid operators participating in the imbalance market, including Arizona Public Service in the Southwest, Idaho
Power in the Northwest and the Warren Buffett-owned Rocky Mountain Power in the Intermountain West.
Several utilities joined last month, including the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which has long zealously guarded its independence. Several more are preparing to join, as far from California as NorthWestern Energy in Montana and El Paso Electric in Texas.
By 2023, the market will cover 83% of electricity demand in the West. It’s growing so fast in part because of the measurable economic benefits. Through the first quarter of 2021, participants collectively saved nearly $1.3 billion.
“California has seen about $300 million of those benefits, and the state hasn’t had to pay a penny to see that market get up and running,” Mainzer said. “It’s just been a smashing success.”
At the same time, political obstacles still stand in the way of a fully integrated Western power grid that could do a whole lot more to limit costs, reduce climate pollution and ultimately prevent power outages.
Three years of discussion over expanding the EIM, for instance, have not yet resulted in an agreement among the participants. A proposal from then-Gov. Jerry Brown that would have transitioned California’s grid operator to a truly regional power authority was defeated several times in the state Legislature, amid opposition from lawmakers who worried the plan would result in fewer in-state jobs building solar and wind farms and cede too much power over California’s energy mix to other states.
Some of the other states are wary of Mainzer’s Independent System Operator, which is led by appointees of the California governor. The agency’s primary responsibility is serving Californians, even as it runs the EIM for the whole region.
Those tensions came to a head last month when the grid operator’s leaders voted to prioritize California’s electricity needs during crunch times on the grid this summer, to the possible detriment of out-of-state utilities that typically have been able to send energy through California’s power lines without much trouble. Arizona and Nevada’s major utilities wrote that the plan was “not equitable or fair.” Mainzer’s former employer, the Bonneville Power Administration in Portland, Ore., wasn’t happy either.
“We take our obligations to California dead seriously,” Mainzer said.
At the same time, he said, “we definitely are very motivated to help the broader West.” As California should be. The state won’t make much of a difference on climate change unless it can bring the rest of the country and world along for the ride.
Mainzer is focused on keeping the lights on this summer. He’s also happy to celebrate the 95% renewable energy record, even if only for a moment.
“We have to remember the positives of the story as well,” he said.