Green Energy

Yeah, this is a case of me assuming things are common knowledge which I really had no business assuming.

Here's the best source to use, the CEC's data reports. FWIW, cali still generates 43% of their power using natural gas - and has added a truly pitiful amount of renewables over the past 5 years. While the end-goal here is absolutely the way to go - induction stoves and heat pumps are undeniably more efficient than their gas alternatives (often 400%+ for heat pumps) - any money here would be much better spent on updating the electrical grid to the point that the kind of losses which plague California's truly neglected power infrastructure are addressed.

If the natural gas power plants were all CCGT running desulfurized gas on decent transmission infrastructure, this would absolutely be a positive move. But right now, your substation is running a 1970s dry-loop stepdown transformer on the transmission lines (and every poor area is running at least one, thanks PG&E) and that alone is eating any potential energy savings this could achieve. Plus, adding load to this already overtaxed system (anyone else remember the summer brownouts?) before its updated is just shifting the responsibility for the environment onto the consumers, again, pretty blatantly greenwashing the whole broken system. And also it'll force the decrepit standby gas powerplants back into more regular operation to keep up with the increasing power demands. (This is just ignoring the greenhouse emissions present in the supply and disposal chain for which I cannot find concrete numbers)

Right now this is a pilot project, and it's investigating strategies to get people to switch their appliances and the feasability/impact of neighborhood decarbonization. That's great, but it's spectacularly not the problem that actually needs to be addressed, and just taking the funding for their dumbass "block party" and putting it towards transmission infrastructure would have a larger impact than all three blocks switching from gas could ever have. The emissions from the already failing infrastructure are far more critical, and are not being addressed, and I can't understand why nobody is talking about this more. Assuming the best case, that all the current trends hold but power consumption plateaus (and you can check the math for yourself if you want), california is going to miss their 2045 deadline by ~10 years. Switching to an induction stovetop (which nobody in a poor neighborhood is going to be able to afford anyways) or a heat-pump (which many low-income multi-units will require structural updates to be able to install the new equipment) are good things to encourage, but it's not going to actually help anything until we youtube some PG&E executives and overhaul the system.

(Uhhh sorry, got a little side tracked there. Gas doesn't have trasnmission losses, that's the thing I originally meant. It's only significant if you're stuck with old infrastructure, but hey guess what...)

Actually it just... doesn't matter. We're so fucked either way.

Alright so I sat down and actually looked at the numbers:

According to the California Energy Comission, the total nameplate capacity of california (in 2024) was 89,207 MW. Of this, ~43% (38,686 MW) is supplied by natural gas powerplants. The short answer to the question of when adding electrical utilities will not be a net loss for the state is "when they replace that 38,686MW with renewable power". That's not insurmountable - according to this article from the California Governor's Office itself, in 2024 alone they added 7,000 MW of new renewable nameplate capacity, and over the last 5 years they've added a total of more than 25,000 MW of renewable power!

So the short answer is that, assuming the trend of year-over-year increases in power continues (which is safe), in an optimistic three and a half years this will no longer be a net-loss for the environment. A ~three year lead time on new capacity is honestly not bad, and taking this into account I can't in good faith say that this is a bad or absurd project for them to undertake, and I apologize for not doing this initally.

EDIT: okay so... that was my conclusion. I went back to check my work because I noticed I'd screwed up a conversion (I've converted GW to MW in a couple places just for readability) and... When you start checking the source data being reported, it's really apparent that the 7000MW figure reported by Gov. Newsom's office includes, yes, the additional power generation capacity added to the state's grid but it also includes the nameplate capacity of all the new battery storage facilities.

...

Yeah. So. From 2023 to 2024, there was a reduction in natural gas production of 1,090 MW, and additional capacity added of 2507 MW (2,375 MW from PV, 132 MW from Wind), for a net increase of 1372 MW. New battery facilities are important, but they only serve to smooth the load and supplement renewable generation, they don't add anything to the actual power generation capacity. At this rate, it's going to take around 14 years for there to be enough capacity added to fully replace the power generated by natural gas, and that's completely ignoring that power demands will be steadily increasing.

I don't... actually know what to say about this. I'm not anti-renewables, my own home has limited solar capacity (I am not in a great spot for it, sadly) but I'm a hearty and vocal proponent of it. I just came in here to present a point about how it's technically better to hold off on upgrades like this, because it's important for us to scrape out every last iota of efficiency if we're going to save what's left of the planet. I wasn't really anticipating that a full 2/3 of the lauded 7,000 MW of renewable energy that's been added is just... made up.

I'm actually tearing up a little. I don't know what we're going to do, guys. This is all just so completely fucked up.