Destroying California’s energy sector, part two

June 28, 2025

OPINION by ANDY CALDWELL

California has made a complete and total costly mess of our energy sectors. Please consider sharing part one and this part two overview because too few people understand the magnitude of the incompetence that is serving to cripple our state’s economy.

Today, we will consider two of the energy sectors that don’t work without subsidies, mandates, and the elimination of the competition, i.e., the energy sectors that do work without subsidies and mandates. Plus, we will look at the largest sources of greenhouse gases and pollution in the state that is conveniently ignored.

Solar

The move to go all renewable led to an explosion of solar power, both utility scale and rooftop, throughout the state. The problem? It is multi-faceted, including the fact that solar produces the bulk of its power from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

However, that doesn’t line up with our primary consumption patterns which occur from about 6 pm until 10 pm in the evening. This has created a huge problem having to do with the fact that too much solar during the day can overpower and collapse the grid. Hence, the power must be sent elsewhere to be used, or it must shut off.

Yet, because other states are producing their own electricity, it is not without problems to try and send our excess solar elsewhere.

As it turns out, we end up sending a lot of electricity to Arizona and New Mexico and, in many instances, they get that electricity below our production costs and, in some cases, we must pay them to take it. That means California consumers are paying twice: once to generate the electricity and again to pay other states to take it off our hands. It is no surprise therefore that we have the second highest electricity prices in the country.

One symptom of this waste of energy and money? Over 20% of California residents can’t pay their utility bills.

Last year, more than 2.4 million California residential utility customers were behind on their electricity bills, owing more than $1.1 billion as of the end of November—a full month before one investor-owned utility’s 2024 rate hike took effect making things even worse.

Battery energy storage systems (BESS)

This glut of solar explains the rush to build battery energy storage systems to store the electricity generated during the four hours of peak sunshine until the evening when there is greater power demands. However, as was the case at Moss Landing in Monterey County and in San Diego, among other places, the batteries are not altogether stable meaning they can overheat and create chemical reaction fires for weeks on end that we don’t know how to extinguish.

As Monterey County Supervisor Glenn Church stated, “this technology is ahead of the government’s ability to regulate it. And the industry’s ability to control it.”

The Moss Landing fire created an eight-mile mandatory evacuation zone and a 20-mile shelter-in-place zone. Not to be deterred, the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors in their infinite wisdom are in the process of building a BESS on county jail property to power the jail.

And an existing BESS is located beneath the 101 freeway in Goleta. Good luck with the mandatory evacuation if the freeway must be closed for a week or more due to toxic plumes of smoke. Then again, evacuating the county jail will be no (perp) walk in the park either.

Fire – The one that keeps getting away!

Having said all that, the two largest greenhouse gas and pollution sources that generate the most emissions are both ignored by the state of California, that is fire, and here locally, offshore oil and gas seeps. Hence, Laura Capps and her fellows on the board of sups had it completely backwards to assert that oil and gas operations must be shut down to abate wildfires and prevent climate change.

Fires in California in 2020 alone emitted two times more emissions than had been reduced by mandates over a nearly 20-year period in our state per a study published in the journal “Environmental Pollution.” Moreover, our community has had these monstrous fires going back 100 years, long before there were any bogus notions of climate change.

Accordingly, here is a chart from the Santa Barbara County Fire Department:

And with respect to emission inventories, neither fire nor offshore seeps are counted in our emission inventories as if there is nothing we can do to abate the pollution. Nonetheless, the combination of fires and seeps dwarf the emissions from our use of fossil fuels by orders of magnitude.

For a video commentary from my alter-ego, the Bernie (Sanders) Bro, on this subject before the board of sups please check out Facebook.

What’s worse? The U.S. Forest Service came up with a plan to finally start managing and clearing over a quarter of a million acres of fuels in the Los Padres Forest, but the usual suspects, including the Los Padres Forest Watch, have raised a big enough stink that the scope of the project has been severely downsized.

Santa Barbara’s luck is going to run out one of these days as they keep playing with fire. Pacific Palisades, which may never be rebuilt, should be a lesson that Mother Nature left to her own devices is a stone-cold killer. After the heart-breaking, deadly combination of a fire/debris flow in Montecito, you would think this community would have already learned that lesson.

In conclusion, the various efforts to shut down the oil industry costs consumers and businesses over $1 billion per month in higher gas prices as compared to other states. By ignoring the fuel that continues to build up via 145 million dead trees in our state, we will end up spending billions more putting out fires and rebuilding what has been destroyed, fires which create monstrous plumes of air pollution. How insane is that?

Andy Caldwell is the executive director of COLAB in Santa Barbara County and host of The Andy Caldwell Radio Show, weekdays from 3-5 p.m. on  FM 98.5, FM 99.5, AM 1240, AM 1290 and FM 96.9.