By Chris Woodward
"California made a decision to try to be the most forward-thinking state in the country with regards to embracing clean energy and renewable energy," explains Merrill Matthews, Ph.D. of the Texas-based Institute for Policy Innovation. "So, for the last several years they have been decommissioning natural gas-powered plants and trying to transition over to wind and solar power ….
"[Now] they're finding that a lot of their power plants simply cannot produce the electricity necessary because the renewable energy, the clean energy, just simply isn't providing the power." Thus, the blackouts, Matthews concludes.
Governor Gavin Newsom (D-California) has called for investigation into California's blackouts – and while energy officials say they warned this might happen last year due to the state's shift in renewable energy usage, at least one environmental attorney blames gas.
"It was actually gas that failed," says Shana Lazerow of Communities for a Better Environment in an article on gizmodo.com. "We should be talking about how gas is unreliable."
Whatever the case may be, Matthews believes Newsom and California should have been prepared.
"It is Governor Newsom and environmentalists who have been warning us for years that we're going to have hotter summers," says Matthews. "So, if anybody should have been prepared, it should have been California – and yet it turns out they are the least prepared state to be able to meet their electricity needs."
The Green New Deal calls for, among other thing, a dramatic change in the way people live and work. One area involves moving away from the fossil fuels society depends on for electricity generation toward renewable sources like wind and solar energy.