California’s Electrical Power is About 60% Clean Energy. The US, 42%.
It has long been a puzzle how clean the power used in California is, since a fair percentage of California’s power comes from out-of-state, and not on particular contracts. In the case of SCEdison it is a massive 42%. I now find that the California Energy Almanac at energy.ca.gov gives a value for the state of CO2 emissions from out-of-state power contributions, so I can use that as well. These methods converge at about 60% clean energy. The not-clean share is the cleanest fossil fuel, natural gas. The data is from 2020.
For California for 2020 from the Almanac, renewables make up 34.5%, large hydro 13.9%, and nuclear 10.6%, which total 59.0%.
California’s goals in the Renewable Portfolio Standard was for 33% by 2020, which a source quotes as having been exceeded at 36%. The next goal is 60% renewable by 2030, but that has also been reached if you just count clean energy. The goal is 100% by 2045, although some would be satisfied if it is just all clean energy, not necessarily all renewables.
The values cited in the SCEdison 2020 Power Mix for California are:
Eligible Renewable: 33.1%, broken down as
Solar 13.2%
Wind 11.1%
Geothermal 4.9%
Biomass and Biowaste 2.5%
Eligible Hydroelectric 1.4%
Large Hydroelectric 12.2%
Nuclear 9.3%
Natural Gas 37.1%
Coal 2.7%
Other 0.2%
Unspecified Power (open market) 5.4%.
The total of Clean Power sources here is 54.6%. However, the Unspecified is mostly from the NorthWest, which is mainly large hydro and wind. Including that gives 60.0% Clean. That is close to 59.0% in the Almanac. Fossil fuel sources total 40.0%.
Imported power is 30.0% of the California Mix, and California generated power is 70.0%. Of the Imported power, 80.4% is Clean, and 19.6% is Fossil Fuels. Of the California generated power, 51.3% is Clean, and 48.7% is Fossil Fuels. See the next article for a further breakdown.
Below are graphs of CO2e equivalent emissions of imported power versus California in-State generated power. Presumably the units are MMtons, or millions of metric tons of CO2e. A metric ton is about 2200 lbs, or 1.1 US ton. Since 2000, in-State CO2e has declined from 60 MMtons to about 33 MMtons per year. But even larger, CO2e emissions from imports have declined from 110 MMtons to about 23 MMtons per year. A lot of that pollution reduction might be running out of long-term coal contracts hastily made when California ran short of power one summer. Part of the imports are clean hydro from Oregon’s Columbia River Bonneville dam, with a direct power line to Los Angeles.
California also gets clean power from a part of the 4 Gigawatts of nuclear reactors at Palo Verde near Phoenix Arizona. That amounted to 8,481 GWh in 2020. The total 9,154 GWh of imported nuclear was 11.21% of Imported power. If the two nuclear reactors at Diablo Canyon are closed in 2024 and 2025, the two 1.1 GigaWatt nuclear reactors will remove the 16,280 GWh per year or 1.86 GWy (GigaWatt years) of clean power per year. That is 8.53% of California’s power production. Even if that is replaced with Imported clean energy, it just takes it off of some other state’s clean power, and does nothing to help the planet.
Still, out of the roughly 56 MMtons of CO2e total emissions for California power, 23 MMtons in Imported power is 41%.
California total electrical energy generated plus imported was 272,576 GWh in 2020. With 1 Quad = 293,071 GWh, that is 0.93 Quads. The 0.066 Quads of the Diablo Canyon nuclear reactors is 7.1% of California’s total electrical energy use. With 36.6 Quads used in electrical energy nationally, California’s share is only 2.54%, yet we have about 12% of the population and households.
US Electrical Power
In the United States, in 2021 there were 97.3 Quads of total energy generated. 36.6 Quads were for electricity generation.
The clean sources for this were:
Nuclear 8.13 Quads
Wind 3.32 Quads
Hydro 2.27 Quads
Solar 1.0 Quads
Geothermal 0.14 Quads
Biomass 0.44 Quads
These total 15.3 Quads, or 41.8% of total electric energy.
The fossil fuel sources were:
Natural Gas 11.6 Quads
Coal 9.47 Quads
Petroleum 0.2 Quads
These total 21.27 Quads, or 58.1% of total electric energy from fossil fuels.
So nationally, we are generating 42% clean electricity.
Another difference between the US and CA in 2020 which cannot be overlooked is that the US cost for electricity averaged 10.59 cents per kWh, while California averaged 18.00 cents per kWh. With the higher cost, however, California produced 59% clean power with natural gas for the fossil fuel segment, compared to only 42% clean power for the US, with about an equal mix of coal and natural gas for the US fossil fuel generation.
