Good Climate Energy News from California on Earth Day! Plus 100% Power Creates New Opportunity!

Hi everybody, Randy Dean, author of the new ebook On Climate: Too Little, Too Late. It is an absolutely stunning April spring day that also happens to coincide with Earth Day, and this is a good news video coming out of the state of California. Dr. Mark Jacobson at Stanford just posted that the state of California, for 38 of the last 46 days has actually achieved 100% or more of its energy needs for at least part of the day, uh, by wind, water, and solar power generation plus battery storage. And I have to tell you, this is potentially the beginning of a breakthrough. A few other countries are doing the same thing right now. To have a state as large as California, fifth largest economy in the world, to be hitting 100% or more for part of the day means that building it out a little bit more, it could be all day every day. Um, honestly, uh, you know, I've been to California recently on some of my business travel, and I can promise you they have still quite a bit of space to build out their systems a bit more, especially with rooftop solar and wind installations. And if they did that plus additional battery storage, I would encourage the state to look at it a different way. There's a bit of a debate happening in the state because prices for electricity have actually gone negative when solar and wind have gone beyond 100%. And what I would encourage is for the state to build it out even more. And here is my reason for saying that, um, if they can build it out even more and especially put in more battery storage to save that excess output, that could position California to be uniquely positioned for supporting the economy in certain energy-intensive industries. Can you say crypto mining? Can you say AI computing? Can you say, uh, things like desalinization of ocean water for fresh water? Uh, can you say cement and, um, concrete production. All of these are very, um, energy-intensive industries. But if you can get the cost of the energy down to close to zero during peak daytime productivity hours and have storage left over for overnight, uh, that could change everything in terms of these industries and position not just California but any state that can get +100% in their productivity, to be able to fundamentally, uh, support industries like that at a much higher level and potentially create an economic boom based off of the fact that your energy prices are so low. Um, and, and I would even throw this idea out there, um, imagine if California gets a much higher adoption rate of electric vehicles and these vehicles are running on 100% renewable power for much, if not all of every day, you've just taken away one of the biggest sources of CO2 and other emissions and pollution right out of your state. So I would encourage you, don't, don't step back because you've gone past 100%. Build it out even more with the intent to use this as an opportunity to greatly grow your economy. And I'm talking to the state states of Arizona and Texas and New Mexico and Florida and the countries of Spain and Portugal and Italy and Morocco and just about any place that might be able to pull off getting, uh, plus 100% electrical generation capability during any time during the day. That super low-cost energy could fundamentally change the nature of how you do business and how your economy works and the kinds of jobs you can create. So yay Earth Day! Finally, great news. This is wonderful news. Hope you share. Bye now.