California will have to deploy renewable power at record-breaking speed over the next few decades to meet its target for carbon-free electricity by 2045, a transformation that state agencies say in a new report this week is technically achievable but immensely challenging.
The scale of deployment California alone will need to achieve underscores the hurdles facing President Biden and his team as he calls for eliminating carbon from the power sector by 2035, 10 years earlier than California’s target. The effort would require the biggest transformation of the electricity sector since it was built.
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Many utility industry leaders are already suggesting a 2035 target, also adopted recently by House Democrats in their sweeping climate bill, wouldn’t be achievable without compromising electric reliability or affordability.
For California to reach its legislative target of 100% clean electricity by 2045, the state could have to build up to 6 gigawatts of new renewable energy and storage capacity each year, according to a joint report released Monday from California’s three energy and environment agencies. That is significantly more than the roughly 1 GW of utility-scale solar and 300 megawatts of wind California has built each year over the last decade.
Renewable energy, largely wind and solar, accounts for roughly 36% of California’s electricity grid to date. The state has a goal to get to 60% renewables by 2030.
The agencies also suggest that in addition to greening its electricity grid, California will have to expand it substantially, by roughly 3 times, to meet growing demand for power as sectors such as transportation and buildings electrify.
Building out those clean energy resources to meet the 2045 target would increase electricity system costs 6% by that year, when compared to the estimated cost of reaching 60% renewable energy by 2030, the agencies found.
If California were to retire all of its fossil fuel plants by 2045, it would be $8 billion more expensive to meet the 100% clean electricity target, according to a sensitivity case modeled by the agencies.
“The concern is, do we need new natural gas for the transition to clean energy? I think the answer is no,” said Ric O’Connell, executive director of GridLab. “Natural gas can absolutely help us get from where we are today to where we want to go, but eventually, we are going to have to move away from it.”
The Biden administration will be forced to grapple with what role natural gas will play in helping to meet its aggressive climate goals.
Crucially, the California agencies say the existence of lower-cost, zero-carbon baseload power would significantly reduce the amount of solar and battery storage California would need to construct to meet its goal, also cutting the cost.
For California, however, that zero-carbon baseload isn’t likely to be advanced nuclear power, as the state is prohibited by law from building new nuclear facilities. The agencies’ modeling also didn’t include nascent low-carbon technologies such as natural gas plants with carbon capture or green hydrogen produced with renewable energy, for which the agencies said they lacked cost and performance data.
O’Connell, who has helped conduct modeling about how the United States can reach 90% zero-carbon power by 2035, said much of the greening of the grid in California and nationally can be accomplished with existing technology.
“It’s totally achievable. It’s just pretty challenging,” he said, adding, “The challenge comes from the scale of the deployment needed.” O’Connell said the toughest part will be eliminating the last 10% of carbon emissions from the electricity system.
Many utilities have said achieving the last 10% to 20% of emissions reductions would likely require zero-carbon technologies that haven’t yet been commercialized or fully developed.
O’Connell added that some of the biggest questions California and the Biden administration will face will be how to weigh the trade-offs of various technologies, such as competing land use when building resources like solar farms, and how to remove regulatory barriers to construct power capacity and transmission lines more quickly.
GridLab and fellow research firm Energy Innovation are also working on analyses for how California can meet its 100% clean electricity target 10 years earlier to match Biden’s 2035 goal.
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California’s energy and environmental agencies did model scenarios with stricter 100% clean electricity targets of 2030, 2035, and 2040. Those scenarios see a big jump in electricity system costs in the year the state would be required to reach 100%, but that cost difference would largely level out by 2045, the agencies found.
