California is bankrupt. It cannot even pay its employees their contracted wages. Californians have allowed themselves to be robbed by politicians and corporations and promoting expensive ecolocical programs when the State had no money.

No hydroelectric power should be sold into California from out of state. California should build cleaner coal or nuclear power plants to get all of its electricity. The hydroelectric power that is now shipped to California can be used in the states where it is generated; California does not deserve the benefit of the reduction of green house gases provided by these out of state facilities since it is imposing its views upon the other states.

California could have had a large number of electric cars, but it failed because of bribery from the fuel cell industry.

There is no more money available for expensive solar energy in California and all such programs should be stopped immediatly.

The government of California has allowed its residents to be robbed of their money with high electric bills and created an environment for ENRON and its succesors to create shortages so that extortionary prices could be charged.

All California cities should be required by law to install Nuclear power plants to supply all of the power needed by the city. It is a well kept secret that nuclear power plants do not generate more than a few cubic yards of nuclear fuel waste a year.

It is also a well kept secret from the public that there is a well researched and well tested facility in operation for safely storing nuclear fuel wastes from navy ship reactors and other government reactors for more than a million years 2000 feet deep in a large billion year old salt deposit. It is called WIPP and only Federal bureaucracy prevents it from safely storing any and all materials declared to be nuclear wastes. Of all of the few hundred tons of used nuclear fuels rods in storage at reactors, there are only a few tons of real waste; all the rest is useable fuel, economical at todays higher uranium prices.

From the beginning of life, all plants and animals have ingested and survived natural radio-active potassium and have survived more natural radio-activity from the earth and space. There are fewer pounds of radio-active atoms on earth because of nuclear reactors. Nuclear reactors do not make pounds of radio-active atoms, but they actually destroy as many as possible. But there are enough radio-active atoms naturally on the earth to supply millions of years of energy at the present rate of energy consumption. Shortly after then, fusion energy will become available upon the earth. ..HG..

@Henry -
Millions of years of energy? Got references to support that?

Henry;Calif has one of the lowest per-capita energy useages in the whole nation,much due to the stringent energy standards that were adopted when Jerry Brown was the governor. Why punish us now for the fact that further reductions,at least in terms of home and building useage,will be hard to find? How about people from Alaska,Nevada, or Florida, who presumably spend alot more energy heating and cooling to live there-are you going to punish them too, or reward the Alaskans, none of whose oil ends up being refined in the US?
I grant you that Calif has a love/hate affair with the automobile, and we drive too much.But we have been driving smaller more energy efficient Japanese cars long before they became very popular in the rest of the country. Richard

I disagree with the part where it suggests to reduce, and I quote, "travel demand" to the state... if anything, travel demand should be fostered and encouraged, for it brings along visitors that contribute to the state's prosperity... other than that, I agree with most of the article... ;)

I assume that both in the hydrogen and the electric scenarios, the primary energy source to produce the hydrogen and the electricity is biomass?

I was wondering where they were proposing to get the hydrogen too. They refer extensively to "low carbon hydrogen"

"In this analysis, feedstocks for hydrogen production considered include natural gas, coal, biomass, and water
electrolysis (with varying degrees of carbon intensity for electricity)...The lowest carbon intensities are associated with electricity and/or hydrogen production from nuclear and renewables. Production via these pathways can potentially reduce lifecycle GHG emissions to essentially zero."

Its not some strange mystic mumbo jumbo.

Its the very basic fact that MORE is always better then not enough.

H2 simply means more options and more cars/trucks that will be doable under 2020 2030 and 2040 conditions.

EVEN with h2 there likely will be some rather nasty gaps in the car/truck market.. but there wil be fewer of them.

I'm surprised there was no mention of increased use of advanced forms of public transpotation. By 2030 it's possible that such systems could be 5 times more efficient than 1990, and travel in excess of 200 mph thereby taking a bite out of airline travel.

John

Because most of the high speed rail projects are now fubared due to the budget. We live right where one of the high speed rail lines will be going through but at this point we expect the line will take many decades to be built if it ever is.

Californai is living in dreamland.

Read this article for a perspective.

http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_2_californias_environmentalism.html

Just why do es Californai have to get 80% below 1990? Wah tsi so sacred about a990.. It was a polirtical compromise by ther phonmy greesnof Europe to allow thm a leg up ontargets becasue it allowed Europe to include the collapsing economies of teh Communist bloc to remove a lot of the CO2, si they did no thave to do so. it was a form of legal cheating.

Why does it have to be a target of 80% or 75 or 60 or 50 or 30 or even 25% or even 0% below 1990.

I do not see that 1990 was an intolerable, unsustainable, situation at all. The World'd temperatur ewa sbarel measureably higher than a century before. Some suggested that if the hea rtisland effect were properly accounted for there may have been no temperature changes at all.

These discussion remind me of the praise for the Emperor's new clothes. Many sycophants spoke of the glimmering shine of the delicate dyes, others of the fine tailoring, yada, yada,yada. It's all makes no sense. In other words it's pure nonsense.

California is living in dreamland.

Read this article for a perspective.

http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_2_californias_environmentalism.html

Just why does California have to get 80% below 1990? What is so sacred about 1990? It was selelcted as political compromise by their phony Greens of Europe to allow them a leg up on targets. Because it allowed Europe to include the collapsing economies of the ex-Communist bloc to remove a lot of the CO2, so they did not have to do so. It was a form of legal cheating by Europe.

Why does it have to be a target of 80% or 75 or 60 or 50 or 30 or even 25% or even 0% below 1990?

I do not see that 1990 was an intolerable, unsustainable, situation at all. The World's temperature was barely measureably higher than a century before. Some suggested that if the heat island effect were properly accounted for there, may have been no real temperature changes at all. As it is, the debate is whether 0.6 Centigrade rise in a century, is of any significance at all anyway.

These discussion remind me of the praise for the Emperor's new clothes. Many sycophants spoke of the glimmering shine of the delicate dyes, others of the fine tailoring, yada, yada,yada. It's all makes no sense. In other words it's pure nonsense.

It can be done with big investments in nuclear, geothermal, wind, and Solar. (Wind and Solar are on the list because a useful amount of them could be built quickly, not because they are complete solutions.) Cars would be PHEVs. Vehicle fuels would be artificial gasoline and kerosene, manufactured from water and atmospheric CO2, retailing at about $5 per gallon before taxes. Retail electricity would be about $0.20 per kiloWatt-hour. Breeder reactors and reprocessing would be used both to extend the supplies of uranium (and later, thorium) and to essentially eliminate high-level waste requiring long-term storage. A fringe benefit of nuclear is that it can reduce the cost of desalinated drinking water.

We can do this. Eventually we must do this (whatever you think of global warming, the world will run out of all fossil fuels in this century unless the world population or economy collapse permanently). We just have to pay for it. The sooner we start the less painful the transition will be.