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Given its failures, can California manage a transition to a carbon-free future?

  • Writer: Think Big
    Think Big
  • Apr 23
  • 1 min read

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Andrew Krulewitz charges his Hyundai Ioniq 6 in Oakland on Feb. 27, 2024. Electric vehicle sales have plateaued in California. Photo by Camille Cohen for CalMatters
Andrew Krulewitz charges his Hyundai Ioniq 6 in Oakland on Feb. 27, 2024. Electric vehicle sales have plateaued in California. Photo by Camille Cohen for CalMatters

It’s become painfully obvious in recent years that California officialdom lacks the ability to plan and deliver major projects.


While examples abound, the state’s woebegone bullet train project, its tortuous efforts to implement information technology and the financial and managerial meltdown of its unemployment insurance program are among the most egregious.


Given that sorry record, why should we believe the state’s plans to completely overhaul California’s economy by eliminating hydrocarbon-based energy will be any more successful?


Over the next 20 years, California wants to replace nearly 30 million gasoline and diesel-powered cars and light trucks with those using batteries or hydrogen. Simultaneously California is supposed to wean itself from natural-gas-fired electric power generation and increase power output, to recharge many millions of car batteries and service houses and commercial buildings that will no longer use gas.


 
 
 

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