California and Newsom passed an initial test — keeping the lights and power on despite triple-digit temperatures covering much of the state that pushed the state’s power grid to its limits.
But that didn’t stop Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.), another potential presidential candidate Newsom used as a GOP foil this summer, from taking a shot.
“I hear a lot of people chirping about Florida from California. They are so worried about Florida. They can’t even keep the power on in California, are you kidding me?’ DeSantis said.
Republicans also hit Newsom over the state’s plan to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035. Noting the California Independent System’s call for state residents to avoid charging electric cars during certain peak times.
“I kind of feel like they’re holding things together with bandits right now. They also just expanded the Diable nuclear power plant. I think that was a common sense thing for them to do. So I think they’re trying to hold it all together, but it’s really a lot of misinvestment over decades and the reliance on wind and solar, in particular, that kind of led to this situation,” said Derrick Morgan, Conservative vice-chairman. The Heritage Foundation think tank told Changing America.
“I think it’s a cautionary tale that pursuing the policies included in the Green New Deal, or continuing to pursue that, can be a real risk,” Morgan added.
Newsom in recent days has pushed back against his critics, arguing that the state has never seen such extreme heat for so long.
He said Wednesday that the state should continue to improve efforts to address climate change, but argued that actions the state has taken over the past two years, including increasing battery storage and extending the life of backups generators, are what kept the power going.
“If we hadn’t done what we’ve done the last two years, we would have had back-to-back blackouts in the last week,” Newsom said Wednesday.
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Last week’s near-crisis highlighted California’s delicate balancing act of phasing out fossil fuels while keeping the grid running reliably in the face of extreme weather events that demand more power.
The state saw temperature records being broken in cities stretching from the Bay Area to just south of Los Angeles. Sacramento hit 116 degrees Fahrenheit on Tuesday, breaking the previous all-time high of 114 set in 1925.
The state narrowly averted a blackout order on Tuesday, a method that involves turning off power in some areas to save power for others, during the most intense phase of the heatwave as Californians heeded the call to reduce power use. The state was also forced to turn on gas-fired generators. The ISO reported statewide power demand reached 52,061 megawatts, a record for California.
California has taken some of the most aggressive actions in the nation to cut its reliance on fossil fuels and increase its use of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. Those steps, to some extent, have elevated Newsom to the political stage as Democrats seek policy leaders on climate change.
But the problems are also fodder for Republicans to smear Newsom and his policies.
California Assembly Republican Leader James Gallagher said the risk of back-to-back blackouts is the result of failed Democratic policies and said the state was “lucky” to get through Tuesday without an ordered power outage.
The state has drawn up plans to get all its energy from renewable sources by 2045, an ambitious goal as electricity demand is expected to increase and heat waves are predicted to strike with greater frequency and intensity. Utilities are working to increase renewable energy as well as battery storage for use when the sun goes down.
According to ISO CEO and President Elliot Mainzer, California has put nearly 8,000 megawatts of clean energy resources on the grid over the past two years, including more than 3,300 megawatts of lithium-ion batteries.
Michael Colvin, director of the California Energy Program at the Environmental Defense Fund, credited California’s battery storage fleet with helping prevent blackouts.
“There are two reasons in particular that we were able to avoid rolling blackouts because it came so close. The first was that the California customers themselves showed up,” Colvin said.
“The second hero of the story in my opinion is what I would call virtual power plants or battery storage facilities.”
It’s not clear that Newsom will run for president — especially since President Biden still plans to.
But Biden’s age — he would turn 81 weeks after Election Day in 2024 — and his low approval ratings have raised questions about whether he would change his mind. If Biden opts out, it is likely to lead to a wide race that will almost certainly include Vice President Kamala Harris, another Californian.
Newsom gained attention over the summer when he ran a television ad in Florida urging the state’s residents to come to California.
“Freedom, your state is under attack. Republican leaders, ban books, make it harder to vote, limit speech in classrooms, even criminalize women and doctors,” Newsom said in the ad, which featured images of both DeSantis and former President Trump.
“I encourage all of you who live in Florida to join the fight. Or join us in California, where we still believe in freedom – freedom of speech, freedom of choice, freedom from hate and freedom to love.”
Newsom’s office did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Colvin, who focuses on strategies for California’s clean energy transition, said the recent heat wave is unusual in that it affected the majority of the state for an extended period of time. He says there’s usually more flexibility during heat waves, as power can be redirected for air conditioning in different areas that need it.
“California knows how to handle a hot day. We have enough power to be able to do this. But just like people, the power grid itself needs to cool down, you end up with operational problems and breakdowns if you have a lot of hot days in a row without any nighttime relief to try and cool things down,” he added. .
