California politics are synonymous with many things, but failed energy policy might be the most relevant.
The Ivanpah solar power plant is on its way to being shut down, just 11 years after it opened. PG&E pulled out of its contract with the plant, leading to a planned closure of two of its three units by next year, while Southern California Edison is also working on buying out its contract. The plant cost $2.2 billion to build, and the Department of Energy said taxpayers will receive a refund of an undisclosed amount for the $1.6 billion in department loans. The contracts were supposed to take the plant through at least 2039.
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In all, the energy from the plant costs too much money. It produced around 70% of what it was projected to produce annually. The sea of mirrors that the plant relied on to produce the energy led to the plant catching on fire in 2016, after mirrors were wrongly positioned in relation to the sun. The plant struggled with energy production due to weather, clouds, and jet streams, and was also pretty bad for the environment, what with the whole burning-birds-to-death thing. The plant also used natural gas to keep itself running, around six times the limit allowed by the California Energy Commission.
What is most shocking is the scope and scale of this project compared to the icky nuclear energy California has tried to rid itself of over the same time period. In 2020, Ivanpah produced 856 gigawatt-hours of energy. This represented a “substantial increase in efficiency and output,” and 91% of the plant’s production goals. The plant takes up 3,500 acres of land.
Meanwhile, the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant is the last nuclear plant in California. It takes up around 750 acres and produces over 17,700 gigawatt-hours of energy. That is around 20 times more than Ivanpah and accounted for over 8% of California’s in-state energy production in 2023. The nuclear plant is so successful that California Democrats have temporarily stopped trying to destroy it. In 2016, the state wanted to shut down the plant by 2025. In 2023, state regulators voted to push that deadline back to 2030.
Also, Diablo Canyon doesn’t have massive mirrors that work as bird death rays. Not bad for the only form of clean energy that environmentalists despise.
You would think California would be eager to recreate those numbers if a zero-carbon future were truly the state’s goal, but you would be wrong. Instead, the state bets its future on grand projects such as Ivanpah, which are more inefficient in energy production and land use. Sure, massive solar plants may not keep the lights on without natural gas, oil, and nuclear propping up the state’s grid, but at least it makes environmentalists feel good about themselves (so long as we don’t talk about the dead birds).
To say something positive about Ivanpah as it prepares for the end, at least it was actually constructed. Take that, California High-Speed Rail Authority.