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How California's Environmental Mandates Led to Blackouts
California's rolling blackouts this summer were caused by decades of costly and poorly planned decisions to replace coal, nuclear, and…
reason.com
"It speaks to the delusion of California policymakers," says Michael Shellenberger, the president of Environmental Progress, which advocates for greater reliance on nuclear power as a way to reduce CO2 emissions and provide reliable energy. "They really convinced themselves that they could manage all of this increased demand on renewables, which are fundamentally unreliable."
California banned the construction of new nuclear reactors in 1976 and has been incentivizing companies to close older plants by piling on burdensome regulations ever since.
Shellenberger says this loss has made California more susceptible to blackouts.
"It would have just provided the energy that we didn't have," says Shellenberger. "The nuclear plant, unlike the solar farms or wind, is reliable like 92 percent of the year."
Yup. Green energy is an expensive, unreliable scam.