Environment

Is California's Carbon-Free Energy Plan Aggressive Enough?

By Pat Finn / Producer , Mark Sauer / Host, The Roundtable

Published September 18, 2020 at 9:00 AM PDT

This story was published more than 4 years ago.

The orange haze covering the San Diego skyline on Sept. 15, 2020, because of smoke from wildfires across California, including the Valley Fire in rural East County.

Two years ago Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law a plan to make all California's energy supply carbon-free by 2045. The devastating wildfires and intense heat of 2020 have caused environmental groups to lobby to move that date up 15 years.

Much of California is choking under a blanket of smoke and ash from deadly wildfires that have blackened miles of backcountry up and down the Golden State.

The dire conditions have caused environmental groups to re-think the current plan to have the state use entirely carbon-free energy by 2045. That's not good enough, say groups such as Environment California. They say we should be aiming for 2030.

SB 100, signed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown in 2018, commits the state to getting 100% of its energy from carbon-free sources in 15 years.

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Moving the time frame forward will mean solving problems with reliance on solar and wind power even sooner. Both those renewable sources of energy are intermittent and must be stored or supplemented by carbon-free sources of energy, like hydro-electric dams and even nuclear, an unlikely power source for California

Rob Nikoleski, energy writer for The San Diego Union-Tribune, joins Midday Edition on Friday to discuss what it would take to change California's energy plan and who currently opposes such change.

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Pat Finn

Pat Finn previously served as a producer for KPBS Midday Edition and KPBS Evening Edition. Finn began her career in broadcasting at KTLA and KCET in Los Angeles. In 1979 she became KPBS’ Public Information Director, then Director of Advertising and Promotion, Program Director, and Director of Broadcasting. She oversaw the station’s local and national productions, including the one-hour documentary Los Romeros: The Royal Family of the Guitar, and Child Protective Services, a one-hour look inside the San Diego County agency responsible for the welfare of at risk children. Both programs also aired on public television stations nationwide. Finn has earned honors from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Pacific Southwest Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

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Mark Sauer

A newspaperman for more than 30 years, Mark Sauer joined KPBS in October 2010 and previously served as the host of the KPBS Roundtable. He spent 27 years as a reporter and editor at The San Diego Union-Tribune after stints at The Houston Post and at two papers in his native Michigan. A features/human-interest writer in the UT's Currents section for many years, Mark also spent about a third of his UT career as an editor and reporter on the Metro Desk. He has covered a wide range of events: Wild fires in Southern California and Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast; Super Bowls and the World Series; foster care and child-abuse issues; the Roman Catholic Diocese's sexual-abuse scandal and bankruptcy; royal visits of Queen Elizabeth, Prince Charles and Princess Diana; Republican and Democratic national conventions; high-profile criminal trials; and many other stories, from the silly to the sublime. Along the way, he interviewed everyone from presidents to pan-handlers. His work exposing the false accusations and prosecutions of several San Diegans for murder, rape and child abuse garnered Pulitzer Prize nominations and many regional and local journalism awards, including Best in the West, the Sol Price Award for Responsible Journalism and several San Diego and California bar-association awards. Mark has a degree in journalism from Michigan State University.

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