California’s first rolling blackouts since the 2001 energy crisis are a stark reminder that achieving 100% carbon-free energy is harder than it looks.
With the worst heat wave in generations fueling near-record electricity demand, the state’s rapid shift away from fossil fuels is making it difficult to ensure that the lights stay on. California, guided by one of the world’s most ambitious clean-energy policies, has shuttered a massive amount of natural gas-fired generation in its bid to for carbon-free power. Now, the blackouts are raising questions about whether that shift happened too quickly.
