Green energy adherents in the US are having a holiday: there has been an oil spill on the California coast
As a result of breakage of an underwater pipeline near the town of Huntington Beach in the southern part of the state, about 3,000 barrels, or 126,000 US gallons of oil got into the Pacific water no later than the evening of October 1.
Incidentally, these figures are just an estimate so far. It is based on theoretical calculations from 2012, when it was required to estimate the maximum damage in the event of a complete cut of the “pipe” three miles offshore. And the worst-case scenario was exactly that – 3,000 barrels, or 126 US gallons of oil. And that is what everyone is dancing around.
California Screamin’
The accident immediately had the predictable consequences. The American media vied with one another for footage of the oily film on the sea waves. The social media were flooded with reposted pictures of dead fish and oil-soaked birds, not always from California. Angry surfers are in their fourth day complaining about ruined beaches. Shares in the Houston-based culprit company, Amplify Energy Corp, have plummeted 51%. And authorities in Huntington Beach, once raised just on oil, have been crying out for an environmental disaster nonstop.
State politicians – Democrats and Republicans alike – have joined the cry. On the fourth day, the “blue” Governor of California Gavin Newsom even declared the state of emergency in the suffered Orange County. Though, compared to, say, the 1969 spill, when 80,000 barrels were spilled into the sea off the Californian coast, the present accident does not sound much like a catastrophe. It certainly bears no comparison to the 2010 Gulf of Mexico disaster, when an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon platform dumped more than 5m barrels of oil into the ocean.
Why, then, are Californians screaming so hard? Their cry has two aims. The first is to get federal funding from Washington to clean up the spill. The second one is to shut down more oil platforms operating off the coast of the state and also to shut down more oil pipelines all over the US.
Governor Newsom is in league with the Greens: he insists on stopping all drilling in California, though only by 2045. Now, apparently, this happy day can come sooner. And with it the Golden State’s complete abandonment of hydrocarbon energy, also so far scheduled for the distant year 2045. It is no coincidence that California is considered to be a leading state in the US for promoting clean energy values.
Peaceful Atom: Americans against the Unclean
So far, however, it is a long way off. According to the 2020 results, only 33.09% of California’s electricity generation was from renewable sources. In first place is good old-fashioned natural gas (37.06%). Another 21.5% of generation came from nuclear power plants and large hydroelectric plants – and that’s where it gets interesting.
In the eyes of Americans, both do not belong to “clean energy” – that is, they should be cut down mercilessly. And if big hydroelectric power stations are just unlucky with their size (their small analogues are considered quite “green” and give the state a modest 1.39% of generation), the reasons for putting nuclear power plants in the category of “unclean” have, so to say, a worldview character.
It would seem, what has the nuclear power plant done wrong? After all, their work does not lead to any greenhouse effect. But it turns out that opponents of peaceful atom in California outnumber supporters of climate protection. It was the public opinion, heavily influenced by the propaganda on the part of environmental brands, that pushed through the most important decision – closure of the last operating nuclear power plant in the state, Diablo Canyon, already by 2025.
This was largely due to the accident at Fukushima in the spring of 2011, and the fact that Diablo Canyon, according to some scientists, is also in the zone of possible earthquakes. In this case, the Americans’ fear of a repeat of the Japanese disaster superimposed on the already traditional phobia of a terrorist attack, which was born on September 11, 2001, and gave a “synergistic effect”.
Among other arguments against nuclear power plants, the need for “somewhere to dispose” of spent nuclear fuel and even the quite environmentally friendly process of dumping back into the ocean the seawater that cools the reactor are regularly mentioned.
As a result, back in 2016, Diablo Canyon’s owner, the scandal-plagued Californian company PG&E, agreed with environmentalists that both of its nuclear power units would only last until their licences expired – that is, until 2024 and 2025. Although these units could supply the state with clean electricity for another 40 years.
“Critical breaking point”
So, what do we see? Guided by the “only true” environmental doctrine and mercilessly exploiting public fears, the California government is on course to abandon carbon power altogether and to crash its nuclear generation in the process. At the same time, non-carbon hydropower, albeit dirty, is being phased out – as it did in 2020, when the state’s hydroelectric plants produced 44% less current than the year before due to drought and heat.
All this is accompanied by accidents, rolling blackouts and huge fires, caused among other things by the extremely deteriorated power grid of said PG&E, as RUSSTRAT has already written about. To make ends meet, Californians every year are taught to save light and not to use appliances after 9 pm.
And on September 10, 2021, due to endless emergencies, droughts and fires, the US Department of Energy even issued an emergency order, allowing gas power stations in California to work for two months without any pollution limits (!), so long as the state could meet its energy obligations.
Incidentally, the recipient of the ministerial order, California grid operator CAISO, predicted just under a year ago that decommissioning the “devilish” nuclear power plant in 2025 would result in a “tipping point” for the entire state. At such a point, California’s power grid simply won’t be able to operate reliably without increased use of… yes, yes, all those already hydrocarbons as fuel. And no solar panels and wind turbines will save the matter.
But Californians, like those mice in the joke, keep on “crying, stabbing, but eating cactus” of RES generation. People are ready to kill their own energy and go back to the Stone Age every evening after 9 p.m., just to stay on the path of accelerated decarbonisation. And it seems like it’s already a cult.
Russtrat