OPINION:
Gavin Newsom, the current governor of California, is running for president — maybe in 2024, certainly in 2028.
That has been the mood music for most of the last year, as some Democrats dream about getting rid of their current ticket and replacing it with more adept, more popular, more articulate, and less physically and mentally rickety politicians.
Mr. Newsom has not been shy about his desire to nudge President Biden and his home state senator out of the way. In the last few days, Mr. Newsom’s rapacity has become even more conspicuous, as he has wandered away from environmental orthodoxy and taken aggressive steps to ensure that California — unlike Texas, its perennial rival — steers a wide course around both blackouts and surging electricity prices.
Politico has noticed and recently started a story by noting: “The California governor is focused on keeping the lights on even if it means reversing pledges to eliminate dirty and risky power sources.”
Leaving aside the gratuitous propaganda where neutral journalism should be, Politico is on to something.
Mr. Newsom, who actively campaigned on shutting down the natural gas storage facility in Aliso Canyon just north of Los Angeles, is now trying to store more natural gas in Aliso Canyon as part of an attempt to avoid energy price increases and, in the worst case, blackouts.
This despite the fact that in 2015, the Aliso Canyon site experienced one of the largest methane leaks in U.S. history.
At the moment, that doesn’t appear to be very important to the governor, whose Public Utilities Commission recently unanimously approved increasing storage capacity in Aliso Canyon to almost 70 billion cubic feet, which is about a 60% increase. By comparison, all of California uses about 6 billion cubic feet a day.
What drove that unusual vote? Well, natural gas bills from SoCalGas (which owns Aliso Canyon) doubled recently as a consequence of cold weather and supply constraints that the company said could have been moderated by added reserves.
An earlier analysis by the California PUC concluded pretty much the same thing: “Aliso Canyon stabilizes electric and gas rates and helps prevent price spikes in summer electric generation.”
That’s a shock; who would have guessed that supply and demand were connected?
In addition, Mr. Newsom has kept the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant open amid opposition from environmentalists and despite his own previous insistence that it be closed. He has also extended the life of three natural gas-fired power plants.
How can the transition to clean energy happen with this sort of backsliding going on? Well, it turns out that some governors may care more about reliability and affordability than about the energy transition.
As former Gov. Gray Davis — who presided over California’s rolling blackouts in 2003 — noted for the Politico story: “If there’s a blackout, it’s the governor’s fault. Certainly, they don’t send you congratulations when you keep the power on, but ultimately, they’ll hold the governor responsible for maintaining the grid.”
The voters of California certainly held Mr. Davis responsible for the blackouts; they recalled him in 2003.
It seems safe to conclude that citizens think the uninterrupted provision of electricity at nonconfiscatory prices should be a necessity in an advanced nation like the United States. They would rather not be the lab rats for various schemes.
Who can blame them? The hard and unavoidable reality is that modern life — air conditioning, the refrigerating of food and medicine, lighting, manufacturing, computers, televisions, etc. — is completely reliant on electricity that is always available and available at an affordable price.
It also turns out that natural gas — essential for heating, the generation of electricity, and most of the chemicals that make the modern world the modern world (including many of the most common and necessary pharmaceuticals) — is also pretty handy, especially when it is plentiful and (consequently) affordable.
Smart politicians — and Mr. Newsom is a smart politician — know that and act accordingly. That is why he has turned his back on his brethren in the environmental community.
The larger lesson is that whether the energy transition progresses or stalls, few elected officials with wider ambitions are going to allow themselves to be placed between reliable and affordable energy for citizens and the more aspirational goals of the environmental community.
Gavin Newsom, preparing to run for president probably sooner rather than later, knows this and is acting accordingly. Others will follow his lead.
• Michael McKenna, a columnist for The Washington Times, is president of MWR Strategies. He was most recently a deputy assistant to the president and deputy director of the Office of Legislative Affairs at the White House. He can be reached at mike@mwrstrat.com.
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