More than half of new U.S. electric-generating capacity in 2023 will be solar

UK Transport Policy Overhaul signals bans on petrol and diesel cars, rail franchising reform, 15-minute cities, and active travel, tackling congestion, emissions, microplastics, urban sprawl, and public health with systemic, multimodal planning.

Key Points

A shift toward EVs, rail reform, and 15-minute cities to reduce emissions, congestion, and health risks.

✅ Phase-out of petrol and diesel car sales by 2030

✅ National rail franchising replaced with integrated operations

✅ Urban design: 15-minute cities, cycling, and active travel

Could it be true? That this government will bring all sales of petrol and diesel cars to an end by 2030, even as a 2035 EV mandate in Canada is derided by critics? That it will cancel all rail franchises and replace them with a system that might actually work? Could the UK, for the first time since the internal combustion engine was invented, really be contemplating a rational transport policy? Hold your horses.

Before deconstructing it, let’s mark this moment. Both announcements might be a decade or two overdue, but we should bank them as they’re essential steps towards a habitable nation.

We don’t yet know exactly what they mean, as the government has delayed its full transport announcement until later this autumn. But so far, nothing that surrounds these positive proposals makes any sense, and the so-called EV revolution often proves illusory in practice.

If the government has a vision for transport, it appears to be plug and play. We’ll keep our existing transport system, but change the kinds of vehicles and train companies that use it. But when you have a system in which structural failure is embedded, nothing short of structural change will significantly improve it.

A switch to electric cars will reduce pollution, though the benefits depend on the power mix; in Canada, Canada’s grid was 18% fossil-fuelled in 2019, for example. It won’t eliminate it, as a high proportion of the microscopic particles thrown into the air by cars, which are highly damaging to our health, arise from tyres grating on the surface of the road. Tyre wear is also by far the biggest source of microplastics pouring into our rivers and the sea. And when tyres, regardless of the engine that moves them, come to the end of their lives, we still have no means of properly recycling them.

Cars are an environmental hazard long before they leave the showroom. One estimate suggests that the carbon emissions produced in building each one equate to driving it for 150,000km. The rise in electric vehicle sales has created a rush for minerals such as lithium and copper, with devastating impacts on beautiful places. If the aim is greatly to reduce the number of vehicles on the road, and replace those that remain with battery-operated models, alongside EV battery recycling efforts, then they will be part of the solution. But if, as a forecast by the National Grid proposes, the current fleet is replaced by 35m electric cars, a University of Toronto study warns they are not a silver bullet, and we’ll simply create another environmental disaster.

Switching power sources does nothing to address the vast amount of space the car demands, which could otherwise be used for greens, parks, playgrounds and homes. It doesn’t stop cars from carving up community and turning streets into thoroughfares and outdoor life into a mortal hazard. Electric vehicles don’t solve congestion, or the extreme lack of physical activity that contributes to our poor health.

So far, the government seems to have no interest in systemic change. It still plans to spend £27bn on building even more roads, presumably to accommodate all those new electric cars. An analysis by Transport for Quality of Life suggests that this road-building will cancel out 80% of the carbon savings from a switch to electric over the next 12 years. But everywhere, even in the government’s feted garden villages and garden towns, new developments are being built around the car.

Rail policy is just as irrational, even though lessons from large electric bus fleets offer cleaner mass transit options. The construction of HS2, now projected to cost £106bn, has accelerated in the past few months, destroying precious wild places along the way, though its weak business case has almost certainly been destroyed by coronavirus.

If one thing changes permanently as a result of the pandemic, it is likely to be travel. Many people will never return to the office. The great potential of remote technologies, so long untapped, is at last being realised. Having experienced quieter cities with cleaner air, few people wish to return to the filthy past.

Like several of the world’s major cities, our capital is being remodelled in response, though why electric buses haven’t taken over remains a live question. The London mayor – recognising that, while fewer passengers can use public transport, a switch to cars would cause gridlock and lethal pollution – has set aside road space for cycling and walking. Greater Manchester hopes to build 1,800 miles of protected pedestrian and bicycle routes.

Cycling to work is described by some doctors as “the miracle pill”, massively reducing the chances of early death: if you want to save the NHS, get on your bike. But support from central government is weak and contradictory, and involves a fraction of the money it is spending on new roads. The major impediment to a cycling revolution is the danger of being hit by a car.

Even a switch to bicycles (including electric bikes and scooters) is only part of the answer. Fundamentally, this is not a vehicle problem but an urban design problem. Or rather, it is an urban design problem created by our favoured vehicle. Cars have made everything bigger and further away. Paris, under its mayor Anne Hidalgo, is seeking to reverse this trend, by creating a “15-minute city”, in which districts that have been treated by transport planners as mere portals to somewhere else become self-sufficient communities – each with their own shops, parks, schools and workplaces, within a 15-minute walk of everyone’s home.

This, I believe, is the radical shift that all towns and cities need. It would transform our sense of belonging, our community life, our health and our prospects of local employment, while greatly reducing pollution, noise and danger. Transport has always been about much more than transport. The way we travel helps to determine the way we live. And at the moment, locked in our metal boxes, we do not live well.

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Tesla Q2 2020 earnings highlight resilient electric vehicles as production and deliveries outpace legacy automakers, while Gigafactory Austin advances, solar installations slump, and energy storage, Megapack, and free cash flow expand despite COVID-19 disruptions.

Key Points

Tesla posted a fourth consecutive profit, strong cash, EV resilience, solar slump, and rising energy storage.

✅ Fourth straight profit and $418M free cash flow

✅ EV output and deliveries fell just 5% year over year

✅ Solar hit record low; storage rose 61% to 419 MWh

Tesla survived the throes of the coronavirus pandemic relatively unscathed, chalking up its fourth sequential quarterly profit for the first time on Wednesday.

On the energy front, however, things were much more complicated: Tesla reported its worst-ever quarter for solar installations but huge growth in its battery business, amid expectations for cheaper, more powerful batteries expected in coming years. CEO Elon Musk nevertheless predicted the energy business will one day rival its car division in scale.

But today, Tesla's bottom line is all about electric vehicles, and the temporary halt of activity at Tesla's Fremont factory due to local health orders didn’t put much of a dent in vehicle production and delivery. Both figures declined 5 percent compared to the same quarter in 2019. In contrast, Q2 vehicle sales at legacy carmakers Ford, GM and Fiat Chrysler declined by one-third or more year-over-year, even as the U.S. EV market share dipped in early 2024 for context.

The costs of factory closures and a $101 million CEO award milestone for Elon Musk didn’t stop Tesla from achieving $418 million in free cash flow, a major improvement over the prior quarter. Cash and cash equivalents grew by $535 million to $8.6 billion during the quarter.

Musk praised his employees for “exceptional execution.” 

“There were so many challenges, too numerous to name, but they got it done,” he said on an investor call Wednesday.

Musk also confirmed that Tesla will build a new Gigafactory in Austin, Texas, five minutes from the airport. The 2,000-acre campus will abut the Colorado River and is “basically going to be an ecological paradise,” he said. The new Texas factory will build the Cybertruck, Semi, Model 3 and Model Y for the Eastern half of North America. Fremont, California will produce the S and X, and make Model 3 and Model Y for the West, in a state where EVs exceed 20% of sales according to recent data.

Return of the Tesla solar slump

This was the first entire quarter affected by the coronavirus response, which threw the rooftop solar industry into turmoil by cutting off in-person sales. Other installers scrambled to shift to digital-first sales strategies, but Tesla had already done so months before lockdowns were imposed.

Q2, then, offers a test case on whether Tesla’s pivot to passive online sales made it better able to deal with stay-at-home orders than its peers. The other publicly traded solar installers have not yet reported their Q2 performance, but Tesla delivered its worst-ever quarterly solar figures: Installations totaled just 27 megawatts. That’s a 7 percent decline from Q2 2019, its previous worst quarter ever for solar.

Musk did not address that weak performance in his remarks to investors, opting instead to highlight the company’s late-June decision to offer the cheapest solar pricing in the country. “We’re the company to go to,” he said of rooftop solar. “It’s only going to get better later this year.”

But the sales slump indicates Tesla’s online sales model could not withstand a historically tough season for residential solar.

"Every single residential installer in the country is going to have a bad Q2 because of the initial impacts of COVID on the market," said Austin Perea, senior solar analyst at Wood Mackenzie. "It's hard to disaggregate the impacts of COVID from their own individual strategies."

Tesla's 23 percent decline in quarter-over-quarter solar installations was not as bad as the expected Q2 decline across the rooftop solar industry, Perea added.

On the vehicle side, Tesla’s sales declined less than did those of major automakers. It’s possible that the same pattern will hold for solar; a less severe drop than those seen by Sunrun or Vivint could be claimed as a victory of sorts. But this quarter made clear that Q2 2019 was not the bottom for Tesla’s solar operation, which once led the residential market as SolarCity but significantly diminished since Tesla acquired it in 2016.

Tesla currently stands in third place for residential solar installers. But No. 1 installer Sunrun said this month that it will acquire No. 2 installer Vivint Solar, making Tesla the second-largest installer by default. That major consolidation in the rooftop solar market went unremarked upon in Tesla's investor call.

Solar and energy storage revenue currently equate to just 7 percent of the company's automotive revenue. But Musk reiterated his prediction that this won’t always be the case. “Long term, Tesla Energy will be roughly the same size as Tesla Automotive,” he said on Wednesday's call.

The grid storage business offered more reason for optimism: Capacity deployed grew 61 percent from the first quarter, rising to 419 megawatt-hours. The prepackaged, large-format Megapack product turned its first profit that quarter.

"Difficult to predict" performance in the second half of 2020
Tesla withdrew its financial guidance last quarter in light of the upheaval across the global economy. It refrained from setting new guidance now.

“Although we have successfully ramped vehicle production back to prior levels, it remains difficult to predict whether there will be further operational interruptions or how global consumer sentiment will evolve, given risks to the EV boom noted by analysts, in the second half of 2020,” the earnings report notes.

The company asserted it will still deliver 500,000 vehicles this year regardless of externalities, a goal that aligns with broader EV sales momentum in 2024 trends. It already has sufficient production capacity installed to reach that, Tesla said. But with 179,387 cars delivered so far, Tesla faces an uphill climb to ship more cars in the second half.

Wall Street maintained its buoyant confidence in Tesla's share price, despite rising competition in China noted by rivals. It closed at $1,592 before the earnings announcement, rising to $1,661 in after-hours trading.

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Arizona Electric Vehicle Ownership is surging, led by EV adoption, charging stations growth, state incentives, and local manufacturers; yet rural infrastructure gaps and limited fast-charging plugs remain key barriers to convenient, statewide electrification.

Key Points

Arizona Electric Vehicle Ownership shows rising EV adoption and incentives, but rural fast-charging access still lags.

✅ 28,770 EVs registered; sixth per 1,000 residents statewide

✅ 385 fast chargers; 1,448 Level 2 plugs; many not 24/7

✅ Incentives: lower registration, HOV access, utility rebates

For a mostly red state, Arizona has a lot of blue-state company when it comes to states ranked by electric vehicle ownership, according to recent government data.

Arizona had 28,770 registered electric vehicles as of June, according to the U.S. Department of Energy's Alternative Fuels Data Center, the seventh-highest number among states. When ownership is measured per 1,000 residents, Arizona inches up a notch to sixth place, with just over four electric vehicles per 1,000 people.

That rate put Arizona just behind Oregon and Colorado and just ahead of Nevada and Vermont. California was in the lead by far, with California's EV and charging lead reflected in 425,300 registered electric vehicles, or one for every 10.7 residents.

Arizona EV enthusiasts welcomed the ranking, which they said they have seen reflected in steady increases in group membership, but said the state can do better, even amid soaring U.S. EV sales this year.

"Arizona is growing by leaps and bounds in major areas, but still struggling out there in the hinterlands," said Jerry Asher, vice president of the Tucson Electric Vehicle Association.

He and others said the biggest challenge in Arizona, as in much of the country, is the lack of readily available charging stations for electric vehicles.

Currently, there are 385 public fast-charging plugs and 1,448 non-fast-charging plugs in the state, where charging networks compete to expand access, said Diane Brown, executive director with the Arizona Public Interest Research Group Education Fund. And many of those "are not available 24 hours a day, often making EV charging less convenient to the public," she said.

And in order for the state to hit 10% EV ownership by 2030, one scenario outlined by Arizona PIRG, the number of charging stations would need to grow significantly.

"According to the Arizona PIRG Education Fund, to support a future in which 10% of Arizona's vehicles are EVs – a conservative target for 2030 – Arizona will need more than 1,098 fast-charging plugs and 14,888 Level 2 plugs," Brown said.

This will require local, state and federal policies, as EVs challenge state power grids, to make "EV charging accessible, affordable, and easy," she said.

But advocates said there are several things working in their favor, even as an EV boom tests charging capacity across the country today. Jim Stack, president of the Phoenix Electric Auto Association, said many of the current plug-ins charging stations are at stores and libraries, places "where you would stop anyway."

"We have a good charging infrastructure and it keeps getting better," Stack said.

One way Asher said Arizona could be more EV-friendly would be to add charging stations at hotels, RV parks and shopping centers. In Tucson, he said, the Culinary Dropout and Jersey Mike's restaurants have already begun offering free electric vehicle charging to customers, Asher said.

While they push for more charging infrastructure, advocates said improving technology and lower vehicle expenses are on their side, as post-2021 electricity trends reshape costs, helping to sway more Arizonans to purchase an electric vehicle in recent years.

"The batteries are getting better and lower in cost as well as longer-lasting," Stack said. He said an EV uses about 50 cents of electricity to cover the same number of miles a gas-burning car gets from a gallon of gas – currently selling for $3.12 a gallon in Arizona, according to AAA.

In addition, the state is offering incentives to electric vehicle buyers.

"In AZ we get reduced registration on electric vehicles," Stack said. "It's about $15 a year compared to $300-700 a year for gas and diesel cars."

Electric vehicle owners also "get 24/7 access to HOV lanes, even with one person," he said. And utilities like Tucson Electric Power offer rebates and incentives for home charging stations, according to a report by the National Conference of State Legislatures, and neighboring New Mexico's EV benefits underscore potential economic gains for the region.

Stack also noted that Arizona is now home to three eclectic vehicle manufacturers: Lucid, which makes cars in Casa Grande, Nikola, which makes trucks in Phoenix and Coolidge, and Electra Meccanica, which plans to build the three-wheeled SOLO commuter in Mesa.

"We get clear skies. No oil changes, no muffler work, no transmission, faster acceleration. No smog or smog tests," Stack said. "It's priceless."

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France EV Incentive Rules prioritize EU-made electric vehicles, tying subsidies to manufacturing emissions and carbon footprint, making Stellantis, Renault, and Tesla Model Y eligible while excluding many China-built models under a new eligibility list.

Key Points

Links EV subsidies to manufacturing emissions, favoring EU-made models and restricting many China-built cars.

✅ Subsidies tied to lifecycle manufacturing emissions.

✅ EU production favored; many China-built EVs excluded.

✅ Eligible: Stellantis, Renault, Tesla Model Y; not Model 3.

France's revamped new EV rules on consumer cash incentives for electric car purchases favour vehicles made in France and Europe over models manufactured in China, a government list of eligible car types published recently has showed.

Some 65% of electric cars sold in France will be eligible for the scheme, which from Friday will include new criteria covering the amount of carbon emitted in the manufacturing of an electric vehicle (EV).

The list of eligible models includes 24 produced by Franco-Italian group Stellantis (STLAM.MI) and five by French carmaker Renault (RENA.PA). Elon Musk's Tesla (TSLA.O) Model Y will be eligible but not its Model 3.

Electric vehicle brand MG Motors, owned by China's SAIC, said it expects the new rules to weigh on the French EV market, despite the global surge in EV sales seen in recent years.

"There are cars that will entirely lose their competitiveness", an MG spokesperson told Reuters, adding that the brand had decided not to apply for the bonus scheme for its MG4 model because it was "designed to exclude us".

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire hailed what he called the new rules' incentive for automakers to reduce their carbon footprint.

"We will no longer be subsidising car production that emits too much CO2," he said in a statement.

President Emmanuel Macron's government has wanted to make French and European-made EVs more affordable for domestic consumers relative to cheaper vehicles produced in China, amid a record EV market share in the country.

The average retail price of an EV in Europe, even as the EU EV share grew during lockdown months, was more than 65,000 euros ($71,000) in the first half of 2023, compared with just over 31,000 euros in China, according to research by Jato Dynamics.

The French government already offered buyers a cash incentive of between 5,000 and 7,000 euros to get more electric cars on the road, at a total cost of 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) per year.

However, in the absence of cheap European-made EVs, a third of all incentives are going to consumers buying EVs made in China, French finance ministry officials say. The trend has helped spur a surge in imports and a growing competitive gap with domestic producers.

China's auto industry relies heavily on coal-generated electricity, meaning many Chinese-made EVs will henceforth not qualify.

The Ademe agency overseeing the process studied the eligibility of almost 500 EV models and their variants to include in the scheme.

Dacia, the low-cost Renault brand, saw its Spring model imported from China excluded from the list.

Tesla's Model 3 is made in China. The Model Y, which is larger and more expensive, is made mainly in Berlin and was the top selling EV in France over the first 11 months of the year, amid forecasts that EVs could dominate within a decade in many markets.

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CAISO Renewable Curtailments reflect grid balancing under transmission congestion and oversupply, reducing solar and wind output while leveraging WEIM trading, battery storage, and transmission expansion to integrate renewables and stabilize demand-supply.

Key Points

CAISO renewable curtailments are reductions in wind and solar output to balance grid amid congestion or oversupply.

✅ Driven mainly by transmission congestion, less by oversupply.

✅ Peaks in spring when demand is low and solar output is high.

✅ Mitigated by WEIM trades, new lines, and battery storage growth.

The California Independent System Operator (CAISO), the grid operator for most of the state, is increasingly curtailing solar- and wind-powered electricity generation, as reported in rising curtailments, as it balances supply and demand during the rapid growth of wind and solar power in California.

Grid operators must balance supply and demand to maintain a stable electric system as advances in solar and wind continue to scale. The output of wind and solar generators are reduced either through price signals or rarely, through an order to reduce output, during periods of:

Congestion, when power lines don’t have enough capacity to deliver available energy
Oversupply, when generation exceeds customer electricity demand

In CAISO, curtailment is largely a result of congestion. Congestion-related curtailments have increased significantly since 2019 because California's solar boom has been outpacing upgrades in transmission capacity.

In 2022, CAISO curtailed 2.4 million megawatthours (MWh) of utility-scale wind and solar output, a 63% increase from the amount of electricity curtailed in 2021. As of September, CAISO has curtailed more than 2.3 million MWh of wind and solar output so far this year, even as the US project pipeline is dominated by wind, solar, and batteries.

Solar accounts for almost all of the energy curtailed in CAISO—95% in 2022 and 94% in the first seven months of 2023. CAISO tends to curtail the most solar in the spring when electricity demand is relatively low (because moderate spring temperatures mean less demand for space heating or air conditioning) and solar output is relatively high, although wildfire smoke impacts can reduce available generation during fire season as well.

CAISO has increasingly curtailed renewable generation as renewable capacity has grown in California, and the state has even experienced a near-100% renewables moment on the grid in recent years. In 2014, a combined 9.0 gigawatts (GW) of wind and solar capacity had been built in California. As of July 2023, that number had grown to 17.6 GW. Developers plan to add another 3.0 GW by the end of 2024.

CAISO is exploring and implementing various solutions to its increasing curtailment of renewables, including:

The Western Energy Imbalance Market (WEIM) is a real-time market that allows participants outside of CAISO to buy and sell energy to balance demand and supply. In 2022, more than 10% of total possible curtailments were avoided by trading within the WEIM. A day ahead market is expected to be operational in Spring 2025.

CAISO is expanding transmission capacity to reduce congestion. CAISO’s 2022–23 Transmission Planning Process includes 45 transmission projects to accommodate load growth and a larger share of generation from renewable energy sources.

CAISO is promoting the development of flexible resources that can quickly respond to sudden increases and decreases in demand such as battery storage technologies that are rapidly becoming more affordable. California has 4.9 GW of battery storage, and developers plan to add another 7.6 GW by the end of 2024, according to our survey of recent and planned capacity changes. Renewable generators can charge these batteries with electricity that would otherwise have been curtailed.

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California 100% Clean Energy by 2030 proposes accelerating SB 100 with solar, wind, offshore wind, and battery storage to decarbonize the grid, enhance reliability, and reduce blackouts, leveraging transmission upgrades and long-duration storage solutions.

Key Points

Proposal to accelerate SB 100 to 2030, delivering a carbon-free grid via renewables, storage, and new transmission.

✅ Accelerates SB 100 to a 2030 carbon-free electricity target

✅ Scales solar, wind, offshore wind, and battery storage capacity

✅ Requires transmission build-out and demand response for reliability

Amid a spate of wildfires that have covered large portions of California with unhealthy air, an environmental group that frequently lobbies the Legislature in Sacramento is calling on the state to accelerate by 15 years California's commitment to derive 100 percent of its electricity from carbon-free sources.

But skeptics point to last month's pair of rolling blackouts and say moving up the mandate would be too risky.

"Once again, California is experiencing some of the worst that climate change has to offer, whether it's horrendous air quality, whether it's wildfires, whether it's scorching heat," said Dan Jacobson, state director of Environment California. "This should not be the new normal and we shouldn't allow this to become normal."

Signed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown in 2018, Senate Bill 100 commits California by 2045 to use only sources of energy that produce no greenhouse gas emissions to power the electric grid, a target that echoes Minnesota's 2050 carbon-free plan now under consideration.

Implemented through the state's Renewable Portfolio Standard, SB 100 mandates 60 percent of the state's power will come from renewable sources such as solar and wind within the next 10 years. By 2045, the remaining 40 percent can come from other zero-carbon sources, such as large hydroelectric dams, a strategy aligned with Canada's electricity decarbonization efforts toward climate pledges.

SB 100 also requires three state agencies _ the California Energy Commission, the California Public Utilities Commission and the California Air Resources Board _ to send a report to the Legislature reviewing various aspects of the legislation.

The topics include scenarios in which SB 100's requirements can be accelerated. Following an Energy Commission workshop earlier this month, Environment California sent a six-page note to all three agencies urging a 100 percent clean energy standard by 2030.

The group pointed to comments by Gov. Gavin Newsom after he toured the devastation in Butte County caused by the North Complex fire.

"Across the entire spectrum, our (state) goals are inadequate to the reality we are experiencing," Newsom said Sept. 11 at the Oroville State Recreation Area.

Newsom "wants to look at his climate policies and see what he can accelerate," Jacobson said. "And we want to encourage him to take a look at going to 100 percent by 2030."

Jacobson said Newsom cam change the policy by issuing an executive order but "it would probably take some legislative action" to codify it.

However, Assemblyman Jim Cooper, a Democrat from the Sacramento suburb of Elk Grove, is not on board.

"I think someday we're going to be there but we can't move to all renewable sources right now," Cooper said. "It doesn't work. We've got all these burned-out areas that depend upon electricity. How is that working out? They don't have it."

In mid-August, California experienced statewide rolling blackouts for the first time since 2001.

The California Independent System Operator _ which manages the electric grid for about 80 percent of the state _ ordered utilities to ratchet back power, fearing the grid did not have enough supply to match a surge in demand as people cranked up their air conditioners during a stubborn heat wave that lingered over the West.

The outages affected about 400,000 California homes and businesses for more than an hour on Aug. 14 and 200,000 customers for about 20 minutes on Aug. 15.

The grid operator, known as the CAISO for short, avoided two additional days of blackouts in August and two more in September thanks to household utility customers and large energy users scaling back demand.

CAISO Chief Executive Officer Steve Berberich said the outages were not due to renewable energy sources in California's power mix. "This was a matter of running out of capacity to serve load" across all hours, Berberich told the Los Angeles Times.

California has plenty of renewable resources _ especially solar power _ during the day. The challenge comes when solar production rapidly declines as the sun goes down, especially between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. in what grid operators call the "net load peak."

The loss of those megawatts of generation has to be replaced by other sources. And in an electric grid, system operators have to balance supply and demand instantaneously, generating every kilowatt that is demanded by customers who expect their lighting/heating/air conditioning to come on the moment they flip a switch.

Two weeks after the rotating outages, the State Water Resources Control Board voted to extend the lives of four natural gas plants in the Los Angeles area. Natural gas accounts for the largest single source of California's power mix _ 34.23 percent. But natural gas is a fossil fuel, not a carbon-free resource.

Jacobson said moving the mandate to 2030 can be achieved by more rapid deployment of renewable sources across the state.

The Public Utilities Commission has already directed power companies to ramp up capacity for energy storage, such as lithium-ion batteries that can be used when solar production falls off.

Long-term storage is another option. That includes pumped hydro projects in which hydroelectric facilities pump water from one reservoir up to another and then release it. The ensuing rush of water generates electricity when the grid needs it.

Environment California also pointed to offshore wind projects along the coast of Central and Northern California that it estimates could generate as much as 3 gigawatts of power by 2030 and 10 gigawatts by 2040. Offshore wind supporters say its potential is much greater than land-based wind farms because ocean breezes are stronger and steadier.

Gary Ackerman, a utilities and energy consultant with more than four decades of experience in power issues affecting states in the West, said the 2045 mandate was "an unwise policy to begin with" and to accommodate a "swift transition (to 2030), you're going to put the entire grid and everybody in it at risk."

But Ackerman's larger concern is whether enough transmission lines can be constructed in California to bring the electricity where it needs to go.

"I believe Californians consider transmission lines in their backyard about the same way they think about low-income housing _ it's great to have, but not in my backyard," Ackerman said. "The state is not prepared to build the infrastructure that will allow this grandiose build-out."

Cooper said he worries about how much it will cost the average utility customer, especially low and middle-income households. The average retail price for electricity in California is 16.58 cents per kilowatt-hour, compared to 10.53 nationally, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

"What's sad is, we've had 110-degree days and there are people up here in the Central Valley that never turned their air conditioners on because they can't afford that bill," Cooper said.

Jacobson said the utilities commission can intervene if costs get too high. He also pointed to a recent study from the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley that predicted the U.S. can deliver 90 percent clean, carbon-free electric grid by 2035 that is reliable and at no extra cost in consumers' bills.

"Every time we wait and say, 'Oh, what about the cost? Is it going to be too expensive?' we're just making the cost unbearable for our kids and grandkids," Jacobson said. "They're the ones who are going to pay the billions of dollars for all the remediation that has to happen ... What's it going to cost if we do nothing, or don't go fast enough?"

The joint agency report on SB 100 from the Energy Commission, the Public Utilities Commission and the Air Resources Board is due at the beginning of next year.

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