There are obvious benefits to logging, grazing, prescribed burns, and mechanical thinning of California’s forests. When you suppress wildfires for what is now over a century, then overregulate and suppress any other means to thin the forest, you get overcrowded and unhealthy forests. California’s trees now have 5 to 10 times more than a historically normal […]
Silicon Valley veterans view Sacramento’s obsession with renewables mandates with pragmatic detachment. Blessed with disposable income sufficient to make them indifferent to the price of gasoline or electricity, they view life on the bleeding edge as an opportunity for California to lead the world into the electric age. They’re not wrong. Heartless, perhaps. But not […]
It’s well known by now that California’s refinery capacity is stretched to the limit. The state’s total crude oil consumption last year was 1.40 million barrels per day, with daily refinery capacity at 1.62 million barrels per day. When accounting for downtime for maintenance and accidents such as the fire in the PBF refinery in Martinez, that’s a thin […]
If there is anything that might constitute an overwhelming institutional consensus in California, it’s that we are experiencing climate change, and that one of the consequences will be more rain, less snow, and more so-called whiplash between very wet years and very dry years. In an average year these days, 30 million acre feet of water flows […]
When it comes to building water supply infrastructure, even if regulations are streamlined and litigation is contained, there are massive costs. Quantifying these variables is something we have focused on a great deal, most recently in WC#96, “The Economics of the Delta Tunnel.” In that and other reports we’ve offered a highly simplified cost/benefit equation: divide […]
For the last few decades in California, the conventional wisdom has been that farmers and urban water consumers have to improve efficiency and reduce consumption. To the fullest extent possible, rain and snow falling on watersheds must proceed unimpaired from the mountains to the ocean, and if water is reserved in reservoirs, releases of the […]
When we talk about EVs, it is reasonable to suggest that at their current level of price and performance, whoever wants to use one has already made the purchase. After a decade of rapid year-over-year growth, EV sales in California in 2024 were actually a bit lower than they were in 2023. There aren’t enough […]
One of the most controversial water issues in California is the proposed Delta Conveyance. The 45 mile long tunnel will have the capacity to move up to 4 million acre feet per year from the Sacramento River safely under the fragile delta ecosystem, delivering water to southbound aqueducts. That’s not bad. But the reservoir storage […]
The moral argument for resuming oil drilling in California is simple: the state still relies on petroleum for fifty percent of its annual energy inputs, and until we can overcome that reliance, we should be producing it here, where it’s subject to the most responsible environmental and labor standards in the world. This argument holds up […]
The concept of deep water desalination has been around for decades, but only in recent years has the enabling technology been available. Innovations pioneered by the oil and gas industry to better service offshore drilling platforms have matured. These include better ways to protect against corrosion of underwater equipment, and replacing hydraulic with electrical systems. […]