It is an illusion to believe that 800 mw of wind or solar is interchangeable with 800 mw of fossil-fired thermal. If you do not have that thermal back up spinning on line 100% of the time, your power supply decays to third world class, i.e, unreliable, depending on wind, clouds, and sun. If you do not have reliable power, few industries can survive under that regime. They have to leave, and take their jobs with them.

So, if you have to build (or renew) 1 megawatt of thermal power for every megawatt of renewable wind/solar power, you must not only cover the extra capital cost but the operational fuel cost of thermal, plus maintenance and capital recovery costs of both. But the enviropsychos do not really care about costs to the taxpayer or ratepayer. The more costly the better, in their warped vision of the world.

So no matter what, the renewables require generation of CO2 by thermal plants, or, even more to the enviropsycho’s jollies, industry, jobs, and people must leave the state.

So once again we are displacing the discussion plane from the real root of the problem: the CO2 hoax promoted by Arnold and CARB and double-downed by Brown. When this hoax is finally recognized by the populace, the renewable baloney will go the way of the Dutch Tulip Mania of the 1600s.