The Economist has become the latest publication to document how the newly refined and improved energy exploration technique using precisely aimed underground water cannons works not just to free up previously inaccessible oil and natural gas but for climate-friendly geothermal resources as well.

Depending on your point of view, hydraulic fracturing — or “fracking” — is either the future of clean, natural gas or an environmental apocalypse. Fracking liberates gas trapped underground by drilling sideways from vertical well-shafts into horizontal layers of shale rock. Millions of gallons of a cocktail of water, sand and chemicals are injected into the horizontal wells at high pressure, fracturing the shale, releasing the gas — and causing violent protests in Europe and parts of America.

Geothermal energy, by contrast, has yet to stir much controversy. Most geothermal plants are located where water has seeped down into the Earth’s crust, been heated and forced back up through permeable rock. Drill a well to between 3,000 and 12,000 feet, and the searing water and steam can be released to drive generators.

Geothermal is a minnow among power sources. America has the world’s highest installed capacity of geothermal generating plants—3.4 gigawatts’ worth at last count (see first chart) — but they generate only 0.4% of its electricity (see second chart). New “enhanced geothermal systems” (EGS), however, look set to make geothermal a bigger contributor — and potentially as controversial as shale.

The industry may dislike the comparison, but EGS is geothermal fracking. Millions of gallons of water and chemicals are injected into mostly vertical wells at relatively high pressure, and the combination of cold-meets-hot, pressure and chemistry shears the deep, hot rock. This creates new “fracture networks” through which water can be pumped, heated and sent back to the surface to generate power. Conventional geothermal wells cost at least $5m to develop, and about half fail. The new technique can reduce the failure rate and extend the size and life of existing geothermal fields. In time, think EGS fans, it will allow geothermal fields to be established wherever there is suitable hot rock.

Who knew? CA has world’s largest geothermal plant

This is much bigger news for California than you may think. While the fact is not well known, the state has the world’s largest commercial geothermal operation at The Geysers in Lake and Sonoma counties northeast of San Francisco.

California also has one of the nation’s largest potential geothermal resources, centered in the Salton Sea area, and the Legislature is now considering a push to force the state to essentially subsidize development there:

California’s poorest county wants a bigger share of the state’s $16-billion wholesale electricity market.

Imperial County, which stretches east of San Diego County to Arizona, is seeking a special deal from the Legislature and Gov. Jerry Brown that would require electric utilities, such as Southern California Edison Co., to buy extra alternative energy from geothermal power plants that are run by naturally occurring steam from deep in the earth.

The steam already is used to drive turbines that make electricity near the Salton Sea.

“Geothermal is the most reliable energy source out there,” said state Sen. Ben Hueso (D-San Diego), whose district includes Imperial County. He is the author of the bill requiring utilities to contract to buy up to 500 megawatts of electricity by 2024.

The purchases would spur investments that could inject as much as $3 billion into the Imperial County economy over the next 30 years, Hueso predicted.

Imperial County companies already produce about 600 megawatts of geothermal power, and they have the potential to more than quadruple that output, local boosters say.

Let’s save the planet, but with conditions

That’s from the Aug. 10 L.A. Times.

What’s funny/intriguing/sad about geothermal is how it illustrates the flippancy and unseriousness of the environmental movement. If reducing greenhouse gases to prevent a climate apocalypse is the most important issue in the world, then of course geothermal should be enthusiastically embraced; it’s already the fourth-largest source of renewable energy in the U.S. and could be far bigger with aggressive development.

But unlike wind or solar power plants, geothermal energy plants have a gritty industrial feel. They also often smell. When I went to college in Hawaii in the 1980s, the plant on the Big Island was notorious for stinking up a beautiful corner of rain forest in Puna. It still is.

This shouldn’t matter to a noble environmentalist trying to save the planet. But it does.

By Chris Reed

Sacramento is still buzzing over a bizarre and obnoxious scandal in which state parks officials hid $54 million while pressing to close 70 parks, and along comes another scandal in which Cal Fire hides millions of dollars while successfully pushing for a new fire-protection “fee,” and what does Gov. Jerry Brown do?

Put the scoop down. “I find it a relatively boring story, to tell you the truth,” Brown told reporters Tuesday.

Brown has been described as brilliant, eccentric,  unique, worldly, weird, etc. But here’s what he’s been since winning passage of Prop. 30 in November: as arrogant as any California politician in a long, long, long time.

The governor dismisses people with sensible criticism of the problem-plagued bullet train project as “defeatists.” Yo, Jerry, does your putdown also hold for the Washington Post editorial page and The Economist, which think the project is nuts?

The governor acts as if temporary sales and income tax hikes have transformed California into a strapping model of robust governance. He completely ignores CalPERS and CalSTRS underfunding, the $10 billion plus the state owes the federal government for borrowing to pay unemployment benefits when the state program went broke, and the fact that another retirement benefit for state employees — health care — is $60 billion-plus underfunded.

Bullying those who don’t parrot his happy talk

California is not on firm ground. Jerry Brown has created a narrative that holds that it is, and he’s gotten journalists from the East Coast to buy the myth. The numbers, however, just don’t add up.

But challenge his narrative of the state being in a new, golden era, and he’ll mock you at a press conference, as he did with Brian Joseph of The Orange County Register. Raise questions about whether the state is as well-governed as he pretends, and he’ll belittle you, as he did the reporters on the Cal Fire scandal by calling their findings “boring.”

He used to be Gov. Moonbeam. Now he’s Gov. Insufferable Know-It-All.

Great, just great.

By John Seiler

India is being hit with a series of blackouts that have crippled the country. It sounds a lot like California dipped in curry. From The Economist:

* India has “blackouts (during peak hours the system delivers 10% less electricity than customers want) and an inadequate grid that does not reach some 300m people.” In California’s case, it’s 37 million people. And we haven’t had blackouts in a decade only because the weather has been cool. (So much for “global warming.”)

* “There is also a risk that India cannot deliver the long-term increase in electricity generation that its economy needs to fulfil its potential…. Trapped in the middle are the firms that run power stations. In desperation they are importing pricier foreign coal, but the grid companies cannot afford the power it produces. With too little coal and wobbly customers, the private firms that have built new power stations are in financial trouble. Another wave of private investment looks unlikely.” In California, our anti-business regulations have forced the state to import 29.6 percent of our electricity from outside the state. See the explanation and chart below.

* “In India, though, no one expects perfect design. The economy sits somewhere between the old command-and-control approach and the new ways of markets and private capital.” In California, the mix is the same, but the sequence the opposite: The old ways were markets and private capital. The new ways are “command-and-control,” as in AB 32, the Cap-and-Trade scheme of the California Air Resources Board and such nutty schemes as Gov. Jerry Brown’s Browndoggle choo-choo train and the Delta tunnel.

* “The problem has been clear for ages. A circuitous blame game is taking place. Ministries squabble but no one knocks heads together.” Same thing in California.

* “Power, so vital for growth, is India’s biggest bottleneck. The danger is that it becomes a metaphor for the whole economy….” Same here. All that “green power” just isn’t going to provide enough juice.

* “Jawaharlal Nehru, the country’s first prime minister after independence, was obsessed with hydroelectric dams, calling them the ‘temples of modern India.’ It would have been good for India’s environment, and the world’s, had many more temples been raised. The fad for hydro trickled away and it now provides only 14% of India’s power compared with up to a half in the 1960s.” In California, we’re actually working to tear down our hydroelectric dams.

* “The subcontinent has plenty of sun and wind, and states including Gujarat and Tamil Nadu are keen to encourage investments in renewable energy. These are likely to be niche sources of power, thanks to problems getting land and their high cost.” Note the word: niche, not rich. In California, the obsession with expensive renewable energy is slamming the state economy.

* “As for nuclear power, India’s attitude has long been hyperbolic on paper and ambivalent in practice…. Events in Japan have not helped. ‘By the time people forgot Chernobyl, along came Fukushima,’ says one industry bigwig.” Same thing in California. No Nukes rules.

* “If the test is avoiding a national catastrophe, India’s power sector will pass it. But if it is delivering the infrastructure that can allow the economy to grow at close to a double-digit pace and industrialise rapidly, India is failing.” Of course, California hasn’t had double-digit annual growth in decades. It’s a stagnant economy, to a great extent because it doesn’t produce enough cheap energy to keep industry humming.

Poverty to middle class — and back again

Not all the analogies are exact. California now uses a lot more natural gas than India; while India prefers coal, which is the one resource they have in abundance. India is determined to raise its people from poverty into the middle class; while California’s elites, in government and business, seem determined to destroy the middle class — or drive it to other states.

Right now, the high tech is in California, while the call centers are in India. In 20 years, it will be the opposite. Then, the wealthy Indian middle-class will complain about how tech support is provided by Californians with Valley Girl accents.

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As to how much of California’s energy comes from out of state, my colleague Wayne Lusvardi told me, “According to the table below, the answer is 29.6 percent.”

By K. Lloyd Billingsley

The surfer, posed by what appears to be the Pacific Ocean, wears star-spangled trunks and his surfboard bears a peace sign, a highway placard bearing the number 13 and a banner reading “Direct Democracy.” The section of his board emblazoned “California” is bent, like a failed design for a boomerang, and pointing downward. In case you Don’t Get the Imagery, the headline of The Economist magazine (April 23-29 issue) explains: “Where it all went wrong: A special report on California’s dysfunctional democracy.”

This is indeed one whopper of a cover story, but not exactly in the way The Economist intends. They even promote it in a “leader” (editorial) headlined “The perils of extreme democracy: California offers a warning to voters all over the world.” This charts some California woes such as the worst credit rating among the 50 states, and wonders how a state with so much going for it can be so poorly governed.

“It is tempting to accuse those doing the governing,” the editorial says. California legislators are “a pretty rum bunch,” and second-chance governor Jerry Brown has “struggled to make the executive branch work.”  But “the main culprit has been direct democracy,” as the special section, “Democracy in California: The People’s Will,” argues. That claim also requires some investigation, even though direct democracy does get a workout.

The special report provides background on the Greeks, ancient Athens and the founders of the United States. Direct democracy in California, however, is not quite the same. It was to counter the mighty Southern Pacific Railroad, which bestrode the state like a colossus.  “Direct democracy in California is thus an aberration…. Instead it encourages special interests to wage war by ballot measure until one lobby prevails and imposes its will on all.” But not so fast.

To correct gerrymandering “the initiative process, in this case, may prove to have done some good.” So direct democracy can be beneficial after all. The report might have mentioned Proposition 209 (1996), which curbed institutional discrimination by eliminating race, ethnic and gender preferences in state employment, education and contracting. Or Proposition 227 (1998), which dumped failed bilingual education programs.

The report contends that James Madison, et al., would not recognize California-style democracy, lacking in checks and balances. This ignores the courts. Whatever one thinks of Proposition 187 (1994), which eliminated many benefits for undocumented persons, voters passed it handily but the courts nixed virtually all of it. Proposition 63 (1986) declared English the official language of California and 73.2 percent of voters, including many of Iberian descent, passed it. The Ninth Circuit declared the vote “largely symbolic” and the U.S. Supreme Court reversed that ruling.

Attacking Prop. 13

So checks and balances exist, and initiatives can do some good. The villain of this special report is not direct democracy but an “unprecedented initiative that shapes the state to this day: Proposition 13.”  The report notes that Prop. 13 cut the property tax rate from an average of 2.6 percent of a property’s value to 1 percent, and required a two-thirds supermajority in the Legislature for any tax hike. The report does not note that, prior to Prop. 13, some Californians were literally taxed out of their homes while the state was running a surplus.

Gov. Jerry Brown opposed Prop. 13 with an apocalyptic zeal that would have put Al Gore to shame. The report says Brown “tried to make a cerebral case for an alternate initiative,” implying that Prop. 13 was visceral and stupid.  Then Brown “made a stunning U-turn” to endorse the initiative. He does not note that Brown declared himself a “born-again tax cutter” and, as a presidential candidate, even promoted a flat tax.

The special report charges that Prop. 13 launched an orgy of initiatives “from environmentalists and potheads to evangelical Christians and Indian tribes, from insurers to oil and tobacco companies.” It did cut property taxes for homeowners and put some restraints on the Legislature, but the report neglects to outline what this supposedly all-powerful initiative did not do.

Political activist Lenny Goldberg told The Economist that Prop. 13 centralizes “virtually all finance in Sacramento,” but that is debatable. The measure had nothing to say about state distribution of money. More important, Prop. 13 did not mandate any state spending and certainly no spending beyond state revenues.

Prop. 13 did not create any new government agencies. Curiously, Proposition 71, the 2004 state stem cell bond initiative, did precisely that, creating the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine, funded with more than $3 billion in state money but providing none of the promised medical cures and therapies. The Economist’s report does not mention Prop. 71, nor Proposition 20, which created the California Coastal Commission, an unelected body with vast powers and staffed by zealots.

Collective Bargaining

Prop. 13 did not authorized government employee unions for California, nor collective bargaining with the state. Jerry Brown did that in his first stint as governor by signing the Dills Act. Prop. 13 did not impose any onerous regulations based on bad science, such as AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. The proposition did not mandate any new state hires and did not approve pay raises for California legislators.

Prop. 13 did not authorize state employees to retire in their 50s with most of their salary for life, nor did it spike any pensions. Prop. 13 did not approve welfare cards that can be redeemed at casinos and on cruise ships. Prop. 13 did not attempt to tax editorial cartoons as though they were works of art purchased in an art gallery, as in the 1996 “laugh tax” that made California a national joke. All that came through legislators and unelected bureaucrats.

Prop. 13 did not mandate that California bulk up the state to consume more than 20 percent of the state economy, about twice the amount that best facilitates economic growth. Prop. 13 did not set a top income-tax rate of 10.55 percent, one of the highest in the country, and a second-highest rate of 9.55 that kicks in at $47,055. “Those doing the governing” did that –legislators. The report acknowledges that the tax system is volatile, but reserves its wrath for Prop. 13, which did not mandate term limits either.

The Economist believes Prop. 13 wrecked California education. The figures cited understate education spending and the special report does not note that, in California’s government monopoly K-12 system, such spending must trickle down through four layers of bureaucratic sediment. Long before Prop. 13, the system was a vast collective farm of ignorance and mediocrity.

The special report’s main source on this theme is John Mockler, billed as an “expert in California education,” ergo, an outside, objective observer. This is like describing former Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez as an “expert in California government.” Mockler is an insider’s insider and strident apologist for the system, from which he has drawn considerable profit.

Mockler  served as a consultant to the Assembly Education Committee in 1965 and went on to advise Assembly Speaker Willie Brown and to work for former state Superintendent of Public Instruction Wilson Riles. As president of the lobbying firm Strategic Education Services in Sacramento, Mockler did a fine job channeling countless millions in state funds to the clients he represented. These include the Association of American Publishers, who lobby furiously to sell their overpriced and often deficient textbooks.

A lucrative lobbyist career did not prevent Gov. Gray Davis from hiring Mockler as executive director of the State Board of Education. This was after, as the report notes, the California Teachers Association, “the largest spender in California politics,” hired Mockler to write Proposition 98, which unlike Proposition 13, does indeed mandate spending.

California Crackup

Another major source for the special report is “California Crackup: How Reform Broke the Golden State and How We Can Fix It,”  by Joe Mathews and Mark Paul, a classic of anti-Prop 13 demonology. The authors want to restrict the initiative system but add more legislators. In similar style, the report wants California to “re-invest the legislature with the credibility it once had.” The report wants a bigger Legislature, and a unicameral model, like Nebraska’s.

In the end, The Economist seems to understand that propositions, like laws, are a mixed bag. “The problem is not direct democracy as such but the details of its California variant. It needs to be fixed, not eliminated.”  Further, California might see the “liveliest debate about freedom and governance since the Federalists and anti-Federalists,” with “lessons for everyone.”

Unlike most pieces in The Economist, a publication of high reputation whose authors mostly are anonymous, at least readers know who wrote this piece on California. The author is Andreas Kluth, who writes their other California pieces, and who speaks three languages. He’s obviously a smart fellow, but as Saul Bellow wrote, “a great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.”

Kluth’s special report is indeed a cover story, ignoring California’s main problems, and maintaining the illusion that Prop. 13 is to blame. As long as that illusion prevails, the prospects for meaningful reform remain dim.  Californians would be better off following The Economist’s editorial. The Golden State has a lot going for it but remains “so poorly governed.” Better, then, to accuse those doing the governing. As the The Economist says, they’re a “pretty rum bunch.”