April 19, 2013, Berkeley

Travers Conference on Ethics and Accountability, California’s Energy Future

“One of the things that’s really true about renewables in California is we have plenty of them….We’re barely tapping into what we have, we are the Saudi Arabia of renewable energy here in California. We have all kinds and we have plenty of it. So that’s not the issue, it’s not a capacity issue.” ~ Jane S. Long

Jane S. Long, Associate Director for Energy and Environment, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Co-chair, California’s Energy Future Committee, spoke about California’s future energy requirements, climate change, and GHG emissions reductions at the Travers Conference on Ethics and Accountability.

She discussed the challenges of doubling energy production while simultaneously decarbonizing it and maintaining a stable power grid. Long’s approach and conclusions differ from those which Stanford’s Marc Jacobson recently presented at a ‘Pathways to 100% Renewables Conference‘ in San Francisco, notably, Long’s decarbonization energy pathway includes nuclear power and biofuels, and she describes the difficulty in reaching 80% emission cuts by 2050 as an innovation challenge.

As far as achieving 100% emission reductions, Long says, ‘the last 20% will be as much effort as the first 60%’.

report by James George