In California, solar generation could finally surpass gas this year

Over the last decade, it’s worth noting, generation from nuclear, wind, and geothermal has stayed flat, and hydropower fluctuated with the annual weather patterns. Those carbon-free sources all have their own passionate advocates and deeply researched reports from the Department of Energy on how they can break out of stasis and grow again. But solar is the only one of the bunch consistently increasing production year over year.

That’s not guaranteed to always be the case. The Republican-led Congress still could axe federal tax credits that currently support renewable installations for the next decade. California has also gotten in its own way, as when Gov. Gavin Newsom’s handpicked utility regulators chose to dismantle the prevailing rules for rooftop solar, greatly diminishing the pace of residential installations.

Nonetheless, if gas power production continues its downward plunge, California will eventually have to figure some things out. Specifically, it needs other tools to ensure on-demand power through the nights and weather patterns that dampen solar production.

State grid planners have ordered utilities to start procuring long-duration energy storage, a category of technologies promising to deliver steady clean power for far longer than lithium-ion batteries can manage at today’s price points. The state is also taking early steps to open up its coastline for offshore wind development; the deep Pacific seabed calls for floating turbines, a newer technology that has not yet been built in the U.S. Efforts to better connect the western grid could also make it easier to balance supply and demand across the region.

California, whose state economy would rank fifth among the world’s nations, is not a place that can change course in an instant. But this impending unseating of gas power by solar shows what can happen over a decade of dedicated policy, regulatory, and business efforts to push down carbon emissions and accelerate clean energy. It took time to get to this point, but now the results are undeniable.

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