Two prototype Tesla Semis in Rocklin, California. (Photo: public domain)
California Can’t Power the State but is Forging Ahead with Electric Truck Mandate
Maybe California should figure out how to fix our electric grid before we outlaw gas cars and trucks
By Katy Grimes, April 5, 2023 3:47 pm
California is rich in natural resources which once powered the state: natural gas deposits in the Monterey Shale formation; geothermal energy, abundant rivers and waterways such as the San Joaquin River Delta and hydroelectric dams; the Pacific coastline; 85 million acres of wildlands with 17 million of those used as commercial timberland; mines and mineral resources, vast farming and agricultural lands, and hunting and fishing.
Despite this abundance, in June 2020 the California Air Resources Board (CARB) approved regulations to require automakers to sell more electric commercial trucks, with the ultimate goal of all new trucks sold in rather state to be zero-emission by 2045.
Under the new “advanced clean trucks” rule, the number of new zero emission electric trucks would increase each year beginning in 2024. By 2035, the zero emission rule has a target of 40% of tractor trailers, 55% of pickup trucks, and 75% of delivery vans. All government-owned trucks would also need to be electric by 2035.
Every car company in California will have to have an electric or hydrogen-powered option by 2024, with CARB currently aiming for net-zero emissions in California by 2050.
By November 2022, the Globe reported California’s nonsensical diesel regulatory rules threatened to worsen the already compromised supply chain – on top of a potential rail strike at the time, which would have ground supplies throughout the country to a halt.
California’s diesel regulations were created during the last administration under then-Governor Jerry Brown. Immediately upon enactment by the CARB, and installation by truck owners, the mandatory, faulty diesel particulate filters were exploding all across the state. Ironically, the filters even fail(ed) at cleaning the air.
Some said this was a delegate ploy to usher in electric truck mandates. Gov. Brown deserves the blame all around, as does Gov. Newsom, who continues to blame rolling blackouts on “extreme weather” and “climate change.”
As California Globe has reported for several years, and has been covering since 2011:
- In 2011, California passed the Renewables Portfolio Standard setting the mandate at 33 percent renewable energy by 2020.
- When it became clear that California was nearly there, in 2015, the Legislature moved the bar again and passed SB 350 the “Clean Energy and Pollution Reduction Act of 2015.” SB 350 by Sen. President pro Tem Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles), requires the state to procure 50 percent of electricity from renewable energy and double energy efficiency savings by 2030.
- In 2018, Gov. Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 100, setting a 100 percent clean electricity goal for the state, and issued an executive order establishing a new target to achieve carbon neutrality – both by 2045.
Power outages and rolling blackouts are coming more frequently as California has taken nuclear power plants offline, and hydroelectric dams offline, while increasing renewables mandates for wind and solar.
Michael Shellengerger has been warning, “California’s bet on renewables, & its shunning of natural gas & nuclear, is directly responsible for the state’s blackouts and high electricity prices.”
California’s owners/operators of trucks, small business owners, and farmers and ranchers, whose livelihood is tied to having affordable, safe, and reliable trucks for transporting goods, were targeted by the California Air Resources Board, and required to install Diesel Particulate Filters in all commercial trucks.
And now California is heading straight into even more commercial trucking regulations with electric trucks.
The disconnect between California policies and politics are at such odds with the rest of the country, it’s a wonder the other 49 states haven’t excommunicated the Golden State from the union.
Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency announced their approval of California’s Advanced Clean Trucks regulations, officially allowing California and six others states a waiver to enforce a 2020 rule (not law), ramping up sales of zero-emission trucks and big rigs – including half of all heavy duty trucks sold by 2035.
Confirming that this is ordered by the California Air Resources Board, the CARB said:
“Promoting the development and use of advanced clean trucks will help CARB achieve its emission reduction strategies as outlined in the State Implementation Plan (SIP), Sustainable Freight Action Plan, Senate Bill (SB) 350, and Assembly Bill (AB) 32.“
In October more than 150 Republicans in the House of Representatives called on President Biden to reject California’s new radical green car regulations as the state looks to electrify its citizens’ fleet, Fox News reported.
“Earlier this year, America’s energy regulators warned states about elevated risks to the reliability of our electric grid and the increased threat of brown and black outs,” Rep. Bob Latta, R-Ohio said in a statement to Fox News Digital.
“Instead of heeding those warnings, California politicians are pursuing stifling new regulations to ban gas- and diesel-powered cars by 2035,” Latta said. “This effort will extend far beyond California’s borders and will make it more difficult for Americans to get to work, drop their kids off at school, and travel to visit loved ones.”
Rep. Gus Bilirakis, R-Fla., one of the letter’s co-leads, told Fox News Digital “California’s proposal is another example of liberal elitists being detached from the real constraints on the energy grid and the average American consumer.”
Indeed.
This plea was on the heels of a visit to California by U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm during an “extreme heat event,” called so by Gov. Newsom, when a flex-alert was issued by the California Independent System Operator (CalISO) which implored residents to conserve energy between 4pm and 9pm – i.e. please don’t charge your electric cars.
Energy officials actually asked residents to avoid charging electric vehicles, and if possible not to use electricity at all during the heat wave. The temperatures were 100+ degrees in Southern California. Northern California hit 110 degrees.
It’s the “tightening available power supplies” part that has many Californians vowing to stick with their gas-powered autos and trucks. Because simultaneously, as Gov. Gavin Newsom has ordered the state to prohibit the sale of gas-powered autos by 2035, less than one week later, California energy providers announced they were not able to provide the necessary electricity to power what the state needs electrified.
Where will all of the electricity come from for the millions of electric vehicles in California’s future?
Wind and solar? Meh. Maybe California should figure out how to fix our electric grid before we outlaw gas cars and trucks.
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Trucking companies will just buy their equipment out of state instead or stop doing business in the state altogether. Right now, 0.3% of heavy duty trucks are electric…as in one third of one precent. And all of the electric trucks available today and for the foreseeable future have abysmal ranges (most can’t even go for more than 100 miles) and/or are prohibitively expensive. Most likely, 2030 will come and CARB will start to issue endless extensions once it becomes clear that there is no way that enough electric vehicles can be produced at the quantity needed to meet demand and at an affordable prices.
Of course….part of this agenda is also to get people to stop having cares and remove their freedom of movement by restricting them to “16 minute cities” and forcing them to take unreliable and incontinent public transportation.
cal has lost it
Still struggling to figure out whether the Democrats are purposely destroying everything or they’re just plain stupid!! Both? I think at the end of the day they are just so incredibly, psychopathically desperate for power that they’ll literally do and say anything to get what they want. If they have to destroy the country, environment or anyone in their path they won’t think twice!
Even if we pretend CA’s electric grid is in decent shape (which it isn’t) and we pretend we have enough electric power at peak times (which we don’t), there are so MANY problems with electric vehicles. And even more with trucks! This is all a CARB-Gov disaster just waiting to happen.
This stuff is NOT ‘green,’ to begin with, as readers here know. Also EVs have a tendency to catch fire spontaneously, never mind if involved in a crash, and that fire is nearly impossible to put out (like a trick birthday candle, it keeps reigniting). Gee, that seems like a problem, don’t you think? And how long would it take to charge up a TRUCK, assuming charging facilities are even available? A day? Two days? Oh that’s sooooo helpful for super-tight trucking schedules and already-dicey supply issues. Then there is the expense, unaffordable for most. Plus God forbid you should have to evacuate because of a Gov-created fire-nado and the stupid EV isn’t charged. Or as was pointed out, because Gov Tyrant forbids you to charge the stupid EV.
The CARB bureaucrats know all of this, they just don’t care. None of their agenda is do-able, and they just don’t care. Apparently they get off on giving us all migraines over what the future holds. However if CARB’s goal is to further ruin the state — economically and otherwise — impoverish its people, and make delivery of goods and services nearly impossible, they’re doing an excellent job.
All of this is being done because Governor Hairgel has been appointed by his World Economic Forum funders, as a “Young Global Leader” from long ago, to promulgate the dystopian future that Herr Schwab and $oro$ envision for their global dominance.
“As California goes, so goes the Union” was the old saw, and our pathological liar Boy Governor and his Weinstein-influenced “First Partner” wife, are only too happy to execute the policies and plans of Agenda 2030 and drive the state economy into the ditch…
Why?
To crash and crush the economy, and make all of us so miserable that we willingly accept the Central Bank Digital Currency, now being tested by Wells Fargo and others in the New York Fed District.
They will probably entice us with promises of X times the number of physical dollars held, and stupid sheeple will gladly trade what little freedom we have left for the illusion of greater riches.
Meanwhile, Governor Dipwad and his slutty wife are enriching themselves with the dirty deals that have been documented already elsewhere on this site and We The People suffer under the tyrranical edicts of demented Democrat politicians who are funded by corrupt unions and wealthy benefactors that hate traditional American values, like $oro$, $teyer, Bloomberg, Gate$, etc.
They have corrupted our voting systems and procedures, poisoned our minds with psy-ops like the plandemic and now wish to undermine our food supply, transportation infrastructure and energy and water systems, all under the guise of pseudo-science like “climate change”…
Wake up and effect change people, because San Franfreakshow and El Lay are coming to all California, and metasticizing outward to kill the entire United States as we’ve known it….
About a month ago I watched a video produced by two individuals who wanted to test the range of a diesel pickup truck versus an electric pickup. Both trucks pulled identical 7,000lb camper trailers. They travelled together at the same speed on an Interstate highway east of Denver Colorado. The electric pickup made it 126 miles before it ran out of electrons. 126 MILES!!! It’s not difficult to extrapolate what California commerce will look like under an all-electric mandate.
Best have a 126 mile extension cord, in that case! Not may plug-ins out yonder!
This was such a good example, Fed Up. I remember.
Showandtell, can you imagine a Central Valley farmer who only has a few hours to harvest a ripe crop before it spoils attempting to do this critical work with an electric tractor? It’s not like someone could bring a 5-gallon bucket of electrons to the field when the tractor runs out of “fuel”.
Oh, I know, Fed Up. Every single aspect of this brain-fevered horse manure is an absolute NIGHTMARE. And for what?
Gee, I guess the farmer could haul a generator and gas cans around during harvest, right? To take care of running out of “fuel,” right? Oh sure! That this would defeat the purpose is not even a true statement considering EVs aren’t in the least ‘green’ or ‘non-polluting’ in the first place.
This whole ridiculous picture might make good fodder for an incisive political cartoon, I guess, but that’s about the extent of anything worthwhile coming out of this utter nonsense. Gah!
Tesla probably can though which is ironic.
Folks, now is the time to stop with the whining and complaining and EMBRACE THE IDIOCY.
Step one: acquire arable lands with water rights.
Step two: grow lots and lots of hay
Step three: sell that hay to all the mule teams that will soon be pulling cargo across the State of California
Mules and eBikes. That is the future.
You might as well print up a few ghost guns and make sure you have spare powder and blast caps for making your own ammo too – because law enforcement in gas vehicles is going grow more and more scarce as these idiotic mandates are enacted.
All that b.s. about how “oppressive” your family is? That is going away soon as well, as anyone with a big family with a lot of men in it will quickly see that they will be able to operate and protect their kin and property much better than all the solo cell phone rich kids making decisions for all of us these days.
To review:
Grow hay for mules.
eBikes and Mules are the new California Dream.
Ghost guns and ammo.
A large kin network to collect male relatives together into a martial force for mutual aid.
A bright future of progress!
Thanks for this article- it needed to be said!
Once again this is the problem of our California State Legislature. The enitre Carbon Neutral is a fraud, the Green Agenda is a fraud, as well as their laws destroying the physical and mental health of our children. We need to create a new legislature that supports the American System of scientific and cultural development. We have good natural resouces to use, as we build hundreds of nuclear power plants and develop commerical fusion energy. We are created in the image of the creator with powerful creative minds to make these discoveries and many more to come as we explore space. This is the mission for children, not transgender rights as this California State Legislature is obsessed with. This is why I am running for CA State Assembly 18 in 2024 and I encourage others to join me. Mindy Pechenuk -Republican Candidate for CA State Assembly 18 in 2024
Thanks for this article- it needed to be said!
Once again this is the problem of our California State Legislature. The entire Carbon Neutral is a fraud, the Green Agenda is a fraud, as well as their laws destroying the physical and mental health of our children. We need to create a new legislature that supports the American System of scientific and cultural development. We have good natural resources to use, as we build hundreds of nuclear power plants and develop commercial fusion energy. We are created in the image of the creator with powerful creative minds to make these discoveries and many more to come as we explore space. This is the mission for children, not transgender rights as this California State Legislature is obsessed with. This is why I am running for CA State Assembly 18 in 2024 and I encourage others to join me. Mindy Pechenuk -Republican Candidate for CA State Assembly 18 in 2024
But this idiocy is what people in California want. Nothing will change because the people who vote (or have their ballots cast for them) are stuck on stupid. I just love them rolling blackouts. Their unpredictability is what makes them so fun. And it’s what the people want.
On this, Ms Grimes, I agree with you (see my comment on the sexualization of schools).
This has nothing to do with Climate Change or emissions. This has everything to do with control. When everyone is dependent of electricity, the government powers can tell you what to do. If you don’t comply, then your power is shut off along with the rest of your life. Power and Control.
Maybe the threatened closure of the landmark Balboa Island Ferry because of CARB diktats will make people prick up their ears about this stuff. Another on the Buzzkill List of the CA bureaucrats like CARB, and it’s all happening for NO GOOD REASON. Disappointing that news outlets covering this (including the one below) have been so soft and sheep-like and haven’t been doing their jobs; meaning why the heck are they never explaining to their audiences who CARB is and what totalitarians they are, and why people should care. More reason to be eternally grateful for The CA Globe:
“A New State Mandate Threatens the Future of Newport’s Balboa Island Ferry”
https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/a-new-state-mandate-threatens-the-future-of-newports-balboa-island-ferry/
Is California removing dams that provide water for hydro power plants. so that a unknown species of plant or animal can survive, who is more important in California the people that live there or an little known big that has very little value. I believe that California has it’s values missed up, look at some of the other things that California is outlawing also.