The Problem With Gavin Newsom's Climate Change Agenda

California is headed for a ban on new fossil fuel-powered cars by 2035, a major part of Governor Gavin Newsom's climate change agenda. While there are major societal hurdles that his government must overcome before that date, one perhaps unexpected obstacle it faces is climate change itself.

The state has been battered since New Year's Eve by a series of extreme weather events—high winds and heavy rainfall cyclones have led to severe flooding, rockslides and at least 20 deaths. Tens of thousands of people were placed under evacuation orders and many more homes across the state have faced outages due to downed power lines.

As extreme weather events are predicted to become more commonplace with global temperatures rising, their impact on energy infrastructure will also be felt across the U.S.—including the infrastructure that is expected to power Newsom's green transition.

"Federal and state authorities will need to collaborate to spur increased funding for grid resiliency and development in the face of climate change and the electric transportation revolution," Devin Gladden, manager for federal affairs at the American Automobile Association (AAA), told Newsweek.

Recent flooding is not the first time California's electrical grid has been impacted by extreme weather. In August 2022, the state's grid operator warned residents that they may need to conserve electricity, including by avoiding charging electric vehicles, due to a heatwave in the midst of a drought.

The alert came a week after Newsom had announced his electric vehicle (EV) ban, drawing criticism of the move. He said in a speech that the drought had reduced the state's hydropower capacity, and power outages were reportedly only mitigated by temporarily ramping up gas-fired power plants.

"As California's grid [nearly] suffered from blackouts under the strain of the heatwaves in 2022, the question remains as to whether the Californian grid will be ready for a tidal wave of demand brought on by EVs," Rami Reshef, an Israeli entrepreneur and CEO of hydrogen fuel cell company GenCell, told Newsweek.

When asked to comment, Lindsay Buckley, a spokesperson for the California Energy Commission, stressed that the grid was able to keep lights on during the 2022 heatwave.

"The reality is we're living in an era of extremes," Newsom said during the heatwave. "Extreme heat, extreme drought, and with the flooding that we're experiencing around the globe—just ask folks in Missouri, Kentucky or in Pakistan—the extreme floods as a consequence of mother nature's fury."

Newsom identified a common misnomer, that global warming means the weather generally gets warmer. Instead, the more heat energy in the weather system, prompted by climate change, is making its movements more erratic and therefore the weather it brings is often more extreme.

"Each summer and each winter it's going to be more variable and we're getting more weather records broken every time," Mark Maslin, a professor of earth system science at University College London, U.K., and a climate change author, told Newsweek.

"What we're seeing is extra energy and heat in the system is making the bends in the Jetstream more extreme. So the incredible cold spell that the U.S.A. had recently is because that bend in the Gulf stream has been pulled really far south," he added. "Last year, they had snow in Texas and the infrastructure literally broke down because they're not used to having that cold weather in Texas. It's also what was causing our super heatwave with 40 degrees [Celsius in the U.K. last summer], when the warm bend in the Jetstream was pushing very far north."

What is exceptional about the weather is not necessarily that it is occurring, but how far north or south it is occurring, Maslin explained, caused by a "strong, oscillating boundary between the warm and cold air, which is taking hot air to places that it usually doesn't get to, and cold air to places it usually doesn't get as south to."

California remains in drought despite the recent deluge, as 2022's long, dry periods have made the soil less permeable and able to absorb so much precipitation in such a short space of time; wildfires caused by extreme heat have also had a destabilizing effect.

While this has exacerbated the flooding California is experiencing, and placed a question mark over the state's ability to retain the floodwater for the summer, it demonstrates how the two weather extremes aren't canceling one another out, but intensifying each other's effects.

Newsom's gas car ban has been made "without the adequate infrastructure for EVs in place," Reshef said, adding that "grid stress will present big barriers" to the transition.

Gladden noted the "uneven patchwork of approaches to grid development" in electric utility companies across the U.S., adding: "Given the urgency of climate change, profits and service territories can no longer dictate where clean energy is available in this country. For this reason, federal and state electricity regulators must work hand-in-hand to demonstrate a higher objective in the name of energy independence and climate change to build the energy infrastructure our future demands. If not, our country's energy future will grow dimmer by the day."

The question of how EVs fare in these extreme weather events has also been raised amid the evacuation orders; for example, in response to a story about power outages during one of the storms, a Newsweek reader wrote: "I hope the governor's Tesla was charged."

Is this a concern for EV drivers in California?

"When the grid goes down, you can't get gasoline either," Marc Geller, spokesperson for the Electric Vehicle Association, based in California, told Newsweek. "Petrol stations require electricity; if there's no electricity, they don't dispense gasoline. So the same issue is of concern to those who hadn't filled their gas [tank]."

When Geller owned a gasoline car over 20 years ago, he said he would, like others, run it down to a quarter of a tank or less before refilling. "But in fact, most people with electric cars do or certainly can plug in their car when they get home—and the car sits there and charges up. And most people leave every day with a full battery, because it charged overnight."

"So certainly, [there may be] the odd case where someone didn't charge up their car, and electricity isn't available—these things can happen," he added. "But is that likely to happen to someone with a gasoline car?"

It's also true that, while green infrastructure has been impacted by extreme weather events, so too have fossil fuels. A rise in gas prices early in 2023 was caused by refineries having to temporarily close due to December's cold snap, according to the AAA.

Gladden suggested battery swapping or generator-powered chargers feature as part of emergency response planning, but added that "the interconnection between fossil fuels and clean energy cannot be understated during times of emergency: to repair the transmission lines that could be moving electricity from a renewable source, you may need a diesel-powered bucket truck to get the repair crew to the lines."

"Fuel availability impacts all vehicle types during extreme weather events that can cause power outages as gasoline pumps also require electricity," Buckley responded. With regards to grid stress, "the state has more than a decade to prepare for the phase-out of gasoline-powered vehicles sales. Over this time, electric vehicles are expected to add only a small amount of electricity demand during peak hours to California's grid."

"State agencies and policymakers are implementing policies to encourage grid-friendly load growth," she said. "For example, management strategies such as time-of-use rates will be able to shift charging to non-peak system hours to mitigate grid impacts and prevent potential system overloads. When implementing time-of-use rates, electricity will cost a different amount depending on the time of day. By responding to price signals through software and automation, consumers can save more money on their fuel costs and mitigate grid impacts."

"The impact of the state ban on new gas-powered vehicle sales is not yet fully known," Anne Gonzales, a spokesperson for the California Independent System Operator (CAISO), commented. "However EV growth and EV load characteristics, along with all distributed energy resources, are areas we are working to better understand as the adoption of transportation electrification continues to increase under state policies and consumer EV adoption."

Citing technology which allows energy to be transferred back to the grid from EVs, she said: "CAISO believes that EVs have the potential to help us respond to grid needs and support grid reliability as we move closer to a carbon-free grid."