California is on the verge of passing a law of using 100% renewable electricity from sources like wind, solar, or hydropower by the year 2045, which is quite a bold disobedience of the Trump administration’s opposition to climate action.
The key legislative committee passed a bill mandating in this regard in the month of July 2017. The bill was sponsored by Senate President Kevin de León (D).
This makes the nation’s sixth largest economy striding closer towards green electricity. When this bill is passed and converted into law, California will be the second state after Hawaii to have 100% renewable energy mandate. This also clearly shows the state’s position against the White House on climate issues. Governor Jerry Brown recently announced his plans to host a global climate summit in San Francisco next year and has clearly spoken out against the president on climate change issue. This has come at a very same time when President Trump pulled the United States out of many climate policies, including the Paris Agreement. Hawaiian state legislature has approved it’s 100% renewable electricity mandate in the year 2015 itself. Massachusetts is another state which is considering to pass a bill towards 100% renewable energy by the year 2050.
The legislation is known as SB 100. It also sets limits on California’s hydrocarbon consumption and aims to increase renewable energy consumption in stages, in the coming decades. The first target is 60% renewable energy by the year 2030. SB100 also emphasizes and promises to reduce the impact on climate change by eliminating the usage of fossil fuel and creating new jobs in the renewable energy sector. This bill will make California the world’s largest test bed for watching the effects of clean and sustainable energy model. It will become a global leader in the environment-friendly energy model.
California’s GDP is the largest in the United States at $2.6 trillion, which is nearly 14% of the entire country’s GDP. With this kind of a transition of the state’s powerhouse economy to 100%, electricity from renewables is really a mammoth task and the other states will have to necessarily take a very serious note of it.