California’s Energy & Economy
California Governor Gavin Newsom claims that his state is “running the 4th largest economy in the world 9 out of 10 days on 100% clean energy.”
IN FACT, the vast bulk of California’s energy is provided by fossil fuels, its economy is nowhere close to the 4th largest in the world, and Newsom’s “clean” energy agenda is expensive and sometimes dirty. Here are the specifics:
- The latest data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration reveal that 73% of California’s energy was provided by fossil fuels in 2024, while 18% was provided by renewables, 3% by nuclear, and 7% by electricity imports from other states, Canada, and Mexico.
- Newsom’s statement only accounts for electricity (a subsector of total energy), and he later altered his boast about “100% clean energy” to “100% clean energy for at least part of the day” without issuing a correction and without disclosing how much of the day.
- Contrary to Newsom’s brag that his state has leapfrogged Japan to become the 4th largest economy in the world, Japan’s economy is actually 56% larger than California’s, but Newsom converts Japanese yen into U.S. dollars using a dishonest method that makes the economies of locations with high prices seem larger than reality, and sources like Wikipedia, Google Gemini, and CNN parrot his deceitful claim.
- California gets more of its electricity from solar than any other state, and Newsom says that solar is the “cheapest form of energy,” but California has the highest electricity prices in the continental U.S., or twice the national average, and this doesn’t even begin to account for all of the government spending on solar that is borne by taxpayers instead of consumers.
- California has banned the sale of all new gasoline-powered cars starting in 2035, and Newsom alleges this will require “100% of new car sales in California to be zero-emission vehicles” like “electric cars.”
- Newsom’s assertion about “zero emission” ignores major pollutants emitted over the lifecycles of the cars, such as “raw material extraction, material transportation, ultimate product disposal, etc.” and all pollutants which don’t come out of a tailpipe like “tire wear, brake wear, road surface wear and resuspension of road dust.”
- At least 5 recent studies have found that EVs emit more toxic or cancer-causing pollutants over their lifecycles than gasoline-powered cars.
- Despite Newsom’s “clean energy” agenda, California dominates the American Lung Association’s list of cities with the “most polluted” air in the nation, including 6 of the worst 10 cities for ozone pollution, 4 of the worst 10 cities for short-term particle pollution, and 5 of the worst 10 cities for year-round particle pollution.
