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Civitas Outlook
Topic
Economic Dynamism
Published on
May 7, 2025
Contributors
Joel Kotkin
Photo by Bob Oh on Unsplash

The High Cost of California’s Green Energy Policies

Contributors
Joel Kotkin
Joel Kotkin
Senior Research Fellow
Joel Kotkin
Summary
California can only prosper if it can develop affordable, reliable energy from all sources, including the state’s fossil fuel supplies.
Summary
California can only prosper if it can develop affordable, reliable energy from all sources, including the state’s fossil fuel supplies.
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Since the early 2000s, governors and legislators from both parties have signed onto a climate agenda in California that is making energy steadily unaffordable.

Gasoline in California, according to AAA, which tracks national gas prices daily, costs an average of about $4.78, compared with $3.16 nationally. The cost of electricity in the state is now the highest in the continental U.S., at 30.22 cents per kilowatt hour.

You might want to blame the discrepancies on greed — Big Oil practicing price gouging, as Gov. Gavin Newsom has suggested, and utilities lining their shareholders’ pockets. But at the pump and on your light and power bill, California’s high energy prices are better understood as a self-inflicted wound, traceable to the state’s quixotic green energy policy.

Continue reading at the Los Angeles Times

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