PG&E pledges net-zero emissions by 2040, will keep using gas

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — The nation’s largest utility on Wednesday outlined a multi-decade plan that aims to more rapidly reduce to zero its net greenhouse gas emissions while still using natural gas to produce power.

Pacific Gas & Electric’s plan is to take more carbon out of the air than it emits by 2040, five years earlier than the goal set by its home state of California and Southern California Edison, the state’s second-largest utility.

The utility's climate strategy also calls for more ambitious near-term goals. These include lowering emissions to 50% below 2015 levels, expanding the use of biogas — created when food waste and other organic matter breaks down — so that it constitutes 15% of its natural gas production, and ensuring 70% of its electric supply comes from renewable sources like solar and wind, all by 2030.

The utility also plans to add enough charging stations to power 3 million electric vehicles and will help customers swap out gas-powered appliances for electric options. The latter seeks to address a growing trend of communities banning or severely restricting gas appliances in new construction. Los Angeles last month joined more than 50 California cities that have approved such plans.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/pg-e-pledges-net-zero-emissions-by-2040-will-keep-using-gas/ar-AAYeKHL

[NNadir]

1. Wow, more "by 2030" and "by 2040." It should go as well as

...all the "by 1990," "by 2000" I heard when I was a young man in California.

It helped me toward my cynicism.

Now we have an announcement of direct air capture.

This should be great for some fancy accounting and cooking the books while we happily cook the planet while chanting.

Overcoming both the entropy and the enthalpy associated with the dumping of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide requires more energy than was released by dumping it.

If it weren't so bloody awful it would be as amusing as hell to hear that "by 2022" people would still be proposing perpetual motion machines as the solution to all of our problems.