Natural gas made up the largest share of California’s electric generation mix in 2022, but solar is accounting for a growing percentage as the state works toward 100% clean energy by 2045.
The data are in a report the California Energy Commission (CEC) released Friday.
Natural gas accounted for 36% of the state’s overall power mix last year, which includes in-state electric generation plus imports from the Northwest and Southwest.
The second-largest share was from solar, at 17%, followed by wind at 11%. Nuclear power and large hydroelectric generation each contributed 9% to the state’s 2022 energy mix.
Fifty-four percent of the state’s total energy mix came from non-GHG and renewable sources in 2022, up from 52% in 2021.
CEC Vice Chair Siva Gunda called the findings “encouraging.”
“Even as climate impacts become increasingly severe, California remains committed to transitioning away from polluting fossil fuels and delivering on the promise to build a future power grid that is clean, reliable and affordable,” Gunda said in a statement.
California’s energy mix has changed markedly since 2012, when 43% of the total came from natural gas. Over the past decade, natural gas generation decreased 20%, to 104,495 GWh.
Meanwhile, solar generation has grown from 2,609 GWh in 2012, when it was less than 1% of the power mix, to 48,950 GWh last year.
Wind generation in California’s power mix grew by 63% since 2012. Coal has been nearly phased-out, the CEC said, contributing just 2% of the power mix in 2022.
Total utility-scale electric generation for California increased 3.4% in 2022, to 287,220 GWh. Twenty-nine percent of the power mix was from imports, about the same as in the previous two years.
Despite the decrease in natural-gas fueled power generation in California, some are calling for a faster phase-out. Looking just at in-state electricity generation, natural gas made up 47% of the total in 2022.
Advocacy groups including Regenerate California point to the disproportionate effect the gas-fueled plants have on disadvantaged communities.
And the group said gas “stands in the way” of the state meeting its target under Senate Bill 100 of 2018, which directs the CEC and other state agencies to plan for all retail electricity sales in California to come from renewable energy and zero-carbon resources by the end of 2045.
“As we power down California’s dirty fossil fuel infrastructure, this gives us the opportunity to create thousands of clean energy jobs and an entirely new system that transforms current and historic social injustices,” Regenerate California said on its website.
The issue of retiring gas plants boiled over this month at a CEC hearing, where the commission voted to keep three old gas-fired plants along the Southern California coast in operation for grid reliability. (See Calif. to Keep Old Gas Plants Operating for Reliability.)