SACRAMENTO—For most of the year, California’s quest to rid itself of fossil fuels seems on track: Electric cars populate highways while energy from wind, solar, and water provides much of the power for homes and businesses.
Then it gets hot, and everyone in the nation’s most populous state turns on their air conditioners at the same time. That’s when California has come close to running out of power in recent years, especially in the early evenings when electricity from solar is not as abundant.
Now, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to buy massive amounts of renewable energy to help keep the lights on. The idea is to use the state’s purchasing power to convince private companies to build large-scale power plants that run off of heat from underground sites and strong winds blowing off the coast—the kinds of power that utility companies have not been buying because it’s too expensive and would take too long to build….