California’s Energy Future Needs the 3 R’s: Reality, Reliability, and Resilience 

California’s energy strategy ignores reality and gets the basic energy principles of reliability and resilience wrong.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s targets—100% “clean” electricity by 2045 and the (currently stalled) ban on selling new internal-combustion-engine cars and trucks after 2035—treat the distinction between electricity and other forms of energy as a detail green policies can easily overcome.

However, wind turbines and solar panels only generate intermittent electricity. They do not produce the jet fuel that keeps military and commercial aircraft flying, the diesel that moves freight and construction equipment, the gasoline and diesel that power the state’s tens of millions of internal-combustion vehicles, or the bunker fuel used by ships calling at the state’s major ports.

The state’s own refining and supply situation shows why the governor’s policies are more fantasy than reality. The state functions as an energy island. The Sierra Nevada blocks pipeline connections to the rest of the country, making large-scale shipments of refined products from Gulf Coast refineries effectively impossible. Despite this geography, California’s economy–the fourth-largest in the world–still demands roughly 58 million gallons of transportation fuel every day.

That transportation fuel demand total breaks down as:

• 37 million gallons of gasoline for more than 36 million vehicles.
• 11 million gallons of jet fuel for the state’s major military installations and international airports.
• 10 million gallons of diesel for trucking and construction.

In addition, ships calling at the Ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Oakland require about 5.2 million metric tons of bunker fuel annually. The Port of Los Angeles alone saw almost 1,900 vessel arrivals in 2025; Long Beach handled over 10 million container units; Oakland adds further significant cargo and cruise traffic.

But planes, ships, trucks, and cars do not run on raw crude oil. They run on fuels that are refined from crude oil and are produced by the nation’s refineries. Those refineries also turn crude oil into thousands of other essential products demanded and purchased in the Golden State (and around the nation).

Yet policies such as California’s low-carbon fuel standard are forcing refineries like the Martinez and Rodeo facilities to shift to biofuel production. Phillips 66 ended operations at its Los Angeles complex in late 2025, and Valero idled its Benicia refinery in 2026. These closures and conversions have reduced the state’s refining capacity by almost 20% in roughly the past year.

California only has seven remaining refineries. With Phillips 66 Rodeo now a Renewable Energy Complex, only six are processing crude oil.

Southern California: (South Coast Air Quality Management District) 

• Marathon Petroleum (Los Angeles)
• Chevron (El Segundo)
• PBF Energy (Torrance)
• Valero (Wilmington)

Northern California: (Bay Area Air Quality Management District)

• Chevron (Richmond)
• PBF Energy (Martinez)

California’s remaining refineries that process crude oil lack the capacity to produce the 58 million gallons of transportation fuel demanded daily. Compounding the problem, other operators have warned that the regulatory climate makes additional refinery closures likely.

Human lives improve with expanded access to affordable, reliable electricity and liquid fuels. But California’s policy approach takes a contradictory path. The state is forcing refinery closures while also mandating reliance on weather-dependent electricity, which forces the state’s utilities to build expensive backup generation, storage, and transmission.

California’s modern economy depends on the refined products made from oil—the very products that intermittent electricity sources cannot produce. But demanding a continuous supply of reliable, affordable energy while imposing regulatory conditions that make continuous service impossible ignores reality.

Resilience is a system’s capacity to absorb a disruption and recover without prolonged shortages or extreme price swings.

California’s policies appear targeted to destroy that capacity. Reduced in-state refining forces greater reliance on imports and leaves the state strained for both fuel and electricity. Wartime losses of refining capacity elsewhere (including Russia and the Persian Gulf) add pressure and raise the risk of prolonged shortages, since building and repairing war-damaged refineries takes time and significant capital. California’s regulatory environment makes that kind of investment unlikely.

Military operations, commercial airports, freight movement, and port operations cannot pause for artificially inflated policy timelines or arbitrary green mandates; instead, they’ll look elsewhere. Rather than accepting the problem and fixing it, current policy is accelerating California’s loss of energy security.

Energy policy choices can be tested against a few basic principles: Can households and businesses afford the fuels and power they use? Can they expect energy supplies to be there when they need them? When a disruption occurs, does the system recover quickly without sustained damage to supply or prices? California’s current course is failing these simple tests.

So-called clean energy mandates can forcibly redirect investments in the energy sector, but they will not create the refining capacity or the transportation fuels the state’s economy requires. Policymakers’ refusal to balance the value of electricity generation and refined fuels has raised costs, tightened supply, and increased dependence on distant (and often unreliable) sources.

A workable energy policy starts by accepting that difference and protecting the capacity to meet actual demand. Instead, California’s trajectory ignores reality by actively damaging the reliability and resilience of its energy systems.

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