Drought in California could nearly halve the state’s hydroelectric generation this summer, pushing up wholesale power prices in the West, and forcing the state to rely on natural gas generation and out-of-state imports, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects in a new analysis.
The EIA suggests in a supplement to its May 2022–released Short-Term Energy Outlook that current drought conditions in the state potentially “have a significant impact” on power markets throughout the West from June through September 2022. That impact “could be different than in past years, given the state’s accelerating growth in intermittent generating capacity and reliance on imports,” which accounted for nearly one-third of California’s power supply in 2020, it said.
