ETIOLOGY OF THE CALIFORNIA ENERGY CRISIS: CAUSES
The mismatch between electricity supply and demand in California in 2001, wherein demand is outstripping the supply, is not the cause of the state's energy crisis. Rather, this mismatch is the energy crisis confronting California. The causes of the energy crisis, on the other hand, are those factors that contributed to the development of the mismatch between electricity supply and demand that became painfully apparent early in 2001.
Several factors contributed (and continue to contribute) to the mismatch between electricity supply and demand in California. A problem exists, however, with respect to defining one of these factors as the primary cause and relegating others to the status of secondary causes. As an example, one can cite the 13.8 percent population growth in California from 1990 to 2000 as a source of vastly increased demand for electricity that, in turn, contributed to the state's energy crisis in 2001. In contrast, however, Texas experienced a 22.9 percent increase in population from 1990 and 2000, and that state has no energy crisis in 2001 (United States Census Bureau, 2001; Yardley, 2001). Similar contrasts involving deregulation and other factors also tend to confuse the issue when one attempts to declare one factor more so than any other is the primary cause of the energy crisis in California in 2001.
In actual fact, the energy crisis in California in 2001 (a situation in which demand outstrips supply) is a manifestation of the interplay among a number of factors (Krugman, 2001a). These factors include the following events, actions, and phenomena:
A very large increase in the state's resident population;
The rapid an enormous increase in the use of computing devices in residences and businesses in California;
The expansion in the number of "server farms" in California that provide service for Internet users throughout the United States and, t...