Business | Lit

Businesses compete to battle California’s blackouts

Green companies vie not just to generate power but also to store and manage it

|NEW YORK

DEPENDING ON WHOM you ask, California is a leader in clean energy or a cautionary tale. Power outages in August prompted stern critiques from Republicans. “In California”, Donald Trump tweeted, “Democrats have intentionally implemented rolling blackouts—forcing Americans in the dark.” In addition to provoking outrage and derision, however, the episode is also likely to inspire investment.

This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “Lit”

What Putin fears

From the August 29th 2020 edition

Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents

Explore the edition

More from Business

An eagle sweating in his bed with a sign showing a red downward arrow attached to the end of the bedframe

Germans are world champions of calling in sick

It’s easy and it pays well

The illustration shows a man and a woman standing on separate stacks of coins.

Knowing what your colleagues earn

The pros and cons of greater pay transparency



Donald Trump’s America will not become a tech oligarchy

Reasons not to panic about the tech-industrial complex

OpenAI’s latest model will change the economics of software

The more reasoning it does, the more computer power it uses

Donald Trump once tried to ban TikTok. Now can he save it?

To keep the app alive in America, he must persuade China to sell up