California is a national leader in the transition to clean electricity, but integrating all that renewable energy onto the grid is no easy feat. Critics of renewables have long claimed that adding variable renewables (such as wind and solar) to the grid would force fossil-fueled power plants to operate less efficiently, leading to an increase in air pollution emissions. And as states start to integrate more renewables, those claims have come back.
But is this argument true? Do renewables really lead to increased air pollution?
