Because Texas has a lot of wind power (so much that the price sometimes goes negative at night) and because, although California gets a lot of its power from renewable energy, most of that is imported (WA hydro) while in-state production remains dirtier.

Don't get me wrong: I live in CA and would be happy never to set foot in Texas again, but this responds to your specific statement.

why is hydroelectric power not "renewable"?

I'm merely saying while California consumes a lot of energy from renewable sources, most of the energy generated in the state is dirty.

In the specific case of hydro, California has, for all intents and purposes, none. There is some pumped hydro storage (as far as anyone can tell, all the reasonable candidate sites are in use) but actual generation comes from WA which has plenty of water flow. This also means that WA deals with the environmental problems of these generator dams, and California does not.

California does have some wind and solar of course, in additional to its hydrocarbon plants. But lots of gas peakers.

For pollution in general, California might be a leader for policies enforcing cleanliness.

But for clean power generation, they're not the leader, Vermont is [1]. California is ranked #8 (Texas is ranked #22). This is based on a ratio of the power consumed, not raw power generation total.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_electri...