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California has rightly positioned itself at the forefront of the fight against climate change since Donald Trump was elected president. But if our state is going to hold the line under this new administration, the details matter. Nowhere is this truer than in the energy sector, where decisions must be made with an eye toward moving away from fossil fuels to clean energy, increasing California’s resilience to climate impacts, and ensuring that the vulnerable communities most impacted can access the benefits they urgently need.
Every new energy project from this day forward must be scrutinized through a critical lens that keeps equity at the center. Is the proposal at hand the best way to provide for our economic and environmental future? Does the proposed project take a realistic view of changing conditions, like projected sea level rise and increasingly severe weather events? Most critically, does the decision support environmental justice, or does it continue the historic legacy of building polluting facilities in already overburdened communities?
These questions should be considered first and foremost by the California Energy Commission (CEC), which will decide whether to approve a new gas-fired power plant on the shores of the City of Oxnard, a predominantly low-income Latino community in Ventura County where power plants for the surrounding region have been concentrated for generations. There are three compelling reasons why the CEC should reject the proposed new facility, known as the Puente Plant.
1. The Oxnard Community Deserves Environmental Justice. Many neighborhoods in Oxnard have higher rates of asthma than those in over 90 percent of California. Even as the City of Oxnard explicitly banned new power generation facilities from its beaches when it updated its General Plan, state agencies have treated the city like the region’s sacrifice zone, littered with dirty industry that wealthier neighboring communities would never allow. The city’s explicit rejection of the proposed energy facility and the unanimous opposition of all of its elected representatives should be taken seriously. As described by Lucus Zucker, policy director for Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE) and shown in this moving video, the people of Oxnard are done with accepting further industrialization of their community. It is time for Oxnard to have the clean air and clean energy it deserves.
2. The Threat of Sea Level Rise Is Real. Because the proposed Puente Plant is located in the coastal zone, state law requires the California Coastal Commission to review the proposal and make a recommendation to the CEC. The Coastal Commission unequivocally rejected the project, concluding there was “substantial evidence that the project site could be exposed to flooding during its proposed 30-year operating life, and that over the long-term, this possibility would become a certainty.” While the justification for Puente is to improve grid reliability, building new energy infrastructure at a coastal site threatened by sea level rise does the opposite.
3. Clean Energy Is a Viable and Less Costly Alternative. Statewide, California has a glut of gas plants at risk of early retirement. Puente is needed only to provide voltage and potentially other reliability services in the highly unlikely event that multiple transmission lines bringing power into the region go out of service while demand is at a 1-in-10-year high. As explained in the city’s testimony on alternatives to Puente, a costly oversized gas plant to meet this localized need is like “using a sledgehammer to crack a walnut.” Use of emissions-free synchronous condensers to provide voltage support, coupled with continued deployment of clean energy, can cost-effectively meet local needs while avoiding the environmental injustice and sea level rise concerns perpetuated by Puente.
California has embraced its role as a beacon for our nation and the world under the climate leadership of Governor Brown. Our actions must match our words in the fight against climate change and environmental injustice. Meeting this mission will surely include some hard choices, but choose we must. The Energy Commission should not approve a dirty power plant in the coastal zone. We know better; now, the Energy Commission must do better.