Glendale's Misguided Gas Power Plan

 

Recently, Glendale residents received a cheery message from Glendale Water and Power (GWP). Besides containing an attractive holiday greeting, the message offered “Holiday Water & Power Saving Tips.” There is a link to an Energy and Water Efficiency Market offering online shopping for energy and water efficient products at discounted prices and some information about Glendale’s mandatory water conservation.

 

This well produced message also includes an update on the Grayson Repowering Project. The report adheres to the cheerful theme of the holiday greeting. Certainly GWP does not need any tips on public relations. However, it seems to need some tips on its “repowering project.”

 

The plant, named after Glendale’s first Engineer and General Manager, Loren Grayson, was constructed beginning in 1939 as a city owned-and-operated steam powered electrical generating facility. Grayson is located near San Fernando Road and Flower, not far from where the Golden State Freeway meets the Ventura Freeway. It sits beside the L.A. River, across from the John Ferraro Athletic Fields in Griffith Park. Because of its age and because it had been running for a long time with little renovation, it was time for a makeover.

 

The 2017 Grayson Repowering Project was a plan to replace existing natural gas burning equipment with new gas-burning equipment with 262 megawatts (MW) of energy capacity. This plan was rejected by the Glendale City Council in April 2018. Glendale residents, joined by environmental groups such as the Glendale Environmental Coalition and the Sierra Club, held meetings, wrote letters, demonstrated and testified at Glendale City Council meetings. In April, 2018, the City Council rejected the Grayson Repowering Plan.

 

In July, 2019, the City Council conditionally approved an integrated Resource Plan (IRP) and an energy portfolio with 93 MW of gas-burning and 75 MG of battery storage at Grayson. This was to be accompanied by clean energy projects, such as demand-response, energy efficiency, solar, battery storage, and transmission into Glendale. The goal was to achieve, or come close to, 100 percent clean energy by 2030. However, by the end of 2021, it was clear that GWP had not fully explored more clean energy alternatives. Instead, the Glendale City Council will be offered two choices: 93 MW from five new internal combustion engine units, or 101 MW from refurbishing two existing Grayson turbines. Environmental groups—the Glendale Environmental Coalition, Earth Justice and the Sierra Club—ask that GWP neither install nor refurbish gas burning equipment until all possible clean-energy solutions have been explored.

 

This fossil fuel got its name because it is a naturally occurring hydrocarbon mixture consisting primarily of methane. It is formed when layers of decomposing plant and animal remains are exposed to intense heat and pressure beneath the Earth’s surface over millions of years. Natural gas, a non-renewable resource, has been a major source of electricity generation. It burns cleaner than other hydrocarbon fuels, such as oil and coal, and produces less carbon dioxide per unit of energy released.

 

Despite its advantages, though, it is not easy to store or transport natural gas. This is due to its low density. It tends to leak, and the leaks may cause explosions. In 2015, SoCal Gas employees discovered a leak and blowout in Aliso Canyon, an underground gas storage facility in the Santa Susana Mountains. The Aliso/Porter Ranch gas leak’s carbon footprint was huge. The leak spewed 110,000 pounds of methane per hour. A given quantity of methane has 84 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. 

 

“What is unique about natural gas among fossil fuels,” writes climate science expert, Michael Mann, “is that it is not only a fossil fuel. It’s also a greenhouse gas….That means it can cause warming not only when we burn it for energy, and it releases carbon dioxide, but when the methane itself escapes into the atmosphere.” (Michael Mann, The New Climate War, 2021)

 

These days almost all natural gas is fracked. “The process of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, that is used to break up the bedrock to get at natural gas deposits inevitably allows some of the methane to escape directly into the atmosphere (what’s known as ‘fugitive methane’”). (Mann, Op. Cit.) Other serious environmental threats from natural gas extraction include the impact of fracking chemicals on the safety of water supplies. Ask yourself: Which is the more important resource to those of us living in the arid Southwest—water or natural gas?

 

The update on the Grayson Repowering Project tells us that it will provide “efficient and reliable power to Glendale homes and businesses, especially in times of emergency and high demand.” How reliable, though, will this project be if the storage facility it uses is shut down? There has been strong community pressure on SoCal Gas to shut down the storage facility at Aliso Canyon ever since the blowout in 2015.

 

The repowering project will help GWP “provide energy to customers when imported energy and local renewable energy sources are not enough.” Might enhanced energy conservation and efficiency, and more local renewable energy sources, such as solar panels on commercial buildings and parking structures and residential rooftops bolster the “enough” component sufficiently? Local distributed energy resources would seem to be more reliable than a highly centralized system. The Glendale Environmental Coalition argues that GWP has neither begun a commercial solar program nor done enough to encourage more private residential solar and storage.

 

GWP claims that natural gas will provide a “source of power that helps ‘fill the gaps’ of solar and wind resources due to their varying nature.” That “varying nature” remark may apply even more to natural gas infrastructure.

“Reducing the high maintenance costs, extra fuel costs, and emergency spot market power purchase costs that we spend now due to frequent breakdowns of the aged, unreliable, inefficient and high maintenance equipment,” observes GWP, “affordable rates for Glendale customers” can be maintained. But, consider this: The Grayson project will cost hundreds of millions of dollars for technology that may well be obsolete or legally prohibited long before the end of the lifetime of the new equipment. Moreover, the new equipment will be used only to cover peak demand. In other words, it represents a very expensive insurance policy.

 

The GWP mentions improved air quality. This claim is valid because “the new technology will be more efficient and will comply with new regulations requiring lower air emissions.” Air pollution and its threat to the well-being of living things near Grayson is a major concern because Glendale, like many L.A. communities is located in a pollution-trapping bowl and is crossed by intersecting freeways. The Grayson Repowering project will result in less air pollution, but the gas-burning power plant will still produce harmful emissions.

 

The official policy of the Sierra Club is that it “opposes new electric generating units powered by natural gas, including peaking and combined cycle units. Consistent with the Board’s goal of eliminating all fossil fuels from the electric sector no later than 2030, it is critical that the U.S. avoid further high-capital investments in new natural gas plants and related infrastructure.”

 

The original Grayson Repowering Project has been partly defanged, thanks to the Glendale City Council’s demands. GWP has taken a step in the right direction, but more steps are needed. These steps should lead to achieving 100 percent clean energy by 2035 or sooner. GWP has not thoroughly examined all other options and, apparently, it has not issued Requests for Proposals for new local clean energy projects since 2018.

 

The report earlier this year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned that the Earth could face runaway global warming unless drastic efforts are made to eliminate greenhouse gases. GWP’s repowering project for Grayson is a good effort but it is far from the drastic effort called for by the IPCC. The expression, “business as usual” springs to mind. U.N. Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres called the IPCC’s report a “code red for humanity” and added that, “There is no time for delay and no room for excuses.”

 

On television last night (December 16) Gavin Schmitt, Acting Senior Advisor on Climate at NASA, spoke about a collapsing Antarctic ice shelf, which will likely lead to an eventual two-foot rise in sea-level. (How many climate refugees from Santa Monica will seek asylum in Glendale?)