By Katie Davis
Global Reckoning
The world needs to stop approving new coal plants and oil and gas fields immediately, shift to electric heat pumps in buildings by 2025, and phase out sales of new gas cars by 2035 to meet international climate goals. That’s the latest word from the International Energy Agency in a May report finding that it’s a “narrow” but possible pathway to a net zero future for greenhouse gases. Here's how we're doing locally...
Gas-Free Buildings
It’s happening, as 46 cities in California have passed all-electric building codes to phase out gas in new buildings. Santa Barbara could be number 47, with a City Council vote expected in June.
All-electric construction is a win-win -- more affordable, healthier to live in, and essential to meet climate goals. Other jurisdictions in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties are eyeing a similar move, and the statewide building code is edging in that direction as well.
Ventura Compressor Mess
A decline in natural gas use in local buildings and power plants can’t come soon enough for the city of Ventura, which voted unanimously on May 10 to ask state regulators to take another look at SoCalGas’s plans to expand a potentially explosive compressor station next to an elementary school in West Ventura. Identified as a polluted site by the Dept of Toxic Substances Control and as a methane gas “super-emitter” by NASA in 2017, locals are fed up. Sierra Club Los Padres Chapter is part of the Westside Clean Air Coalition, a group demanding environmental review of the expansion project and consideration of clean energy alternatives.
Oily-versary
May 19 marked the 6-year anniversary of the 2015 Refugio oil spill. While the spill shut down our beaches and caused the deaths of hundreds of marine animals, the unusably corroded pipeline also shut down ExxonMobil’s offshore oil production and oil processing facilities on the Gaviota coast ever since.
As these facilities had been the largest source of greenhouse gases, harmful PM2.5 and smog-forming VOCs in Santa Barbara County, we’ve all been breathing cleaner air ever since. Exxon doesn’t want us to get too used to it. Hearings on restarting their oil rigs in the channel and trucking the oil on Highway 101 are scheduled for September 8 and 10. The extra hearing seems designed to accommodate all the expected opposition.
Cat Canyon Spotlight
While the last of the oil expansion projects proposed in Cat Canyon near Santa Maria withdrew last November, our celebrations are muted by the narrow failure of SB 467, a bill that would have phased out cyclic steaming and permanently protected our county from this risky process.
The vote in the Natural Resources Committee was 4-3 in favor of the bill. However, it needed five votes to pass out of committee so was one vote shy. We are also, sadly, still fighting the Cat Canyon aquifer exemption the oil companies requested to drill through the Santa Maria groundwater basin.
On our behalf, the Environmental Defense Center has submitted three expert reports documenting the risks to our drinking water, but the state still seems poised to rubberstamp the application. We are also reminded of the existing oil drilling in Cat Canyon by the frequent fires they start. The last one, dubbed the Dominion fire, was reported on May 12 and was caused by a power surge at an oil lease near Orcutt-Garey Road and the Dierberg Vineyard.
Solar All Over
If you asked me to predict what battles we’d be fighting this year, I wouldn’t have guessed rooftop solar. Such an obvious good in our efforts to reach 100% renewable energy! Such an economic bright spot and job generator! Such a nice way to power an all-electric house and electric vehicle!
Yet, it is a universal truth that the big utilities don’t like rooftop solar, considering solar customers as lost customers. After all, utilities make money from building utility-scale energy and transmission lines. They are pushing AB1139, a bad bill Sierra Club California says, “will severely impact the rooftop solar industry by proposing compensation that severely undervalues established benefits of distributed generation.”
It’s linked to tug-of-war going on at the Public Utilities Commission over Net Energy Metering, the way solar homeowners are credited for the solar energy they supply to the grid. A vote is expected soon.