California law under SB 100 (De León, 2018) requires that our electricity system run on 100% carbon-free power by 2045. That means a significant deployment of energy storage resources, like batteries, to capture surplus renewable power from the sun and wind for dispatch during dark and windless times.
While passing this law was a milestone, actually achieving this target will require siting and permitting major clean energy facilities. And perhaps no better land is appropriate for these facilities than at existing fossil fuel plants. These plants are on already-industrialized land with access to transmission lines. Converting them to energy storage facilities is a double-win: it offers a phase out of fossil fuels, while improving the air quality (and often the aesthetics) of the surrounding area.
So that’s why it’s frustrating to see one such proposed conversion to battery storage — the Moss Landing power plant battery energy storage project — potentially held up for months now by local opposition. The Monterey County Planning Commission will consider the project at its July 29th hearing.
The proposed project involves a 1,200-megawatt (MW) battery energy storage system, fit into the existing industrial footprint of the Moss Landing power plant in four two-story buildings, along with associated infrastructure (substations and inverters/converters). It will also replace existing lattice transmission towers with monopoles (staff report available here).
Most importantly, the goal of the project is to store renewable energy from the sun and wind to help California decarbonize its electricity grid. For this reason, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E, the local utility) selected the project and brought it to the California Public Utilities Commission for approval, with a condition that the project reach commercial operation by July 18, 2021 (PG&E advice letter here).
But a good proposal to support needed climate policy is not always enough in California. Permitting any industrial project comes with challenges and opposition, most notably compliance with environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).
In this case, a review of the project under CEQA by the county revealed no significant impacts on the myriad study areas, including air quality, biological resources, water, traffic, cultural resources, and others; provided the developer implement appropriate mitigation measures. However, the developer ended up going beyond the county’s recommendations by committing to a dialogue process to identify additional mitigation measures to protect migratory birds. In short, the developer agreed to go above and beyond what CEQA requires.
Furthermore, in collaborating with the National Audubon Society and Monterey Audubon, the developer agreed not to include new transmission poles and high-voltage wires until after 2020, at which point they will conduct final design in consultation with those nonprofits. The company further committed to addressing bird safety issues in that process, including consideration of undergrounding high-voltage transmission wires.
Ultimately, the clean energy nature of the project, the county’s preparation of an environmental review document that follows CEQA, and this additional commitment to address bird safety issues were enough to gain the support of Audubon and the Sierra Club. The project appeared to face relatively easy sailing to a permit, but the planning commission delayed considering it at its July 8th meeting so that the environmental review document could be revised to clarify transmission wire placement associated with the project. Hopefully, the commission approves the project on July 29th, and no one appeals it to the Monterey County Board of Supervisors.
If California can’t allow relatively straightforward permitting of energy storage facilities at existing power plants with minimal anticipated impacts, where can they go? Not only will clean tech companies shy away from investing in California, potentially driving up costs from lack of competition, but these eyesore power plants may take longer to decommission. In the case of Moss Landing, the power plant has 500-foot dual smokestacks visible through Monterey Bay, a source of visual blight and air pollution in an otherwise unique marine and coastal environment. This battery storage project could help facilitate this decommissioning sooner rather than later, while embodying precisely the critical energy storage deployment California needs to achieve a decarbonized future.
