Cheap solar contract idled by utility union’s concerns. Garcetti’s Green New Deal faces continuing labor resistance
By Sammy Roth, LA Times, Aug 27, 2019 (full article at the bottom and at link)
Los Angeles has been sitting on a contract for record-cheap solar power for more than a month — and city officials declined to approve it Tuesday because of concerns raised by the city-run utility’s labor union, which is still fuming over Mayor Eric Garcetti’s decision to shut down three gas-fired power plants.
Under the 25-year contract with developer 8minute Solar Energy, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power would pay less than 2 cents per kilowatt-hour — a number city officials and independent experts say would be the lowest price ever paid for solar power in the United States, and cheaper than the cost of electricity from a typical natural gas-fired power plant.
In addition to 400 megawatts of solar power, the Eland project would include at least 200 megawatts of lithium-ion batteries, capable of storing solar power during the day and injecting it into the grid for four hours each night.
The combined price to L.A. ratepayers of the solar and storage would be 3.3 cents per kilowatt-hour — also a record low for this type of contract.
But LADWP’s Board of Commissioners voted not to send the contract to the City Council for approval, after utility staff said concerns had been raised by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 18, which represents utility employees.
In recent months, IBEW Local 18 has run television and radio ads attacking Garcetti’s Green New Deal initiative, which includes the retirement of three coastal gas plants that employ more than 400 LADWP workers.
City officials say none of the LADWP workers at those plants will lose their jobs. But that hasn’t satisfied the union, which has warned that Garcetti’s plans for fighting climate change could drive up electricity prices and eliminate good-paying jobs.
Brian D’Arcy, IBEW Local 18’s top executive, called the mayor’s decision to shut down the three gas plants a “childlike proposal” that could lead to more power outages in an interview earlier this year.
The Eland project, which is planned for the Mojave Desert north of Los Angeles, wouldn’t replace those gas plants. But it could help L.A. reduce its reliance on gas, which has become California’s largest electricity source as utilities look for evening power sources to fill in for solar after the sun goes down. With 200 megawatts of batteries, Eland could produce power at full strength for 50% of each day, according to Tom Buttgenbach, 8minute’s president and chief executive. By comparison, solar farms without energy storage typically have capacity factors in the 25% to 30% range in the sunny desert Southwest.
“You can totally control how much power it produces. The technology is very, very reliable,” Buttgenbach said.
Buttgenbach attributed Eland’s record-low price to several factors, including cheap land costs and some of the best solar radiation in the country.
He also noted that Los Angeles has an option to increase the amount of battery storage from 200 megawatts to 300 megawatts, for an additional cost. That would bring the solar-plus-storage price to 3.96 cents per kilowatt-hour — still cheaper than electricity from gas under most circumstances, based on cost estimates from the U.S. Energy Information Administration and the investment bank Lazard. And the plant’s capacity factor would rise to 60%.
LADWP staff struggled to explain to the Board of Commissioners on Tuesday why Local 18 had objected to the Eland project. The utility’s director of labor relations, Deitra Fernandes, said the union might be worried about the developer hiring out-of-state workers.
But 8minute spokesman Jeff McKay said the company plans to sign a Project Labor Agreement this week with IBEW Local 428 in Kern County, with the entire workforce coming from California.
Asked about the union’s opposition, an IBEW Local 18 spokesman sent a short emailed statement saying that LADWP “has not complied with its contractual obligations for this deal.” The statement didn’t provide details of how the utility hasn’t complied.
“Local 18 is at the forefront of building some of the largest renewable energy projects in the state, however concerns needed to be raised,” he said. The LADWP board is expected to consider the Eland contract again at its next board meeting on Sept. 10. There’s a tight timeline: 8minute’s pricing is dependent on the federal investment tax credit for solar energy, which is scheduled to drop to 26% at the end of 2019 from 30% now. The company needs to start construction by December to qualify for the 30% tax credit, which means it needs contract approval from LADWP and the City Council before then.
“The sooner the better for us,” McKay said. “If it carries on another month, we could still make it work.”
Two LADWP commissioners, board President Mel Levine and Jill Banks Barad, voted to approve the Eland contract on Tuesday, with the understanding that utility staff would meet with the union this week to hear its concerns. But Cynthia McClain-Hill voted no, and Susana Reyes, a recent Garcetti appointee, abstained. With the fifth commissioner, Christina Noonan, absent, there wasn’t a majority to approve the contract.
“I would be concerned about unnecessarily creating problems with labor around a project of this importance,” McClain-Hill said. Eland would supply L.A. with enough electricity to meet 6% to 7% of the city’s annual need. It would go a long way toward helping Los Angeles meet state mandates of 60% renewable energy by 2030 and 100% climate-friendly energy by 2045. Today, LADWP’s electricity supply is about one-third renewable.
The cost of solar power has fallen 85% since 2010, according to the research and consulting firm Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Cheap energy storage is a newer phenomenon, but analysts say the technology may be in the early stages of a similar cost decline. BloombergNEF reported earlier this year that battery costs had fallen 35% since the first half of 2018. Costs will drop an additional 64% over the next two decades, the firm predicted.
The market for large-scale solar-plus-storage has just started to take shape, according to Yayoi Sekine, a New York-based analyst for BloombergNEF. Most of the projects proposed or contracted so far have been in Southwestern states such as Arizona, California and Nevada, as well as Hawaii.
“Sunny states are probably the best economic case for where solar and storage are going to start,” Sekine said.
**
Excerpt from LA Times, July 14, 2019
On Facebook and Twitter, the group (IBEW) also has warned that Garcetti’s green plan could double electricity rates and “dramatically increase” gasoline prices for drivers. And DWP workers have picketed Garcetti events, carrying signs that call the Green New Deal “a raw deal” for workers and ratepayers.
Driving much of the opposition is Garcetti’s plan to close three DWP plants powered by natural gas, a planet-warming fossil fuel, over the next decade. The plants employ more than 400 DWP workers. Brian D’Arcy, IBEW Local 18’s top executive, has seethed over the move to close the plants, calling the idea “pie-in-the-sky nonsense.”
It’s “so blatantly political,” he said in an interview in April, as workers chanted “Garcetti’s got to go!” on the street behind him. “All he wants to do is sign the [Green New] Deal so he can be along with the left wing of the Democratic Party.”
The IBEW campaign is built around the idea that City Hall and Garcetti in particular are incompetent and failing to live up to their promises, said Zev Yaroslavsky, who heads the Los Angeles Initiative at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. Because the gas plants aren’t mentioned in the ads, “unless you’re on the inside, you don’t really know what this is all about. You don’t know that it’s about shutting down fossil-fuel-powered plants in the basin,” said Yaroslavsky, a former L.A. councilman.
The campaign could weaken Garcetti if he chooses to run for another political office, a way for the union to exact revenge on a longtime foe. When Garcetti ran in 2013, a political action committee tied to the DWP union spent more than $3.8 million to attack Garcetti and back his opponent.
Garcetti turned the expensive ad blitz against the union, portraying rival Wendy Greuel as someone incapable of standing up to IBEW Local 18.
The latest clash reflects a broader schism among groups important to the political left — labor unions and environmentalists — over climate change policy.
Working with fossil fuel interests
Some organized labor groups have embraced the Green New Deal concept promoted by U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), which would link environmental progress to economic equality and workers’ rights.
But unions that represent construction workers and utility employees have come out swinging against Green New Deal-type initiatives that they argue put jobs at risk. D’Arcy has warned that green policies like Garcetti’s could drive his members away from the Democratic Party.
In the San Fernando Valley, a political arm of IBEW Local 18 is already backing the Republican candidate running in an Aug. 13 special election for a seat on the City Council. With financial support from the fossil fuel industry, the Working Californians political action committee has spent more than $57,000 supporting John Lee, a former council aide who voiced concerns about whether closing the plants could hurt ratepayers. Lee is running against college educator Loraine Lundquist, a Democrat who backs the decision to phase out the three plants and has made fighting climate change part of her campaign.
Garcetti announced in February that he had abandoned plans for rebuilding the Scattergood, Haynes and Harbor generating plants along the Pacific Coast, billing the move as a way to continue shifting the electrical utility off fossil fuels and onto renewable energy.
The mayor made his decision despite DWP executives’ previously arguing that the plants would be needed to keep a reliable source of electricity flowing to customers.
Garcetti spokesman Alex Comisar said none of the workers at those plants will lose their jobs. The mayor is expected to have a more detailed plan for replacing the energy from the three plants — and for moving the utility to 100% renewable energy — early next year, Comisar said.
“Despite the DWP union super PAC’s ads, Mayor Garcetti remains committed to his DWP reforms to reduce emissions, keep rates low, and protect and create jobs,” he said in an email.
Seven-figure ad buy
Environmentalists argue that in a state already suffering from deadly wildfires, Garcetti’s push to phase out fossil fuels is a matter of life and death. They contend the DWP’s workforce will ultimately benefit from a transition to renewables.
“Imagine all the money that we can invest in our local economy if we re-power with something new — and all the jobs we can create,” said Aura Vásquez, a former DWP commissioner now running for a council seat in Koreatown and South Los Angeles.
Vásquez said she tried to speak to D’Arcy at a reception at the California Democratic Party convention this year. When she greeted him, he accused her of being “irresponsible,” telling her that her actions would cost workers their jobs and result in power outages, she said. D’Arcy walked away before she could respond, Vásquez said. His representatives did not comment on her account.
A Working Californians representative would not say how much the group had spent on the ads, indicating only that it was more than $1 million. The TV ads went on the air June 1, warning of higher taxes just days before voters crushed Measure EE, a new tax championed by the mayor to fund L.A. public schools.
The commercials did not specifically mention the DWP, simply citing higher utility rates and “green taxes.” Asked what that referred to, Working Californians spokesman Michael Trujillo pointed to a handful of ideas in Garcetti’s Green New Deal, such as a proposal to explore “congestion pricing” that would charge drivers to enter traffic-choked areas.
The group has also contended on Twitter that continuing to produce energy locally is good for national security — an argument frequently made by the oil and gas industry to oppose efforts to curb petroleum production.
But in interviews, D’Arcy has focused squarely on the gas plants, arguing that Garcetti needs to reverse his decision and warning that a shutdown will pose a series of problems. D’Arcy said solar and wind power will require enormous amounts of land for batteries and leave the utility with “basically a toxic waste dump” once the batteries are no longer usable. He also cited a study commissioned by the DWP that said replacing all three plants with clean energy could cost $5 billion. Above all, D’Arcy said, the three plants keep electricity flowing to L.A. homes and businesses. “That’s why the lights stay on,” he said. DWP officials disputed those claims. They said the costs cited by D’Arcy are based on outdated assumptions and don’t take into account recent policy developments, including a state law requiring utilities to get 100% of their electricity from climate-friendly energy by 2045.
Utility officials said that they’re working with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to study possible pathways for phasing out fossil fuels, and that it’s too early to say exactly what combination of renewable energy facilities, transmission lines and energy storage will win out. Los Angeles already gets about one-third of its electricity from renewables, and the costs of clean energy keep falling.
Blaming the mayor
DWP commissioners are expected to approve a 25-year contract this month for solar power and energy storage from a project in Kern County, with the solar priced at less than 2 cents per kilowatt-hour — a record-low price for a U.S. solar farm, according to utility officials.
And backers say the DWP has time to figure out how to replace the three plants. The Scattergood plant can keep operating until 2024 under state environmental rules, and Haynes and Harbor don’t have to shut down until 2029.
Chris Roth, a community organizer with the activist group Ground Game L.A., said that much of the blame for the union backlash lies with the mayor, who failed to explain what kind of job the displaced workers would find during and after the transition.
“The impression the workers had is that he did not consider them in this move at all,” said Roth, who is running for state Assembly in a district that includes downtown.
Comisar, the mayor’s spokesman, said in an email that Garcetti staffers met several times with DWP union representatives to discuss their plans in the months leading up to the mayor’s announcement. “We continue to have conversations with union representatives, and will always maintain an open dialogue with the DWP union,” Comisar said. Not all labor groups oppose Green New Deal-type policies. Last month, the Service Employees International Union approved a pro-Green New Deal resolution. So did the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, which said in a March resolution that it supports “a Green New Deal or similar effort that provides career opportunities for people of color, low-income communities and women … that simultaneously protects existing union jobs.”
Last month, the federation was also poised to endorse Lundquist, the council candidate running against Lee, according to two people familiar with the process. But IBEW representatives proved instrumental in preventing her from getting the prized endorsement, the two sources said. Federation officials declined to comment.
Yaroslavsky, the UCLA instructor, said Garcetti cannot afford to back away from his plan for the three gas plants. But the IBEW ad campaign may also be aimed at council members, who could ultimately weigh in on the mayor’s plan, Yaroslavsky said.
The message from the union, Yaroslavsky said, may be: “This is what we’re doing to the mayor. Imagine what we can do to you.”
CALIFORNIACLIMATE & ENVIRONMENTHOUSING & HOMELESSNESS
L.A. Mayor Garcetti’s ‘Green New Deal’ would phase out gas-fueled cars
By SAMMY ROTH, LA Times, April 29, 2019
Mayor Eric Garcetti unveiled a sweeping plan for a more sustainable Los Angeles on Monday, calling for dramatic changes to the car culture, buildings and air quality of America’s second-largest city.
The mayor’s sustainability plan imagines a city where, by the mid-2030s, 80% of the cars run on electricity or zero-emission fuel, 80% of the electricity comes from renewable sources and Angelenos drive 2,000 fewer miles each year than they do now. It’s a far cry from today’s L.A., where gridlock, tailpipe pollution and smoggy air have come to define a way of life.
Garcetti cited the “existential threat” of climate change, which scientists say is fueling bigger and deadlier heat waves, wildfires and floods in California and around the world. He said he worries that if Los Angeles doesn’t take aggressive action now, in 50 years the city will have little time for priorities other than survival.
“Los Angeles needs to lead, but the whole world needs to act. This plan gives us a fighting chance,” Garcetti said in an interview. “It’s sort of a ‘greenprint’ for every other city in the country and the world, hopefully.”
Garcetti is pitching the plan as L.A.’s version of a Green New Deal, the set of climate change and economic justice policies popularized by progressive activists and championed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
City Hall may have limited control over whether L.A. meets many of the targets in the plan, which updates a previous sustainability road map from 2015 and has been in the works for several years, before the phrase “Green New Deal” entered the national lexicon.
At times, the plan simply reiterates existing commitments on climate and clean energy, and details for how many of the goals will be achieved are yet to be determined.
But in at least two areas, the plan sets ambitious new targets and lays a foundation for how they might be met: transportation and buildings, which account for three-quarters of the city’s planet-warming emissions.
On the transportation front, the mayor’s office hopes to reduce the amount of time Angelenos spend driving, from an average of 15 miles a day now to 13 miles by 2025, and 9 miles by 2035. More significantly from a climate change emissions standpoint, the sustainability plan calls for increasing the percentage of electric or zero-emission vehicles in the city from 1.4% last year to 25% by 2025, 80% by 2035 and 100% by 2050.
The city’s built environment would see big changes, too. Garcetti’s plan says all new buildings should be “net-zero carbon” by 2030, with the entire building stock converted to zero-emission technologies by 2050.
Even with the falling costs of renewable energy and electric cars, Garcetti said he expects meeting the targets to be “messy and difficult” politically.
The labor union that represents workers at the Department of Water and Power, for instance, recently protested his decision not to rebuild the three coastal gas plants. Union workers protested again Monday outside Garcetti’s house, saying his plan would kill jobs and raise electricity rates.
Garcetti also acknowledged the challenge of getting people to change their behavior, joking that Angelenos “like the way they suffer in their single-passenger, stuck-in-traffic, gas-guzzling cars.”
But Garcetti said he’s hopeful because fighting climate change, expanding the economy and improving people’s quality of life “go hand in hand.” The city’s sustainability plan estimates the creation of 300,000 “green jobs” by 2035, on top of the 35,000 green jobs Garcetti says have already been created since he took office.
“My goal is to build such a strong coalition that the next mayor, the mayor after that, has to accelerate these goals further,” Garcetti said. “There will be pride in this. There will be a sense of who we are.”
Reducing the number of miles people drive could be especially challenging. Garcetti’s plan envisions making it possible largely through initiatives already underway, including a massive build-out of public transit and a proposed “congestion pricing” pilot that would make driving more expensive in some traffic-choked areas.
L.A. takes climate change fight to the streets by pouring cooler pavement »
Getting drivers into zero-emission vehicles also faces hurdles. Choosing a car can be a financially fraught — and intensely personal — decision. But the costs of battery-powered vehicles keep falling, and city officials say they can accelerate the transition to electric cars.
The mayor’s plan sets a target of 28,000 publicly available electric-vehicle chargers by 2028 — up from 2,100 today — with the city streamlining permitting for chargers, expanding rebate programs and requiring more chargers through the building code.
The Department of Water and Power will also develop incentives for customers to buy used electric vehicles, according to Lauren Faber O’Connor, the city’s chief sustainability officer, who helped craft the mayor’s plan.
“We know that the secondary market is really important to proliferate the adoption of EVs,” she said.
The plan also mentions self-driving cars, saying the city should “ensure all autonomous vehicles (AVs) used for sharing services will be electric by 2021.”
Garcetti expressed high hopes for driverless technology.
“Most people will be primarily getting into autonomous vehicles if we look 20, 30 years out. If we mandate that autonomous vehicles have to be electric, then we will move people into electric vehicles,” he said.
Antonio Bento, an economist who leads USC’s Center for Sustainability Solutions, described the goal of 80% zero-emission cars by 2035 as “overly optimistic” and unlikely to be met. But setting such a lofty target could still do a world of good, Bento said, because it sends a message to the private sector that one of the globe’s most car-dependent cities is moving away from oil as quickly as possible.
“The rest of the world, when it comes to these types of policies, they look at Southern California for guidance,” said Bento, who is working with former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former state Senate leader Kevin De León on an initiative to help local governments speed the adoption of cleaner transportation options. “What appears to be a policy set by one city could quickly grow to capture a large part of the automobile market.”
Garcetti’s goal of converting all buildings to net-zero technology by 2050 may also be a huge lift. That’s because it could require households, landlords and building owners to replace all gas-powered heating and cooling systems, clothes washers, dishwashers and stoves with electric appliances or cleaner fuels. California’s next frontier in fighting climate change: your kitchen stove »
But Faber O’Connor, the city’s chief sustainability officer, said eliminating planet-warming carbon emissions from buildings may not be as hard as it sounds. She expects building codes and rebates to do the bulk of the work, with homes and businesses installing electric appliances over time as gas-powered versions break down.
State officials are also beginning to develop policies to electrify buildings, which are collectively responsible for a quarter of California’s greenhouse gas emissions. Those efforts have faced pushback from Southern California Gas Co., which sees electrification as a threat to its business model. The gas company has talked up the benefits of replacing the natural gas in its pipelines with so-called renewable gas or, eventually, hydrogen.
Some researchers agree with SoCalGas that substituting cleaner fuels for gas would be easier and cheaper than swapping out gas for electricity. They include Jack Brouwer, a UC Irvine engineering professor, who has led a project to inject small amounts of hydrogen into the university’s gas pipelines.
“Our policy goals cannot be met without hydrogen, is my view,” Brouwer said in an interview last month.
But most clean energy advocates and a growing number of state policymakers disagree, raising questions about the costs and available supply of renewable gas and hydrogen. In a report last summer, the California Energy Commission described a “growing consensus that building electrification is the most viable and predictable path to zero-emission buildings.”
Faber O’Connor said Los Angeles officials “believe that electric will be the predominant solution, and we will be designing incentives in that direction.” A study released this month by the consulting firm Energy and Environmental Economics found that newly built all-electric homes in California can save residents $130 to $540 per year, and that the vast majority of single-family homes with gas furnaces and air conditioners would save money by replacing those systems with electric heat pumps. The study modeled several major cities, including Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Jose. It was funded by three electric utilities: Southern California Edison, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and the Sacramento Municipal Utility District. Switching to electricity is “cost-effective in many situations already, even before the market transformation that’s going to further bring down the costs,” said Pierre Delforge, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, who helped review a draft of the electric utilities’ study. “It doesn’t mean it’s cost-effective everywhere yet. But it’s quite promising, because we’re right at the beginning of that technology adoption.”
Climate change is making us sicker and shortening our lives, doctors say »
Delforge said the zero-carbon building plan announced by Garcetti “seems to be aligned with our climate goals, and it seems to be ambitious, particularly for existing buildings.”
“It means we have 30 years to transition the entire building stock to zero emissions. That’s a challenge, and it’s important to get started now,” he said.
In a sign of how quickly the national dialogue around climate policy is evolving — and of the urgency with which scientists describe the climate crisis — some activists criticized Garcetti’s plan as insufficient.
Sunrise Movement Los Angeles, a part of the national organization pushing for a Green New Deal, released its blunt assessment Monday that Garcetti’s plan “is not a Green New Deal.” The group said maintaining a livable climate depends on achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2030, much earlier than Garcetti’s 2050 goal. “Los Angeles is on track to be twenty years too late,” the group said in a written statement.
L.A’s sustainability plan also includes a section on the city’s move to 100% renewable energy, which Garcetti accelerated earlier this year when he announced his intention to shutter three gas-fired power plants along the coast. Other sections of the plan outline strategies for increasing the use of local water resources, reducing air pollution from industrial facilities and the port, and slashing emissions from waste and the food system.
Schwarzenegger and De León are launching an initiative with environmental activists and researchers at USC and UCLA to study how local governments can speed the adoption of cleaner transportation options and to promote more aggressive action at the state level. Reducing dependence on oil for transportation, they say, would benefit the climate and reduce lung-damaging air pollution in disadvantaged communities.
“Pollution kills people. There’s no getting around it,” De León said in an interview, describing the new initiative publicly for the first time. “And it’s been happening for the last century. It’s just been a very slow burn.”
De León, who ran unsuccessfully against incumbent Democrat Dianne Feinstein for a U.S. Senate seat last year, has been a leading advocate for political action on climate change and air pollution. As a state senator, he wrote the bills that raised California’s clean energy mandate to 50% by 2030, then 100% by 2045.
Schwarzenegger is also a climate change policy veteran. As governor, he signed the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, which set the first legal requirement for California to slash its greenhouse gas emissions.
The movie star and former governor said he and De León “come from different parties, but we share the belief that we can do better at protecting the people from the health impacts of pollution.”
“I’ve always said there is no Republican air or Democratic air,” Schwarzenegger said in a statement.
The laws pushed by Schwarzenegger and De León have helped reduce emissions to 429 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2016 from 494 million metric tons in 2004, according to state officials. But most of those reductions have been driven by the electricity sector, as homes and businesses use energy more efficiently and utilities replace coal-fired power plants with solar panels, wind turbines and natural gas.
Transportation was responsible for 41% of California’s climate pollution in 2016. And as the economy has grown in recent years, transportation emissions have risen, fueled by increased driving.
Tailpipe pollution also contributed to the 87 consecutive days Southern California violated federal smog standards last summer, said Antonio Bento, an economist who leads USC’s Center for Sustainability Solutions. Bento, who plans to support Schwarzenegger and De León’s initiative with academic research, said a Trump administration proposal to roll back fuel-efficiency rules would only worsen the region’s air pollution.
“It’s absolutely unbelievable that we’ve made so much progress in terms of air quality. But unless we continue to do a major push for the electrification of the fleet, I think we are starting to plateau,” Bento said.
“Electrification of the fleet” means replacing fossil-fuel-powered cars and trucks with electric vehicles. It’s California’s main strategy for slashing transportation emissions, along with promoting alternatives to driving.
L.A. keeps building near freeways, even though living there makes people sick »
So far, the state’s highest-profile efforts to clean up transportation have had mixed results.
Former Gov. Jerry Brown set a goal of putting 5 million electric vehicles on the road by 2030, but just 550,000 EVs have been sold in the state to date, according to Veloz, a nonprofit backed by environmental groups and car companies. And critics say a market-based program known as cap and trade is too gentle on the oil industry, although state officials have defended the program, arguing it has kept transportation emissions from rising even more.
In 2015, De León tried to get a bill through the Legislature that would have mandated a 50% reduction in petroleum use statewide by 2030. But he was forced to strip that measure from the bill amid opposition from the oil industry.
Now, De León and Schwarzenegger are taking an approach they hope will sidestep those thorny politics: focusing on local governments.
Although the state can subsidize electric vehicles and prod utility companies to install EV chargers, cities and counties are largely responsible for the policies that influence how many miles people drive, through actions such as housing and zoning decisions, investments in public transit and regulation of ride-sharing services. Local governments also buy a huge number of buses, trucks and passenger vehicles.
“What the senator and former governor are trying to do is really look to local and regional leaders for lessons of success to describe what has worked and what hasn’t worked,” said J.R. DeShazo, director of UCLA’s Luskin Center for Innovation, who is also working on the new initiative. “What we would be doing is helping the senator and the governor take these local strategies and think about how do we scale them statewide.”
The initiative will also involve researchers at USC, where Schwarzenegger teaches an environmental policy class and chairs an institute named for him. Bento said he and other USC professors plan to conduct research on a variety of topics, possibly including vehicle-buying habits in minority communities, policies that could encourage car dealerships to embrace electric vehicles and the best way to structure incentives for EVs.
“One of the key issues is how do we design public policies so that not only do we promote a cleaner environment, but we also do it in a way that reduces inequalities and brings these technologies to vulnerable communities,” Bento said. “It’s not just subsidizing the purchase, it’s thinking about the entire infrastructure that is needed to allow you to even consider this technology in the first place,” including the availability of charging stations.
From De León’s perspective, reducing emissions needs to be done in a way that helps low-income and minority communities breathe easier. He pointed to his former state Senate district in central and eastern Los Angeles, which he said is crisscrossed by seven freeways.
“Too many kids are sick at home missing school because of dangerous levels of air pollution,” De León said.
Cleaner air is linked to stronger lungs in Southern California children »
Cleaning up the transportation sector won’t be easy, especially in Southern California, which has long been defined by freeways and suburban sprawl. The state’s long-term plan for reducing climate pollution envisions a 15% reduction in miles traveled by light-duty vehicles by 2050, which the state plan says will require strategies such as more infill development, congestion pricing and expanded roles for transit, biking and walking.
The state’s ability to cut emissions will also hinge on the private sector, such as battery manufacturers, automakers and ride-share companies. The biggest player in the electric vehicle market is Elon Musk’s Tesla Inc., which said last week it would finally start selling its Model 3 sedan at the long-promised $35,000 price point.
Bento said he’s excited to work with Schwarzenegger.
“Coming from Portugal, as a kid my idea of him was the Hummer driver in ‘The Terminator,’” Bento said. “It’s been a phenomenal surprise and inspiration to me how much he’s taken this as a big cause of his life now.”
https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2019-08-27/los-angeles-solar-energy-storage-cheap
Los Angeles has lined up record-cheap solar power. But there’s a problem
By SAMMY ROTH, LA Times Staff Writer, Aug 27 2019
Los Angeles has been sitting on a contract for record-cheap solar power for more than a month — and city officials declined to approve it Tuesday because of concerns raised by the city-run utility’s labor union, which is still fuming over Mayor Eric Garcetti’s decision to shut down three gas-fired power plants.
Under the 25-year contract with developer 8minute Solar Energy, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power would pay less than 2 cents per kilowatt-hour — a number city officials and independent experts say would be the lowest price ever paid for solar power in the United States, and cheaper than the cost of electricity from a typical natural gas-fired power plant.
In addition to 400 megawatts of solar power, the Eland project would include at least 200 megawatts of lithium-ion batteries, capable of storing solar power during the day and injecting it into the grid for four hours each night.
The combined price to L.A. ratepayers of the solar and storage would be 3.3 cents per kilowatt-hour — also a record low for this type of contract.
But LADWP’s Board of Commissioners voted not to send the contract to the City Council for approval, after utility staff said concerns had been raised by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 18, which represents utility employees.
In recent months, IBEW Local 18 has run television and radio ads attacking Garcetti’s Green New Deal initiative, which includes the retirement of three coastal gas plants that employ more than 400 LADWP workers.
City officials say none of the LADWP workers at those plants will lose their jobs. But that hasn’t satisfied the union, which has warned that Garcetti’s plans for fighting climate change could drive up electricity prices and eliminate good-paying jobs.
Brian D’Arcy, IBEW Local 18’s top executive, called the mayor’s decision to shut down the three gas plants a “childlike proposal” that could lead to more power outages in an interview earlier this year.
The Eland project, which is planned for the Mojave Desert north of Los Angeles, wouldn’t replace those gas plants. But it could help L.A. reduce its reliance on gas, which has become California’s largest electricity source as utilities look for evening power sources to fill in for solar after the sun goes down.
With 200 megawatts of batteries, Eland could produce power at full strength for 50% of each day, according to Tom Buttgenbach, 8minute’s president and chief executive. By comparison, solar farms without energy storage typically have capacity factors in the 25%-30% range in the sunny desert Southwest.
“You can totally control how much power it produces. The technology is very, very reliable,” Buttgenbach said.
Buttgenbach attributed Eland’s record-low price to several factors, including cheap land costs and some of the best solar radiation in the country.
He also noted that Los Angeles has an option to increase the amount of battery storage from 200 megawatts to 300 megawatts, for an additional cost. That would bring the solar-plus-storage price to 3.96 cents per kilowatt-hour — still cheaper than electricity from gas under most circumstances, based on cost estimates from the U.S. Energy Information Administration and the investment bank Lazard. And the plant’s capacity factor would rise to 60%.
LADWP staff struggled to explain to the Board of Commissioners Tuesday why Local 18 had objected to the Eland project. The utility’s director of labor relations, Deitra Fernandes, said the union might be worried about the developer hiring out-of-state workers.
But 8minute spokesman Jeff McKay said the company plans to sign a Project Labor Agreement this week with IBEW Local 428 in Kern County, with the entire workforce coming from California.
Asked about the union’s opposition, an IBEW Local 18 spokesman sent a short emailed statement saying that LADWP “has not complied with its contractual obligations for this deal.” The statement didn’t provide details of how the utility hasn’t complied.
“Local 18 is at the forefront of building some of the largest renewable energy projects in the state, however concerns needed to be raised,” he said.
The LADWP board is expected to consider the Eland contract again at its next board meeting on Sept. 10. There’s a tight timeline: 8minute’s pricing is dependent on the federal investment tax credit for solar energy, which is scheduled to drop to 26% at the end of 2019 from 30% now. The company needs to start construction by December to qualify for the 30% tax credit, which means it needs contract approval from LADWP and the City Council before then.
“The sooner the better for us,” McKay said. “If it carries on another month, we could still make it work.”
Two LADWP commissioners, board President Mel Levine and Jill Banks Barad, voted to approve the Eland contract on Tuesday, with the understanding that utility staff would meet with the union this week to hear its concerns. But Cynthia McClain-Hill voted no, and Susana Reyes, a recent Garcetti appointee, abstained. With the fifth commissioner, Christina Noonan, absent, there wasn’t a majority to approve the contract.
“I would be concerned about unnecessarily creating problems with labor around a project of this importance,” McClain-Hill said.
On Wednesday, three Los Angeles City Council members — Mike Bonin, Paul Koretz and Paul Krekorian — sent a letter to the LADWP commissioners saying they were “shocked and dismayed” to read that the board had declined to sign off on the solar deal.
“Not approving this contract is fiscally irresponsible and an act of surrender in the battle against the climate crisis that threatens our children and our environment,” they wrote.
Eland would supply L.A. with enough electricity to meet 6% to 7% of the city’s annual need. It would go a long way toward helping Los Angeles meet state mandates of 60% renewable energy by 2030 and 100% climate-friendly energy by 2045. Today, LADWP’s electricity supply is about one-third renewable.
The cost of solar power has fallen 85% since 2010, according to the research and consulting firm Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Cheap energy storage is a newer phenomenon, but analysts say the technology may be in the early stages of a similar cost decline. BloombergNEF reported earlier this year that battery costs had fallen 35% since the first half of 2018. Costs will drop an additional 64% over the next two decades, the firm predicted.
The market for large-scale solar-plus-storage has just started to take shape, according to Yayoi Sekine, a New York-based analyst for BloombergNEF. Most of the projects proposed or contracted so far have been in Southwestern states such as Arizona, California and Nevada, as well as Hawaii.
“Sunny states are probably the best economic case for where solar and storage are going to start,” Sekine said.
Staff writer Emily Alpert Reyes contributed to this report.
By TONY BARBOZA AND JON SCHLEUSS, in the LA Times, March 2, 2017
1 dot = 1 person living within 1,000 feet of a freeway in 2010
For more than a decade, California air quality officials have warned against building homes within 500 feet of freeways. And with good reason: People there suffer higher rates of asthma, heart attacks, strokes, lung cancer and pre-term births. Recent research has added more health risks to the list, including childhood obesity, autism and dementia.
Yet Southern California civic officials have flouted those warnings, allowing a surge in home building near traffic pollution, according to a Los Angeles Times analysis of U.S. Census data, building permits and other government records.
In Los Angeles alone officials have approved thousands of new homes within 1,000 feet of a freeway — even as they advised developers that this distance poses health concerns.Play Video
The city issued building permits for 4,300 homes near freeways in 2015 — more than in any year over the last decade — and signed off on an additional 3,000 units last year.
Public funds, including millions of dollars from California’s cap-and-trade program to cut greenhouse gas emissions, are going to developers to build new homes in freeway pollution hot spots.
The population near Los Angeles freeways is growing faster than elsewhere in the city as planners push developers to concentrate new housing near transportation hubs, convinced that increasing urban density will help meet state targets for greenhouse gas reductions.
More than 1.2 million people already live in high-pollution zones within 500 feet of a Southern California freeway, with more moving in every day. Between 2000 and 2010 — the most recent period available — the population within 500 feet of a Los Angeles freeway grew 3.9%, compared with a rate of 2.6% citywide.
Orsini
- 1,072-unit apartment complex
- Opened in three phases between 2004 and 2010
- 1-bedroom apartment rents for $2,000 to $2,500 a month
- Developer Geoffrey H. Palmer has built thousands of units near downtown L.A. freeways and plans more
Have you ever lived near a freeway?
Tell us your story
Los Angeles City Councilman José Huizar, who lives several hundred feet from Interstate 5, said freeway pollution is such an urgent and complex problem that he wants the city to establish buffer zones. He called for a “comprehensive, citywide study of development near freeways that would analyze all impacts of limiting development around freeways.”
Other elected officials and business groups argue that Los Angeles is so thoroughly crisscrossed by freeways that restricting growth near them is impractical and would hamper efforts to ease a severe housing shortage. In some cases, city officials are paving the way by re-zoning industrial land along freeways and other transportation corridors.
In an interview at a recent groundbreaking for a freeway-adjacent apartment project, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said that he grew up near the 101 and 405 freeways and that many in his family had cancer.
But he said he opposes any restrictions on how many homes can be built near freeways and thinks that improving air-filtration, building design and tailpipe emissions are a better way to reduce risks to residents.
“I take this stuff very seriously, but I also know that in looking for housing we have a very constricted city,” he said.
Garcetti spokesman Carl Marziali noted that a prohibition on building within 1,000 feet of freeways, for example, would cover more than 10% of land currently zoned for residential construction in the city, from Westwood to Boyle Heights and San Pedro to Sherman Oaks. But proponents of stricter planning, including supporters of Measure S, a proposal on the March 7 ballot that would place new restrictions on development, have criticized city officials for approving what they term “black lung lofts.”
How close to the freeway are you?
Low rent and a location near shops and restaurants are what brought Jeremiah Caleb to an apartment on Beloit Avenue, where a sound wall is all that separates the 405 freeway from sleek new apartments and lofts advertising “good living.”
But life got worse for Jeremiah and his wife Angel soon after moving into that one-bedroom on the Westside of Los Angeles. The couple began to struggle with bouts of coughing, sneezing and headaches. They kept the windows shut, yet a grimy, black film settled regularly over the furniture, counters and even their skin — a never-ending reminder of the vehicle exhaust and soot they were breathing just 100 feet from 14 lanes of traffic.
“We were constantly sick,” said Caleb, an actor in his 30s. The couple worried enough about dirty air that they put off having children. “We were desperate to leave, but we felt stuck. We just couldn’t afford it.”
Business groups have consistently opposed any suggestion of restricting development near heavy traffic.
“Freeways are part of Los Angeles’ fabric and prohibiting housing by them is unrealistic,” said Carol Schatz, president of the Downtown Center Business Improvement District. She argues that such restrictions would worsen the housing crisis and severely limit the ability to build housing near mass transit.
The Southern California Assn. of Governments, the regional planning agency for Los Angeles, Ventura, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Imperial counties, has projected that the population within 500 feet of a freeway will increase by a quarter million people by 2035.
Rob McConnell, a professor of preventive medicine at USC who studies roadway pollution, is one of a number of health researchers who has advised city officials not to allow new housing that close to freeways.
“I tell them you’re going to make a lot of people sick,” McConnell said.Play Video
Scientists have long known that polluted air cuts lives short.
But pinpointing the harmful agents in traffic pollution is difficult because it’s a stew of ingredients including toxic combustion gases, microscopic soot particles, compounds from worn tires and dust from vehicle brake pads. Recent research has narrowed in on one component of special concern: ultra-fine particles, pollutants in freshly emitted vehicle exhaust that can be five to 10 times higher near traffic.
The invisible, chemical-laden specks are less than one-thousandth the width of a human hair — so tiny they are hard to capture with pollution controls or filters. Scientists suspect ultra-fine particles are able to pass through the lungs and into the bloodstream, where they may harm the heart, brain and other organs. Yet they remain unregulated by state and federal authorities.
That emerging science has raised concerns that decades of government regulations, aimed at curbing smog that builds up across vast urban areas, are not sufficiently tailored to the more localized problem of roadway pollution.
Two years ago, state environmental officials concluded that diesel soot and other carcinogens in vehicle exhaust pose nearly three times the cancer risk previously thought.
In a long-term study, USC researchers have for more than two decades measured the lung capacity of thousands of school children across Southern California. They found that children growing up near major roadways have higher rates of asthma and other respiratory illnesses, including deficits in lung function that can be permanent and lead to a lifetime of health problems. Even in communities with cleaner air, such as Santa Maria near the Santa Barbara County coast, children living near traffic had the same lung function loss as those in Riverside and other smoggy inland areas, the scientists found.
Anthony Moretti, chairman of pediatrics at White Memorial Medical Center in Boyle Heights, said children who live close to freeways are among those who most frequently land in the emergency room struggling to breathe and in need of treatment for asthma and other respiratory diseases.
“These kids will come in four, five, six times over a six-month period, and clearly their environment is a factor,” he said. “I feel for these families because they suffer an undue burden of illness simply because of where they live.“
Public health officials have long warned that traffic pollution can drift well over 1,000 feet from traffic — and more recent research suggests that it may waft more than a mile.
Yet it took lawsuits and a nationwide mandate from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to force Southern California air quality officials to begin regularly measuring pollution near Southern California freeways in 2014. The first readings confirmed that people near freeways breathe higher levels of the exhaust gases nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide. Then, in 2015, the South Coast Air Quality Management District detected the region’s highest concentrations of fine particulate matter at a new monitoring station 30 feet from the 60 Freeway in Ontario. The findings added compelling evidence that traffic emissions are piling on top of regional smog, hitting people near freeways with a double dose of pollution.
To learn more about the problem, The Times conducted air quality testing at sites where new housing is planned near Los Angeles freeways. In August and September of 2015, reporters collected air samples at several locations using portable pollution sensors that detect ultra-fine particles, the microscopic pollutants in vehicle exhaust. One set of air samples was taken next to stretches of the 110 and 5 freeways and another set was taken 1,500 to 1,800 feet from the freeways.
Ultrafine particles spike near freeways
Pollution readings near the freeways were three to four times higher than in neighborhoods at a distance from traffic. Diesel trucks produced the most noticeable pollution, coughing out foul plumes of exhaust and soot that could be seen and smelled as pollution readings jumped.
Scientists at USC and the South Coast air district said the readings were consistent with their measurements near freeways. One of the locations where reporters detected high pollution levels was next to a vacant lot along the 110 Freeway in South Los Angeles where two apartment buildings for low-income residents are being built.
The $55-million Meta Housing Corp. project, which will bring 160 new housing units to the busy traffic corridor, is partly funded with money from pollution permits sold under the state’s cap-and-trade program, among other state and local government subsidies.
Among the most visible and controversial projects that have raised traffic pollution concerns in Los Angeles are developer Geoffrey H. Palmer’s massive Italianate apartment complexes overlooking downtown freeways. He has built thousands of units and is planning more.
In interviews, current and past residents of Palmer’s Orsini development, which hulks over the interchange of the 101 and 110 freeways, said they moved to the complex for its convenient downtown location. But many spoke of keeping windows closed to block noise and pollution, deploying house plants to soak up the bad air and constantly sweeping and dusting the fine black soot that seems to find its way onto every surface.
Felicia Gargani said her pet peeve was the grime that collected on her fourth-floor balcony that looked out over the freeway. “If you walk out there barefoot,” she said, “your feet turn black.”
Construction on the Orsini began more than a decade ago, before scientists grasped the extent of the health hazards of building so close to traffic.
In the years since, the South Coast air district has sent dozens of letters to cities sounding alarms about similarly risky home building proposals near freeways in Los Angeles and other communities across its four-county jurisdiction.
