California is choosing natural gas over Diablo Canyon’s clean energy
Faced with a recall election this year, Gov. Gavin Newsom is scrambling to ensure the lights will stay on this summer.
Rolling blackouts during a heat wave last August sent a clear warning: Utilities didn’t have enough power to meet periods of high demand. The pending 2025 closure of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, one of the state’s largest sources of clean electricity, will only make the situation worse.
In response to last year’s blackouts, the State Water Resources Control Board has quietly extended waivers to natural gas plants on the California coast that had been scheduled to close because they use ocean water for cooling, exempting them from a ban on the practice the board established in 2010, when Newsom was its chairman.
These plants are among the dirtiest in the state and disproportionately impact low-income communities of color. Allowing them to continue to operate blows a hole in the state’s climate goals.
Newsom, the California Public Utilities Commission and the water board all insist the waivers are a temporary fix while the state builds more renewable energy. But with Diablo slated to close, don’t expect dirty power plants to shut down anytime soon.
The Union of Concerned Scientists, a longtime opponent of nuclear energy, recently released a devastating analysis acknowledging Diablo’s closure would result in a nearly 10% increase in California’s CO2 emissions relative to baseline — and the state missing its 2030 climate targets.
Much of this could have been avoided if the state had been willing to waive the once-through cooling rule for Diablo instead of for gas plants, which PG&E repeatedly asked for. Had it been granted, PG&E could almost certainly have relicensed Diablo.
But even though PG&E said they would be forced to close the plant if it wasn’t granted a waiver, Newsom and the state’s environmental community forged ahead, insisting closure of the plant would not increase California’s carbon emissions or worsen air quality because the plant would be replaced with renewable energy, efficiency, demand management and energy storage.
But in 2018, when the final agreement to close the plant was announced, the PUC’s order suggested otherwise. Diablo’s clean generation would be replaced predominantly by natural gas.
That is exactly what is happening. Renewable energy generation continues to grow, but because it is intermittent, it requires backup generation to assure lights stay on when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow. Energy efficiency, demand management, and large batteries can help, but the state still needs enormous amounts of generation that must be available to fill in for the lulls in renewables at both hourly and seasonal time scales.
It will be harder still when Diablo closes, as gas plants that today vary their output to balance renewables will need to run much more to replace the constant electricity Diablo currently provides.
There is an obvious alternative to keeping the state’s dirtiest gas plants online for years to come. But it will require Newsom and the state’s environmental community to admit they were wrong to advocate the closure of Diablo back in 2016.
The truth is that Diablo is neither too old nor too expensive for PG&E to continue to operate. It began a license renewal process in 2009, and it could pursue a further license extension to the 2040s.
Even a short-term waiver of the once-through cooling rule would allow PG&E to seek a license extension for Diablo from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. This would allow the plant to continue operating until the state figures out how to meet its electricity needs with renewable energy — and without extending a lifeline to fossil fuel plants that should have been shuttered years ago.
Jameson McBride is senior climate and energy analyst and Ted Nordhaus is founder and executive director at the Breakthrough Institute in Oakland. On Twitter, you can follow Jameson @jamesonmcb and Ted @TedNordhaus.