Where’s the Juice?
By Jock O’Connell
In charting a course for an emissions-free, all-electric future, California policymakers have tended to downplay certain down-to-earth issues that might hamstring the zealous pursuit of their not-to-be-doubted-by-mere-mortals air quality goals.
Among these issues is whether California will have the power-generating capacity to supply the juice needed to electrify the transportation conveyances the California Air Resources Board (CARB) wants to see deployed within the next few years.
Economists label such issues as “externalities” but to regulators and elected officials they are usually treated as “someone else’s problem.”
In the case of the state’s quest to clean the air by electrifying the wide array of equipment used to move goods, the cavalier stance with respect to the state’s inconsistent and potentially insufficient power supply brings to mind Tom Lehrer’s ditty about a certain World War II German rocketeer the U.S. government saw fit to employ: “Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That’s not my department, says Wernher von Braun.”
Anyone looking for an example of how California sometimes seems to operate in an alternate universe might start (and possibly finish) by reading two recent studies from impeccable sources. One is a February 2021 study from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). It raises serious doubt about California’s ability to provide all the electric power it will likely need later in this decade. The other is a June 2021 Moffatt & Nichol (M&N) analysis of the real-world challenges of supplying the volts the state’s seaports and port drayage providers will need in order to comply with CARB’s directives to transition their cargo conveying equipment efficiently and economically from diesel to electric.
Both studies anticipate serious problems with regard to power generation and grid reliability by the second half of this decade as the state’s rising demand for electric power outstrips its capacity for power generation.
Before delving into each report’s specific findings and conclusions, let’s look at the recent climate news, starting with what might be the first crack in the dike, so to speak. Just a few days ago, we learned that California’s prolonged drought had taken down the Edward Hyatt Powerplant at the Oroville Dam due to a paucity of water in the dam’s reservoir. As the Los Angeles Times soberly reported: “The loss of the hydroelectric power source at Lake Oroville, about 75 miles north of Sacramento, could contribute to rolling blackouts in the state during heat waves in coming months.”
Ya think?
After the reservoir behind Northern California’s Shasta Dam, Lake Oroville is second largest hydroelectric power source in the state. Jim Caldwell, a former assistant general manager at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, told the Times: “Replacing the lost power would cost far more than the hydroelectric power generated at Lake Oroville, and that replaced electricity would probably be less efficient, drive up emissions and deliver more pollution overall.”
Not outcomes, in other words, that state policymakers in Sacramento want to see happen.
From here, unfortunately, not much in this story gets better.
The loss of hydroelectric capacity at Oroville came just weeks after the Bootleg Fire in Oregon threatened the California-Oregon lntertie, the transmission line that delivers power from the Pacific Northwest into California. (California generates only about 72 percent of the electricity it consumes. The rest it imports from other states, over long-distance transmission lines many environmentalists absolutely loathe.) That event temporarily reduced electricity supply into California by almost 4,000 megawatts, according to Governor Newsom’s office. It also came shortly after the Northwest endured blast furnace temperatures that set historic records, opening the question of whether authorities in a region that has now developed a keen appreciation for air-conditioning will continue to be as generous in sharing power with California.
California’s grid is both gargantuan and fragile. Power outages have become more and more common. Even more regular have been the so-called “flex alerts” when households and businesses are implored to reduce energy consumption. With average temperatures throughout California rising and with the number of days with highs over 100 degrees creeping up, demand for power to run air-conditioners and fans will only increase.
But increased demand induced by climate change and a proliferation of household gadgets and appliances is only part of the problem. While a persistent drought erodes the state’s hydroelectric capacity, what most troubles the Union of Concerned Scientists is that the state’s single biggest electrical generating plant is scheduled for closure within the next three or four years.
That would be California’s last nuclear plant at Diablo Canyon, which itself supplies nearly 6% of the state’s electricity. And, as the Concerned Scientists note, it does so without producing “planet-warming greenhouse gases or lung-scarring air pollutants.”
But with just three or four years left until the Diablo Canyon plant begins to power down, California has no strategy to directly replace it, as the Los Angeles Times has persistently reported. Although the state has committed itself to replacing Diablo Canyon’s energy without increasing global warming emissions, the UCS study concludes: “current plans are insufficient to achieve this goal.” The irony, of course, is that there will likely be a lengthy period of increased greenhouse gas emissions as the state is obliged to burn more natural gas to offset the loss of Diablo Canyon’s output.
The UCS report estimates California would emit an additional 15.5 million metric tons of planet-warming carbon over the next decade — roughly equivalent to keeping 300,000 gasoline-powered cars on the road over that same time period. At the same time, nitrogen dioxide pollution, which can cause asthma attacks and reduced lung function, would also rise in communities near gas-fired power plants. The added pollution would be equivalent to operating 1,750 diesel school buses, the report finds. As UCS energy expert Mark Specht told the Times: “We should have figured this out by now.”
In planning to compensate for the loss of Diablo Canyon’s generating capacity, California committed itself to an initiative almost designed to fail. In 2018, the state legislature enacted Senate Bill 100, a measure requiring that zero-carbon energy resources supply 100% of electric retail sales to customers by 2045. This past March, the California Energy Commission, the California Air Resources Board, and the state’s Public Utilities Commission jointly released a plan to achieve that goal through greater reliance on solar and wind power, implicitly minimizing the manifest reality that, in litigious California, nothing – no matter how virtuous – gets built on a timely basis, if at all.
If the concerned scientists are right, California’s power grid is in for a couple of decades of exceedingly thin skating when all of us will be scrambling for the watts to run the nifty household gadgets and kitchen appliances we’re being sold.
But suppose it’s not a new air-fryer you’re trying to power-up in your kitchen but a massive ship longer than three football fields that’s just sidled up to your dock.
A June 2021 report from highly regarded infrastructure engineering firm Moffatt & Nichol looked into that question. Its summary warning, phrased in the anodyne language of engineering consultants is that: “Several challenges await California ports, terminals, and power suppliers in converting to all electric powered container and RoRo facilities.”
The M&N study set out to determine the power requirement for the two giant San Pedro Bay ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the Port of Oakland, and the Ports of San Diego, Hueneme, San Francisco, and Richmond. With the grid already stretched to its limits, the report notes that there is considerable risk that the transition to all-electric power could outstrip the ability of utilities to reliably deliver power to California’s ports. As the study cautions: “The consequences for not addressing the challenges could result in periodic shutdowns at the marine terminals or inability to continuously operate at daily capacity, resulting in breakdowns of the supply chain.”
And that’s not a far-down-the-road eventuality. In his July 30 Emergency Proclamation calling for energy conservation measures, Governor Newsom cited an anticipated shortfall of 3,500 megawatts during extreme weather events this summer and a “previously unforeseen” shortfall of up to 5,000 megawatts projected for next summer.
An equipment inventory developed in the M&N report finds that, in the San Pedro Bay and Oakland regions, there are nearly 3,000 pieces of heavy-duty cargo handling equipment that move containers on a regular basis. Most of these still require conversion to be zero-emission. In addition to the cargo handling equipment, port terminals require substantial electrical power for refrigerated containers (reefers) and shore power as well as security lighting and normal business activities. Ship-to-shore cranes in the study regions are all powered through direct connection to the electrical grid. Rubber-tired gantry (RTG) cranes in the study region are predominantly diesel powered or diesel-hybrid. Testing is currently underway for RTGs with direct connection to the electrical grid. However, M&N advise that RTG cranes with direct connection to the grid tend to have lower operational productivities than diesel powered or diesel-hybrid. Similarly, none of the port-registered drayage trucks serving the San Pedro Bay ports are currently battery-powered commercialized Class 8 type vehicles, though there are several demonstration units in operation. Conversion to battery power for Class 8 trucks providing drayage services will require charging capability that is not currently available and would be connected to the power grid.
Ultimately, the broader issue here lies with the inability of the relevant government agencies to transcend bureaucratic boundaries to better coordinate in implementing the state’s environmental mandates. Although CARB is empowered to decree a greater reliance on electric power, the agency itself is not involved in generating that power or in making the juice flow through transmission wires. Instead, those tasks are performed by utilities such as PG&E, San Diego Gas & Electric and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, and by public agencies, notably the state’s Public Utilities Commission, the California Energy Commission, and the California Independent System Operator.
The State of California has long been accustomed to challenging private industry to develop the novel technologies needed to achieve the state’s clean air goals. This time, though, it’s less private enterprise but the government agencies responsible for generating and distributing electrical power in California that will likely face the stiffest challenge in abetting the drive to replace the internal combustion engine.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in Jock’s commentaries are his own and may not reflect the positions of the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association.