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Boiling Point
L.A. Is Keeping The Lights On Without Coal
00:46:03
Sammy Roth talks with Jason Rondou, Chief of Staff for Power at LADWP, about Los Angeles’ shift from coal to clean energy — and how the city is showing what’s possible for building a sustainable future.
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This is an LA Times Studios podcast.
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My name is Sami Roth and I'm the climate columnist for the Los Angeles Times. This is Boiling Point. According to President Trump, America needs coal. Or as Trump falsely calls it, clean, beautiful coal. Just this week, the Trump administration announced it would open 13 million acres of public lands to coal mining and also offer hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies to companies that operate coal plants. Trump's argument, which to be very clear is not supported by facts or science, is that we need coal to keep the lights on affordably and reliably. Here in Los Angeles, the people responsible for keeping the lights on are proving Trump wrong. The LA Department of Water and Power was not thinking about Trump when it started making plans to shut down Intermountain power plant more than 10 years ago. For decades, IPP, which is located hundreds of miles away from LA, just outside Delta, Utah, was LA's largest source of electricity. Now it's the last coal plant supplying the state of California. And next month, in November, LADWP is finally shutting it down. When that happens, there will be just about zero coal power left on California's electric grid. And folks, you heard it here first on the Boiling Point podcast. The lights in our city are going to stay on. Los Angeles has already been using Intermountain less and less the last few years, and guess what? We haven't had any power shortages. Louisiana has been preparing for Intermountain's closure by bulking up on renewable energy, including some of the cheapest solar and energy storage anywhere. I had a chance to visit Intermountain last month. It was actually my third visit to the coal plant since I started at the LA Times back in 2018. And. And it was crazy to see how much IPP is changing. In the run up to shutdown, desks had been torn out of the office building. There was this whiteboard with photos of dozens of employees who had retired this year. But probably the biggest change was the coal pile and the yard out back. It was tiny compared to the last time I visited. When I got back to la, I set up a video call with Jason Rondou. He's an assistant general manager at the Department of Water and Power. And I wanted to ask him what's coming next at Intermountain, because LA is just shutting down a coal plant in Delta, Utah. It's building something new right across the street, something that's never been built before, something that involves green hydrogen, the end of coal, the beginning of hydrogen. They're both huge stories for California and really for the world. So hopefully you'll find them as interesting as I do. Here's my conversation with Jason Mondu.
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During one of the most severe windstorms Southern California experienced in more than a decade, the Palisades and Eaton fires ignited, leaving heartbreaking losses in our communities. Now, as we build back, we're building stronger, cleaner and more resilient in communities most vulnerable to dangerous weather conditions and wildfires. Southern California Edison is placing power lines underground, hardening the electric system by installing wires with protective coating and adding advanced technology to help keep communities safe. So when Southern California faces the next storm, the next most severe event, helicopters, structures adjacent here, we'll be ready. Learn more@sce.com disasterrecovery California lawmakers big Oil.
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Is slick, Don't Slip Big Oil lobbyists are working hard to roll back climate and clean energy progress to keep their profits soaring and California hooked on their dirty, expensive energy. We can't afford to slip on Big Oil's slick PR and lobbying keep California moving forward with affordable clean energy and transportation local. Learn more at don'tslipca.org, paid for by California environmental voters.
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Jason, thank you very much for being with us on the Boiling Point podcast.
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Happy to be here and thanks for the opportunity.
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Sammy so LADWP has been moving to this point of shutting down Intermountain for a long time. Big deal for the city of la, big deal for California to finally get out of coal power. How does it feel for you to finally be at this moment?
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E
Well, it's obviously very exciting. We as you know, view ourselves as a leader in clean energy, in reliable energy and affordable energy. And Intermountain Power Project has really checked two of those boxes for many, many years, has been really incredibly important for us and for the city, has allowed us to provide reliable and low cost power for many years. But it's come at a pretty significant external cost to the costs of the coal carbon emissions. And for us to move beyond that and move to a more cleaner, innovative technology I think is very exciting, especially this year given some of the milestones that we've hit on renewable energy in the face of some really serious headwinds.
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B
Yeah, I want to talk about the headwinds, obviously. I want to talk about some of the big milestones you guys have hit this year. I mean, I was out earlier, gosh, it was the end of last year, technically at the big solar and storage plant you guys just built up in Kern county in the desert that's really cheap and going to supply a big chunk of the city's power. Already Supplying a big chunk of the city's power. But before we get there, a little bit of history for folks. I think that probably most people in Los Angeles have no idea that for decades that the biggest source of electricity for Los Angeles was this giant coal plant 500 miles away in the state of Utah. How did that come to be? Why did LA and several other cities here in Southern California get together and build this thing? And why do it there? What's the history?
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E
Yeah, well, we're a municipally owned utility. We own and control our generation, our transmission, our distribution. That's very important for us strategically in many ways. It allows us to keep our rates low, it allows us to be reliable. And that strategy is not a new thing for us. That is a decades long strategy. And part of that strategy led to L A and other utilities, as you mentioned, in the region, recognizing the financial and the reliability, the supply risk with oil. And we looked to coal.
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So this was out of the 1970, like 1970s oil crisis. This happened.
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E
Right. We had come together in the late late 70s and we along with others looked to create a resource for us that would provide low cost and reliable power. And Delta Utah is in OB, obviously in the state of Utah. It's 500 miles over 500 miles away. And it not only has access to water, it also has access to coal facilities both in the state of Utah and other areas as well. And there's notably a significant amount of land. And so obviously it's a great moment for us to move beyond it. But it actually is a pretty incredible story of our ingenuity, our foresight, our vision and our ability to execute. We had something like 400 LA DWP employees that worked on the design, the construction that all led to us and our partners being able to deliver intermountain power. And that actually started operation in 1986.
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B
And this model of LA sort of reaching all over the western United States for electricity, for water, that's not exactly a new thing, right? I mean Los Angeles has been doing this for a long time. We've got water supplies and power supplies from, gosh, I want to say almost every state in the West. That's probably not quite true, but this wasn't exactly a new idea.
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E
Yeah, we've got assets in seven western states that allows us to reach different resources, Hydro resources, wind, in the past now, soon to be in the past, very soon to be in the past, coal. It gives us the geographic diversity and those transmission lines that historically have brought in fossil fuel based power. Now those same Exact transmission lines, the same exact right of way are being utilized to bring in, you know, cleaner power today. So no, that this is not a new strategy. It is a sort of a long standing, you know, resource that we've had to just give you. Sort of like a comparison. LADP is 10% of the state's load.
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B
Meaning 10% of the electricity.
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E
Yeah, the electricity load, you're right. So the entire, the entire electricity consumption in the state, we consume about 10% of that, but we have about 20% of the states, I think over 20% of the state's transmission capacity. So that gives you an idea of how transmission rich we are and how that positions us to continue to be a leader not just in reliability and affordability, but now clean energy too.
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Right. And that point you were making, that Los Angeles actually builds and owns all of this stuff, or builds a lot of it and owns all of it. I mean, the comparison you were basically making there is to the privately owned electric companies like SoCal Edison or PG&E. Right. I mean, it sounded like you were basically saying that by building all of this and owning it ourselves, electric rates are lower. We haven't had any issues with power shortages or blackouts in the same way that other have. I know you're not trying to cast aspersions on anyone else, but I mean, you're really talking up that municipal ownership model as providing a lot of benefits, public ownership.
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E
Yeah. And I think that a lot of folks would say that there are trade offs and I think there was all the great intention in the world about partial deregulation in the state of California to try to drive down generation costs. We all know how, you know, that went poorly. We, we did not.
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B
There is an energy crisis for those who weren't around 25 years.
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E
Yeah, there was an energy crisis. Yeah, yeah, that it was. There were a lot, a huge, you know, huge safety risk, reliability risk. Political fallout. We, we did not sell off our generation assets. We stayed steadfast in, in our, in our desire to own and control that whole value chain. You know, vertical integration is the word that, that we use to describe how we own and control from the generation to the transmission to the distribution. Now, and that hasn't been easy. And I say that because as we transition to renewable energy, historically there have been significant tax incentives that a municipally owned utility, it's difficult for us to monetize those unless we actually partner with third parties that can build it and deliver it to us. And in those cases, we've actually been intentional about building in buyout options in those, in those resources so that we can stay in control of these resources. So despite tax law change, but despite, you know, regulatory changes, we've really been steadfast in our desire to maintain that vertically integrated structure.
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And in the interest of just being totally fair on all sides here. You said there are trade offs with public ownership and management. There have been, as with most local governments everywhere, there have been at times corruption and billing and scandals that come with local government. There's a current former, there's a former general manager of DWP who's currently in federal prison, I believe. Not something that we need to talk about here in a podcast about a coal plant. But to put that all out there, let's talk about the coal plant though. I was up there two weeks ago. It was fascinating to see it as it's in its final stages here. It was supposed to come down or supposed to shut down. I think originally this past July, it's been extended. Now you guys are saying you're going to shut it down for the last time, turn off those, those two turbines in November. Why the delays? What's, what's kept this online a final few months here past when you'd hoped to get it turned off?
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E
Yeah, Sammy, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take the liberty to sort of reframe that if I, if I may. And just please rewind back to the, you know, back over a decade where we started to re examine our dependence on coal. Said for a long time it made up half or more of our capacity. And that's not in our distant future. In 2003, 2003, we were 3% renewable energy and we were over 50% coal energy. And that was a combination.
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B
I didn't know it was that high. 50%.
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E
Yeah, it was over 50% in 2003. And that was a combination of Intermountain Power and Navajo Generating Station, the coal facility that has since been decommissioned in Navajo Nation. And the combination, for those who haven't.
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Seen, by the way, this video of Navajo Generating Station, the smokestacks being demolished, where they blew them up and it gets, you know, comes down. That's a great video. I'm sure you can find it on YouTube. Anyway, continue.
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E
Yeah, so back in 2003, 3% renewable, over 50% coal power. And if you fast forward TO Even in 2015, almost 40% of our, of our mix, of our power mix was coal power. And in 2015, we actually exited the Navajo Coal Generating Station early. I think it was a couple years early. And at that time we were looking towards the 2027 date for the, the conclusion of our contracts with IPP. And, and then the.
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B
Let me interrupt for one second here. And just for folks knowledge, I believe there was a state law in 2006, SB 1368, that through a bunch of regulations essentially required that you couldn't renew your contract to keep buying power from Intermountain past 2027. Right. So that was sort of the deadline that you had to get out of coal by 2027.
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E
Yep, that's right. And we looked at that and we started to think, okay, we fully are behind the clean energy transition, but we've got to do it in a way that maintains reliability and maintain resiliency. And we reviewed that 2027 date and we ultimately arrived at rebuilding the Intermountain Power facility with a natural gas and hydrogen capable unit by 2025. So back in 2017, back in 2017, our goal was to have this project completed by 2025, first of its kind, combined cycle natural gas with a 30% hydrogen utilization and we delete and we're going to deliver that in the year 2025. And so I think the question initially started about why the delay between July and November. But I want to take a step back and really emphasize there's no other project in the world like this. There's no other project that has the level of significance, the level of technology difficulty. Now. Now of course with any projects there are delays and in this case are very, very minor delays that have pushed us to November. And that comes with any commissioning of any project like this. You know, you had mentioned the Eland solar and storage project that we'll probably get into in a little bit. That project, just like any other project, will experience delays. But for Intermountain Power, we are extremely proud of our ability to deliver in this calendar year despite, you know, some of those minor delays. I think we had some issues around testing and commissioning and ensuring the turbines themselves were operating effectively. Something that's really interesting today, before I kind of wrap up bragging about how proud I am about delivering it in this calendar year is today we're actually testing our energy control center's ability to ramp the unit up and down very quickly. And that's something we did. Not that that level of control and that level of ability to ramp down when we actually don't need this resource is something that we have not had before. So we, you know, I think we're in a really good spot right now.
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B
So so much I want to ask you about there and we're going to go through it one by one. But first off, good for you. I did get ahead of myself there with that question. Got a little bit over my skis. So I appreciate your backing up and going through the context and talking about why this is a big deal. And you're right, in the grand scheme of things, a few months, I'm assuming everything works as it should. A few months is not a big deal. So good call on that. Let's do the context. You mentioned 2017. I think it was 2019 when the decision was made to do this first of its kind gas hydrogen project, because it was right after I started at the LA Times. The first time that I wrote about this. It was, I think, summer of 2019. The original plan was to build a plant, to just build a natural gas plant in its place to, you know, you knew you guys were getting out of coal. You had to get out of coal under state law. Everyone in California kind of knew coal is bad. Coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel. But the idea was to just build natural gas, which is, you know, less polluting on combustion, less bad for climate change, but still a fossil fuel. And there was, you know, concern raised about that. And the decision was ultimately made as you just started to describe. Okay, rather than straight natural gas, let's go with a combination 70% natural gas and on startup, 30% green hydrogen, which we'll get into more in a minute. But you know, green hydrogen, when it's combusted, it doesn't contribute to global warming. And then over, over time, as the technology improves, as we get to turbul, that can burn higher levels of hydrogen, which we don't have right now, by 2045, will burn 100% hydrogen. That was the decision. There were still among environmentalists some debate over that as to whether why burn natural gas at all. Why don't we just do solar and wind and batteries. You guys also import wind power from Utah through these power lines. Talk a little bit about why the decision was made that you still need to, you know, have something at the other end of these lines, some type of fuel that you can burn rather than go with other types of renewable energy that, you know, that don't need to be combusted, that still, at least for the foreseeable future, are going to involve gas.
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E
Yeah, so I think it's, it's probably. Let me, let me take a step back again and talk about be careful.
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B
You step back too much, you're going to hit the wall there's a wall behind you.
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E
I want to tell you, when I started to say I'm going to take a step back, I was like, I said it again, I did. So I appreciate that. Now next time I, I'm just going to stop and we'll have to restart. Okay. So I'm not going to take a step back. I'm going to do a 30,000 foot view and.
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B
Okay, okay, okay. You say it again, I'm going to warn you about the ceiling. But for now you're okay?
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E
Yeah. Thank you. So the coal project, Intermountain Power was a roughly 1800 megawatt project that we got a significant amount of our resource from. I told you earlier at one point, point over half of our of our power was coming from coal.
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B
For point of comparison, for folks that's almost as big as Diablo Canyon, that's like what, 80 to 90% of Diablo Canyon or 85%, something like that.
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E
And that was, you know, baseload capable coal fired power that was providing power to la. Now that transmission line, we had every intention of utilizing that transmission to bring renewable energy into the basin. And so at the time the decision was made to downsize that facility from 1800 megawatts down to 840 megawatts. And the, what that essentially does when you look at the, the carbon intensity of coal versus gas and when you look at the essentially, you know, cutting the capacity in half, you're talking about over an 80% reduction in carbon intensity, an 80% reduction in carbon intensity to go from the old coal plants to the gas plants. Then there was discussion and I think this was a wise reflection at the time of, you know, we as a city and the state are talking about 100% clean energy and we understand the need for the reliability of that transmission line, the ability to have what's called inertia, to be able to ensure that we can bring that power into the, that, that renewable power into the basin. But we still have that fossil fuel based infrastructure that will last decades. And if maintained and operated effectively, that will last decades. And so what was our plan? What was LADP's plan? To go from an 80% reduction in carbon intensity to a 100% reduction in carbon intensity at that facility at IPP. And at the time we said, well look, we think we can make commitments around utilizing 30% hydrogen. And the reason that we felt we could make that commitment is the capability for us to access renewable energy in that area, the capability for us to use water in that area and the capability for us to actually store significant amounts of hydrogen in that area. It's a really unique convergence of all of those features. And so the commitment around hydrogen was what allowed us to go from, as I said, over 80% reduction all the way down to 100% now. To get to that 100% reduction in carbon intensity at IPP will take, you know, further advancements in technologies around combustors and that sort of thing. But we do believe that we've got a, a path to be able to get there over the next decade or so.
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We'll be back after a quick break.
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D
California ratepayers face some of the nation's highest electricity costs with a decades old solar policy at the center of debate. Net energy metering was introduced in the 1990s to boost rooftop solar by letting homeowners sell excess power back to the grid at full retail rates. But now the California Public Advocate's Office reports that households without solar are subsidizing those with rooftop systems through higher electricity rates rates. The Fix the Cost Shift Coalition points out that this shift has led to equity concerns. Solar adoption concentrates among higher income homeowners while costs burden renters and lower income families. Assembly member Lisa Calderon authored legislation to address the cost shift while maintaining solar incentives at 76 to 82% of current levels. Support assembly member Calderon and help fix California's electricity crisis. Learn more@fixthecost shift.org that's fixthecostshift.org the Supreme.
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A
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B
So as I understand it, you have groundwater in the area. You've got some surface water too. You use electricity from your system. When you have extra renewables floating around on your power line, Some solar when we don't need so much solar in the LA basin, some extra wind. When there's extra wind on the system, you use it to. You zap the water with it. You take the hydrogen. Water is hydrogen and oxygen, right? You use the renewable electricity. You split the hydrogen molecules from the oxygen molecules. It's called electrolysis. You store that hydrogen in these underground salt caverns that another company is building for you there happen to be these big underground salt domes that are conveniently located right across the street from this power plant by pure coincidence, as far as I've been told. And so they're carving out these caverns for you that are perfect for storing this hydrogen. So it essentially acts as energy storage. And then when you need the hydrogen, you pull it out, you mix it with the gas and you combust it in the plant. Did I get that just about right?
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E
You sure did.
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B
So you've turned excess solar and wind power from LADWP's massive Western Power grid into something that you can combust when you need electricity here in la?
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E
That's right. The one nuance that I would add is because it takes so much energy to create hydrogen, you really want to be smart about when you create it and how much of it you use. So I had mentioned that intermountain power, coal, we, that was being utilized in many cases as baseload. That's not our intention with the gas units.
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B
Baseload, meaning you run it all the time, Right?
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E
Meaning that it's a steady production of, of energy. It's very different from wind and solar, which is variable. Geothermal is pretty close to baseload. But typically with, with coal plants you would, nuclear plants, you would see what's called baseload, which is just generating all the time. And that's not how we intend to do this for two reasons. One, when we have renewable energy coming down that 500 mile transmission line, we want that to come home first. The number one priority is to bring that renewable energy home first and to utilize that facility to ensure the stability of that line. Or in the case where there might not be renewable energy coming down that line and the LA basin might have a high heat day and might really need that power, then we would tap into that. Now the second reason we want to really minimize the utilization of this, especially as we get to higher levels of hydrogen, is to create hydrogen takes many times the amount of energy that it actually produces. And so, and that's not totally uncommon for energy storage. There's always a loss with energy storage.
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B
But it's more inefficient than like lithium ion batteries.
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E
Yeah, yeah. The trade off is with a lithium ion you might have very minor losses, but the, what you get from lithium ion is really quick reacting, you know, very, very fast access to that power. But roughly maybe four, you know, maybe you know, five hours from that. Whereas with, you know, storing hydrogen as a battery allows you to have, you know, not just multi day storage but, but seasonal storage as well. So think about Los Angeles in, in April, where, especially in the mid city and the west side where it might be, you know, 75 degrees, the sun is shining, there's a ton of solar being created, nobody's air conditioner is on. And so those are periods where we've got a.
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B
My bedroom doesn't even have air conditioning.
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E
Right, Right. Yeah. A number of folks, you know, especially like I said on the west side, you know, may not have air conditioning at all and maybe even if they have it, may not need it for a big portion of the year. And so that's when those are the exact periods where storing a lot of hydrogen might make a lot of sense. And then fast forward to, you know, right now. Even though the temperature is pretty, you know, moderate today, you know, it's not uncommon. Last year in September, we had a very significant, you know, heat storm in, in September. And so that's the sort of seasonal storage that you would get out of being able to store hydrogen. And it's, it's very different from lithium ion. They both have different purposes. You would never, you know, create, you know, hydrogen storage for, you know, a, you know, a one hour, two hour, four hour period that would be totally ineffic. But for that seasonal storage, that's where hydrogen can really provide significant benefit.
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B
Okay, so you're saying that even if you could have built, you know, just a bunch of solar farms and big lithium ion battery banks up in Utah, that this provides additional benefits to keeping the lights on in Los Angeles that, that wouldn't have provided.
- [29:16]
E
That's right.
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B
This is also kind of a model for what you ultimately want to do at DWP with several gas plants that are here in the LA basin too. Right? Scattergood and Haynes and Harbor.
- [29:25]
E
Harbor, yeah. So yes and no. And the no part is I don't think it's a model. I think that IPP is, is a very unique convergence of all those resources that I said. A significant amount of renewable energy, a significant amount of land and this incredible salt cavern storage capacity. Those things.
- [29:51]
B
We are not blessed with salt caverns here in Los Angeles, right?
- [29:54]
E
Yeah, we're blessed with a lot of things. Salt caverns is not of them. And you know, when we look at the, the, the, the city that, you know, when we say in, in the LA basin, we, we have a very different reason for needing the, you know, that, that potential capacity. And I will, you know, sort of give the context of why that, why that exists. So we, we as, as, you know, but just to Recap. We did a multi year study with the National Renewable Energy Lab out of Denver, Colorado. We hired them 2017 and we stood up a project cart called LA100 where we looked at different pathways to get to 100% clean energy. Like what are the different strategies? What are all the costs? What are the health benefits, what are the jobs that are created? It was the most advanced and might still be today and comprehensive approach to clean energy planning that's been done. It was a third party that led that in conjunction with our folks. And in addition to its technical merits, it was the most transparent and public engaged process where we had 50 different organizations that sat right next to our power planners, the PhDs from the National Renewable Energy Lab. We got to understand what they cared about, our stakeholders from the environmental community, business community, academia, et cetera. And they got to understand for those who didn't, many of them do. But for those who didn't, they got to understand how complex power planning was. And I think for a lot of us going through that study, we at the time were thinking what is life going to be like without these, these power plants in, in the LA basin? And what the study showed us was that under all, all different strategies to get to 100% clean energy, we needed to have the, the capacity within the city to provide power in the event that we have a power outage, in the event that we have an extreme event like a high, you know, extended high heat days, in the event that.
- [32:02]
B
A wildfire takes down one of the line in hydropower from the Pacific Northwest that we rely upon here, which has almost happened on a number of occasions.
- [32:10]
E
Yeah, that happened in 2019, the Saddle Ridge Fire. In 2009, the Sayre Fire. 2017, the Blue Cut fire. And even during the Palisades, there was impacts to our transmission system that required our scattergood generating station to run to ensure that power remained on during that, that disaster. And that could have been significantly, you know, obviously worse should there have been a widespread outage. And so what that means, to get back to your original question of, you know, is hydrogen? Does hydrogen have a role in our decarbonization strategy? I think the answer is, you know, to get to 100%, not 95%. To get to 100%. With the technology that's available today, hydrogen would be what is able to get our, our mix from roughly 90, 95% to 100. What that means is our future does not include running any natural gas plants as our baseload or our first resource. That's all going to be renewable energy. But there will be times where we can't bring all the power that we need to bring into the city and we will have to rely on those power plants and to the degree that we can decarbonize the fuel that those power plan use, that will allow us to get to 100%. I also want to emphasize what's at stake and there's a lot of folks that really appreciate the significance and the importance of reliability going forward. And it's not that maintaining reliability that we have today I don't think is sufficient. I think we have to actually be more reliable. And the reason I believe that is we in the city of LA have this incredible opportunity. You said we're not blessed with salt caverns, but we do do in this city have a significant amount. You know, we're not dense like New York, we're not dense like San Francisco, we're not dense like Chicago, but we are a big city and we, we do have a significant reliance on electric vehicles. We have the opportunity to have a massive impact on local air quality and significantly clean up local air quality by decarbonizing and converting cars to electric vehicles. Same thing with the rooftops we have in the city. We're not dense, as dense as other major cities. So we have a huge opportunity to get solar on rooftops across the city and electrify the buildings across the city. And to do all of that effectively, we need to maintain and in some cases improve reliability to sort of put an exclamation point or underline this. The port of la, the airports, other major customers are electrifying and they're more sensitive to power quality and reliability issues. So for us to position them to be able to decarbonize and to electrify, we need to ensure the reliability of our power system. So I know that was a long winded answer, but I do think it's really important to not assume and I'm not saying that you are assuming. I don't want folks to think, think that that IPP is sort of a like cookie cutter that we're going to look at our in basin power plants and say that's what we're going to do there. No. And even within our power plants there, the sort of makeup, the neighborhoods, the communities, that the loads that those serve, the approach is going to be, you know, potentially a little bit different for each of those. But hydrogen would play a role and will play a role if we're to get to 100%.
- [35:55]
B
Right, right. If we, if we are going to get to 100%, you'll have have to convert them to hydrogen somehow, is what you're saying.
- [36:01]
E
That's right.
- [36:04]
B
Let me zoom out for a second here and you can make a joke at my expense about zooming backwards into my screen or something. I don't want to lose track of the significance of just the closure of the coal plants as we get deep into the weeds on what comes after the coal plant. But, I mean, I think you alluded at the beginning of our conversation to the headwinds facing the clean energy transition this year. I mean, just this week, gosh, it was on Monday, although it already feels like a million years ago, that the Trump administration, the Interior and Energy departments in particular, came out and said they're going to be opening up 13 million acres of federal land for coal mining and give out $625 million, basically handouts to try to bring dead coal plants back online and upgrade existing coal plants to help them stay online. And this is part and parcel for the Trump administration, but one of their most significant efforts yet seemingly try to revive an industry that's been dying for quite a while now because it's just not economic. What has it been like for you as you worked on the decommissioning of Intermountain Power Plant, to just see these efforts to try to keep coal alive when it's just for both policy and, I assume, economic reasons, just you're seeing up close and personal just why it doesn't make sense any anymore?
- [37:28]
E
Yeah, I think there's a lot to say to all of that. I think maybe I'll start with just how excited and proud I am that we were able to get this project done in a matter of weeks. It's not even months anymore. It's weeks. This will be live and we'll have moved on from coal. Despite supply chain issues, through Covid, despite, you know, uncertainty around tax law and all of that, we still got this done in the same calendar year that we intended to do, you know, a decade ago. Similarly with our Eland Solar and storage, which provides 7% of the entire, the entire city of LA, the 4 million people that live here, 7% of them get solar energy from Eland solar and storage out in Mojave. And that project got done through, through tax law changes, through supply chain issues, through tariff concerns, all of those headwinds. We delivered that project. It's the lowest cost project of that size in our entire portfolio. It will probably be the lowest cost project like that for the foreseeable future in the country, barring any sort of major changes in costs and project costs like that. Similarly, this calendar year alone, we committed to two more power purchase agreements, one a geothermal project and one a solar project, one of them delivering actually at IPP, totaling $1.5 billion of new energy commitments that we LADWP are committing to buy. We entered into those agreements this calendar year and next month in October, we're going to be bringing to our board a consideration of a $200 million expansion demand response portfolio.
- [39:27]
B
And so, yes, demand response for those. Demand response, by the way, that's just paying people strategically to use less electricity when the grid could be helped out by that. When they're straight on the grid.
- [39:38]
E
Yeah, and I know this would be a tangent, but I would say it's a lot more exciting than just that. I mean, that's more advanced electric vehicle charging, building management systems and storage and that sort of thing.
- [39:53]
B
Thing.
- [39:54]
E
So, so I say that because the.
- [39:56]
B
Most exciting thing that's impossible to make sound exciting as a, as a climate journalist. But anyway, continue.
- [40:01]
E
I will not dispute that at all. It is, it is very flexible load, flexible loads, very important. And, you know, despite all of these challenges, we are moving forward. And there are things that are out of our control. And what's out of our control are, you know, the tax law changes that, that we're seeing. And what that means is, you know, you know, beyond 2030, 2030, renewable energy, you know, entering into contracts that will deliver energy post 2030 will be more expensive. And you know, one of the things that we can control though is looking at this gets back to our, you know, very intentional approach to controlling and owning our facilities. You know, part of our strategy going forward may include reviewing a lot of our existing resources and saying, what can we do to expand the existing resource that we have? What can we do to sort of maximize the output of those existing resources? And you might be able to get a half a % here, a percent there, and add all that up and you might be able to move the needle quite a bit. And those are the things that we can control. We're not going to be able to control the uncertainty, the tax law changes and all those sorts of things. So to the degree that we can still operate and control the things that we can control, you know, that will be what we focus on. And so far this calendar year, we've done a darn good job of it.
- [41:24]
B
I mean, that National Renewable Energy Lab report you mentioned on getting to 100% that found that LA could get to 98% clean energy by 2030 and 100% by 2035 without substantially impacting electric rates. I mean, do you think we can still do that? Are we on track to still do that?
- [41:42]
E
Well, I do think that largely the study found found that there are many ways to get to 100% clean energy. They the study found that it is technically achievable to get to 100% by 2035. And when I say technically achievable, I mean that there are a lot of things that have to go right, some things that are within our control and some things that are outside of our control for us to be able to do that in a way that is affordable. And part of that is tax law change. I think we need to. We're actually wrapping up our biannual power plan update. And that power plan update kicked off well, well before tax law changes. Well, well before the election. And so I think at our next iteration of that power plan, we're going to see, you know, what the actual we'll be able to quantify what the actual impact from a cents per kilowatt hour perspective, from an energy burden perspective, what that's going to mean to ratepayers for us to, you know, be able to deliver this, this energy. The good news that we are working on several projects that will deliver power, renewable power, before the tax law changes. But as I said, there are a lot of things that have to go right both within our control and outside of our control to be able to do this in a way that's reliable and in a way that's affordable.
- [43:04]
B
As for the immediate future at Intermountain at Delta Utah. So we know the coal plant is shutting off in November. Is the combined gas hydrogen plant going to fire up in November as well? Because I thought when I was up there, they told me that it was going to come online just as gas at first, with the hydrogen coming into the mix sometime in quarter two of 2026 was the current plan because there was still testing going on for the hydrogen.
- [43:31]
E
We expect to have the combined cycle units fully commissioned by the end of no November. The, the, the, the salt cavern storage facility that you had referenced earlier, we require the to to create what's called pad gas in that. And that's sort of a shorthand way of saying we need to build up enough pressure in that storage facility so that when we extract that hydrogen to be able to be mixed with the natural gas, we can actually tap into it. That's going to take some time for us to do so we expect by Q2 2 quarter 2 of 2026 to be able to start mixing in hydrogen with that combined cycle natural gas.
- [44:16]
B
Okay. So the testing is finishing up for that now, but it'll be ready by end of November, by whenever you shut the coal turbines off. But it's the. Explain to me about the caverns again, what's not going to be ready? The pressure. I don't quite get it.
- [44:29]
E
Yeah, so essentially you need to fill that salt cavern. It's almost like a balloon. When you fill a balloon with a air, you need to really fill enough pressure so that when you open up that balloon, that, that air, that air flows out. In this case, we want to build up enough pressure so that when we need to tap into that salt cavern, we are able to extract that, that hydrogen from it.
- [44:49]
B
So basically you just, you need to spend enough time with enough excess renewables on the system to do enough electrolysis, create enough hydrogen, fill up the cavern and then you think you'll have that done by the second quarter of next year and then you'll be able to start fire, firing up your turbines.
- [45:03]
E
That's right.
- [45:04]
B
With hydrogen. Okay, well, I guess this is the first of its kind in the world. That's exciting. I hope it works. I hope it works as planned and that you get to 100% because that would be a big deal.
- [45:21]
E
We fully expect it to work. We're very proud of the work that our team has put into Intermountain Power. We're proud and thankful to our partners, both our local partners, for our partners in Utah. We are extremely excited about this. Again, I had mentioned we want to decarbonize and we want to do it in a way that's affordable and reliable. And we also want to lead in innovation and really set the tone for other utilities, other cities, other states to learn from us. And we feel like this will have an impact on. This will have a real impact on other utilities decarbonization efforts. So again, I sincerely appreciate you paying attention to and actually caring about and understanding, understanding how big of a deal this really is. Because it's a big deal. We're proud of it and we're really thankful for the opportunity to talk to talk about it.
- [46:09]
B
Delta, Utah, it was on the map already. People didn't really know. Maybe they'll find out now. Jason, thank you very much for being with us on the Boiling Point podcast.
- [46:17]
E
Thank you, Samy.
- [46:19]
B
Hey everybody, Samy here with a little bit of news for you before I sign off. I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but this is actually my final Boiling Point podcast. After seven incredible years covering climate change and energy for the Los Angeles Times, I'm leaving to try some new things. Don't worry, I'm still going to be writing about climate change and if you want to find out how to keep following my work, please send me an email@sammyroth42mail.com and I'll be sure to keep you updated. Again, that's S A M m y r o-42 SammyRoth42mail.com Truly, I would love to hear from you. Just as important, I hope you'll keep supporting my friends and colleagues at the LA Times. This paper has an incredible team of environment reporters covering climate change and water and wildfires and air quality and public lands and all sorts of stuff. And they are just one part of the biggest, most awesome newsroom in the American West. If you don't already subscribe to the LA Times, please. I really hope you'll subscribe start and if you're not ready to do that yet, that's okay too. Download the LA Times app Follow the Times on social media, go to our website latimes.com I really think you're going to like what you find. And also keep following Boiling Point on your podcast app because we're going to have Pat Morrison's Smoglandia podcast for you, which we previewed here in August, starting in just a few weeks. Well, that's it for me. I have. I have loved hosting this podcast for the last year and writing the Boiling Point newsletter for the last five years. It has been an absolute pleasure getting to know you all and I really hope this isn't the last time we get to talk climate together. Thank you so much for your support and thank you as always for listening. Signing off thank you for listening to Boiling Point. I'm your host host Sammy Roth. My producers are Mary Knoff and Jonathan Shiflett. Sound design and original music by Jonathan Shiflett. Elijah Wolfson is our editor. Denise Callahan is our Studio manager. Ben Church is our Production manager. Nick Norton is our engineer. Special thanks to LA Times Studio President Anna Magzanian President and Chief Operating Officer of the Los Angeles Times, Chris Argentieri and Executive Editor of the Los Angeles Times, Terry Tang. Boiling Point is executive produced by Darius Derekshon and created by me, Sami Roth.
- [49:06]
F
A kidnapped child with whispers dark secrets from his past in a language he no longer understands. But a lost cassette will reveal the ugly truth From Curious Cast and Blanchard House comes a cross continental odyssey to recover a stolen past. This is Stop the Lost Boy, available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.