The people of Moss Landing are experiencing what the people of Pajaro and Capitola have experienced before them. Three weeks after the catastrophic fire, news cameras and reporters are slipping away, they must deal with the aftermath while out of the spotlight.
This past weekend, I stopped to see Kim Solano at the Haute Enchilada Restaurant in Moss Landing. She—along with other local restaurants, shops, and bed and breakfasts—shut down when the highway was closed and the area evacuated. While reopened, they have not financially recovered.
Where do we go from here? I have asked for a complete, independent investigation. Scientific studies have come out piecemeal since the fire. The public deserves a complete investigation that is vetted in public. We need to know how the fire started, what can be done better in the future, and understand the public and ecological health impacts of the fire plume. The California Public Utilities Commission and Monterey County along with the relevant state public health agencies are pursuing these investigations.
In 2023, my Senate Bill 38 required safety plans for battery storage plants. It appears that both Vistra and PG&E did not submit these plans directly to Monterey County after the bill became law. They need to do this—and the county needs to advise the public of the adequacy of the plans.
The effects of a changing climate are here. Scientists point out that the intensity of hurricanes and fires—such as the recent ones in Los Angeles—have increased due to the warming climate. The answer is to put less carbon in the air. Moving away from fossil fuels is key to doing that.
With the national government pulling out of the world blueprint for reducing carbon emissions, including the Paris Agreement, California must redouble our efforts toward the goal of zero carbon emissions by 2045, as well the interim goals on the road to 2045 established by Senate Bill 1020 I authored in 2022.
As we move toward more wind and solar power, we are impacted during times when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. Battery storage allows for energy reliability—and less reliance on energy produced by fossil fuels—when it stores extra energy produced during windy, sunny times and returns energy to the grid at times when it’s dark and the wind isn’t blowing. Even with this storage, California continues to send solar power to Arizona’s grid, as we do not have enough battery storage to store it here.
California battery storage produced 500 megawatts in 2019, growing to 13,300 megawatts now, with the goal of 52,000 megawatts by 2045. In September 2022, when the electrical grid was on the verge of a blackout, battery storage put more energy online than Diablo Canyon’s nuclear power during a few key hours—and the power stayed on.
Every energy source has had a disastrous incident—whether it’s Chernobyl with nuclear power, bird strikes with wind power and solar towers, or countless incidents with fossil fuel—including a several-day fire in 2003 on the very Moss Landing site that just burned. We recall too the loss of lives in San Bruno due to a natural gas explosion, and of course the recent, alarming fires at Moss Landing related to battery storage.
The transition to safer battery storage was underway before the fire. The original facilities—like some of those at Moss Landing—included batteries housed indoors, use a more volatile configuration of lithium. Newer technology has changed to a less volatile mix with lithium—and with a different physical configuration of batteries in enclosed individual containers that have individual fire suppression systems and are outside on separate cement slabs.
Think of your smartphone in 2019 and now. In such a short span of time, the smartphone of today performs far faster, with less energy. Similar advancements are being made with battery storage.
Current proposals for new battery storage facilities will utilize newer, much safer components. In Morro Bay, for example, we need to consider the appropriateness of that proposed location; however, the proposed technology would be newer, safer technology and not the configuration at Moss Landing.
Seventy-five percent of California’s battery storage uses newer, safer technology. Twenty-five percent is the older technology, such as what burned at Moss Landing. The state should have discussions about the 25 percent of battery storage facilities that use older technology. What do we do? Heightened inspection? Safety improvements? Phasing out over time? All of the above? If Vistra’s plant is rebuilt in Moss Landing, it should be with newer, safer technology.
There are no lithium safety standards in California. This is also an issue that extends beyond battery energy storage facilities and includes EV battery servicing, operation, and disposal. I am working with the California Professional Firefighters and IBEW/Electrical Workers on a possible bill to establish safety standards.
In addition, the California Public Utilities Commission is considering an order about battery storage safety on March 13—including monitoring whether facilities have complied with SB 38.
There are three major energy goals in California—move away from fossil fuels to a greener electrical grid; have safe, reliable, renewable energy sources; and keep the lights on. Our job in the coming months and years is to have the public at the table as we decide how to meet each of these goals without sacrificing any of them. It is a tall order. The future of our state and planet demands it, and the well-being of our communities deserves it. Δ
Sen. John Laird represents California’s Central Coast and is former secretary for Natural Resources. Send a response for publication to letters@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Feb 6-16, 2025.
I would encourage every Californian to sign the initiative to make California its own country. Why are we sending our tax money to Washington only to subsidize the wealth of oligarchs? Why support a fascist regime in Washington? Why is Washington sending their agents to California to interrupt our lives? We are we being taxed to death. They are about to dismantle the federal Departments that have saved us from from mixing religion with tax dollars. There will be private, religious schools on every corner (paid for by you and I) spitting out students dreaming of the apocalypse and rapture. Is that what we really want? There’s enough Hari Krishnas and Heavens Gate members to go around already. Sign the initiative to leave the US and take control of our future.
https://www.sos.ca.gov/administration/news-releases-and-advisories/2025-news-releases-and-advisories/Proposed-Initiative-Enters-Circulation-Requires-Future-Vote-on-Whether-California-Should-Become-Independent-Country
While I appreciate Senator Laird checking in on us, no where in his commentary does he mention where he stands on Assemblymember Addis’ AB303 which restores some local control to planning, approving and constructing these plants. While the senator attempts to reassure us that this technology is becoming safer, balanced with an admission that there are risks, he doesn’t specifically advocate for local control. Laird started out as a local elected official, but I am concerned that he may believe that “Sacramento knows best.” We need to support AB303 to at least have some control over what happens in our communities.
The US needs California, California doesn’t need the US. We have enough ports, farms, technology, and fisheries to be a free and independent country. At this point, every wasted tax dollar we send to Washington is simply used to subsidize the wealth of the 1%. What have we gotten in return? Whatever it is, it’s become less and less every year. All California is now is a giant cow perpetually milked, whose resources never remain with the Californians who created it. There is an initiative to leave the U.S. going around, if you care about your family and your future, sign it the minute you see it.
As I look around, all I see is a rudderless ship. A regime has taken over in Washington who is running around trying to put their fingers in every crack that is appearing. As concerned as I am about their intentions, it’s been a long time coming. This is a direct result of the generation that came before us, Boomers. They exported our nation’s industrial and productive capacity overseas and relied on tax breaks and borrowing to fund their carefree lifestyle and enrich themselves. This has come to end and we are left holding the bag.
They now enter their golden years still focused on how “hip” they were rather than what they did to the rest of us. No one in my age group has a good thing to say about them. Could they say that about their parent’s generation, my grandparent’s generation? Nay. My grandparent’s generation survived the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, and WWII, only to leave them a country and economy in the exact opposite condition they now leave us and which they squandered pursuing personal pleasure. WE ARE RUINED. If you are over 70, stay indoors and don’t come out. You are the bane of this country.
I appreciate Sen Laird’s well nuanced and informed statement. While supporting the need for greater safety standards and enforcement, he also advises that we need to continue our push toward supporting green energy and the necessary battery storage facilities that go with it. Laird’s is a much more thoughtful and far reaching response than Addis’ short-sighted “overkill” AB303.
While I see the need to improve safety standards and fire codes, they do absolutely nothing to stop a lithium battery fire when it hits thermal runaway. There is no 100% effective extinguishing method to put out these fires, and until there is we need to exercise caution when permitting large scale battery energy storage systems near populated areas where they can do harm. Yes, there is “new technology” but it has also caught fire causing evacuations and shelter in place order for residents. Why are we continuing to employ lithium-ion BESS when there are already viable long duration energy storage solutions that don’t catch fire? These batteries include iron-flow, iron air, zinc air etc. They solve more of the energy problem by providing a longer energy discharge (8-100hr duration vs lithium ion 4 hrs). Why we aren’t using safer technology here in CA that actually stand a chance of fixing the storage problem is mind boggling. The definition of insanity is repeating the same thing over and over while expecting different results.
Senator Laird: “Seventy-five percent of California’s battery storage uses newer, safer technology. Twenty-five percent is the older technology, such as what burned at Moss Landing. The state should have discussions about the 25 percent of battery storage facilities that use older technology.”— So, whether 25% of BESS’S are less safe (which really means they are now determined unsafe) or whatever smoke screen is offered, talk is cheap. How long do you pussyfoot around an unexploded ordinance before you act? Acknowledgement of a problem now makes Laird culpable for failing to act. Laird can’t in the future diminish the next NCM battery building fire by saying it was a missed opportunity to rectify the problem while complacently thinking someone else will handle it. He has a duty to act, not insanely double down. It’s obvious green fear mongering policy proliferated these unsafe environmental time bombs next to homes and food supplies and those who degraded the electric grid with intermittent power are incapable of fixing it . Laird could have championed more pumped storage, but instead took political contributions to advocate for 6,000 tons of flammable unquenchable batteries that have polluted a +5 mile radius at Moss Landing. No monuments for Laird for this public disservice.
If the type of American capitalism that has provided the means to fund a very basic social safety net has collapsed and, according to capitalist ideologues, socialism is a failure and road to serfdom, what then is left? Answer: Complete anarchy and primitive Darwinism.
The rich have accumulated everything and refuse to return anything. Instead, they now tear down the institutions of state that have provided it with the barest of legitimacy. Gone will be the Social Security Administration, gone will be Medicare, gone will be the U.S. Department of Education, gone will be the VA. The only thing left will be the Army, Navy, IRS, and Federal Bureau of Prisons.
The new administration in Washington speaks for banks and oligarchs. Since my late parent’s generation exported our factories and production, the average American has no money to spend on what used to be made in America. The only source of wealth the fascists in Washington have left is the firehose of money from the Fed. The value of this money is contingent on the credit worthiness of the US.
They see the various federal agencies engaged in making sure old people, women, children, and the unemployed don’t keel over dead in the street from starvation, not as institutions that prevent the public from putting their heads on pikes, but instead as unprofitable divisions in a sort of national corporation.
When hundreds of thousands of federal workers get suddenly laid off and join the rest of us and find themselves and their families living in trash cans in an alley somewhere, how long and in righteous rage do these oligarchic fascists think the public, as in revolutionary France, won’t be arresting them, trying them, and in acts of poetic justice, hang every single one of them?
Our government and economy has collapsed. It’s every person for themselves now, folks. For wage laborers, it’s been that way all along.
The fact that the current administration is running around shutting down entire federal agencies is a direct result of the deindustrialization of America. Public employment has replaced private sector employment. The problem with the current situation is that we didn’t cause the growth of government, corporatists did and my late parent’s generation of lackies going right along with it. I know, I heard their conversations. The current crisis wasn’t something they would have to deal with. Well guess what, now they do. The fascists in the White House are about to privatize Social Security, eliminate Medicare, and as a result of profligate bank bailouts, collapse the dollar. Is this what might be called generational schadenfreude? I can’t speak for anyone else, but it brings me GREAT joy to see the people who managed to insulate themselves from working class problems, about to experience them themselves. Welcome to our world. Welcome to food insecurity. Welcome to utility bills being turned off. Welcome to living paycheck to paycheck. Welcome to poor access to dental and medical care. Welcome to riding the bus to work. Welcome to scarcity. Welcome to poor nutrition. Welcome inadequate legal defense. Welcome to bowing and scraping. For all the people of my late parent’s generation who managed to create this hellscape through shortsightedness and and pure self interest, I hope you get a good look at what you leave behind. Rome is being sacked, we are no better than a banana republic. You, who enjoyed a quality of life that was basically one giant party and through no work of your own, take it all in, this is will be your legacy. The burning down of the institutions that those who came before you fought and died for (my late grandparents), whether on the battlefields of WWII or labor strikes in coal mines or steel mills, take it in Boomer. You took what was supposed to be the national and generational patrimony of the post WWII boom, and in the span of one generation (yours) managed to run it into the ground. Perhaps your parents, traumatized by WWII, decided to “spare the rod and spoil the child” rather than inculcate a grave sense of responsibility and patriotism in your entire generation. How else do explain the crime you committed? You mocked your parents sobriety and conservatism developed through surviving the Great Depression and WWII and grew your hair long, spit on American soldiers, dropped acid and generally acted like spoiled children. Well guess what? The world is spitting on you. Take the generational wealth and opportunity you stole from the rest of us and go to hell.