Politics, as the saying goes, makes for strange bedfellows. Where environmental issues are concerned, those strange bedfellows can be downright bizarre.
Case in point: A planned battery farm in (where else?) California, part of the once-Golden State's Net Zero plan to save the environment, is being rather vigorously opposed by people concerned about the installation's effect on... Wait for it... The environment.
You can't make this stuff up. And yet, from a certain point of view, it makes sense. The Pacific Research Institute's Kerry Jackson has more.
Virginia-based power firm AES has plans to build a 40-acre battery facility in the Coyote Valley hard up against a conservation area not far off U.S. 101. The valley is “a key wildlife corridor,” says the Sierra Club, that features “open space, trees, and agricultural fields.” The project would be sited on “a 128-acre parcel now used for growing crops,” says the East Bay Times.
Two months ago, a 71-acre working farm in North Coyote Valley was bought by a conservation group for $5.3 million. The Peninsula Open Space Trust said the purchase “advances protections for both farmland and wildlife connectivity in Coyote Valley, one of the most ecologically significant and development-threatened landscapes in the Bay Area.” All told, as much as $160 million has been spent by private groups that want to preserve the valley and the areas around it.
The proposed AES farm, known as the Jewelflower project, would stack up thousands of lithium-ion batteries in shipping containers. Operations are scheduled to begin in 2029.
In shipping containers? Seriously? For those not familiar with these things, they aren't the most attractive or ecologically friendly things around. These are big steel containers, about the length of an 18-wheeler's trailer, capable of holding tons of cargo. Here's the problem: They get very hot in direct sunshine. I've worked helping to load and unload these things in Middle Eastern heat, and they very rapidly turn into bake ovens in direct sunshine.
But wait! There's more!
Parents don’t want it around, because it will be straight across from the Charter School of Morgan Hill where more than 600 students attend classes. One of the fears is fire, and it is not necessarily unfounded. Monterey County’s Moss Landing, one of the largest energy-storing battery facilities in the world, has caught fire multiple times. Last year’s fire caused the evacuation of 1,200 nearby residents. AES facilities in Arizona and Southern California also have a history of super-heated battery fires. The San Diego fire caused an evacuation that lasted two days.
Legislators who oppose Jewelflower include Democratic Assemblymembers Ash Kalra, of San Jose and Gail Pellerin of Santa Cruz, and state Sen. Dave Cortese of San Jose. As far back as 2021 Kalra was fighting “to protect Coyote Valley against efforts to pave it over for more sprawl and warehouses, counter to smart growth and environmental protection.” Cortese is encouraging opponents to sue AES under the California Environmental Quality Act.
It’s the resistance from green activists, though, that seems irregular.
“It’s in the wrong place,” says Green Foothills. “Battery storage facilities belong in industrial areas … not on open space or farmland in the heart of Coyote Valley.”
Kathy Sutherland, who chairs the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority Board of Directors, also believes the “project is simply in the wrong place.”
Indeed, one wonders if there is a "right place" for something like this. I'm inclined to say there is not, but this is California.
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This is, frankly, an idea that never should have seen the light of day, and if there is any evidence of that, the near-universal opposition by NIMBYists and green energy advocates would surely be it.
Look, lots of us are concerned about the environment. Some of us even live out in the environment, or what we called "the country" back in the day. But these things have to be tempered with reason, and there's very little reason involved in this scheme. The fire danger is very real, especially in that area; there is ample dry brush in those canyons in that part of California, and lithium-ion batteries, when they burn, they burn very, very hot. The company behind this scheme, AES, has a history of battery fires. Remember, as well, how they are planning to house these batteries: In ugly steel cargo containers in which, on a hot day, one might bake bread. Worse, this scheme would place this quite near a school.
California needs to learn a lesson from this; when you encounter this much opposition, from groups that might otherwise be amenable as well as from people who just don't want a big, ugly installation in their front yards, then maybe a rethink of the entire policy is in order. But this is the impeccably coiffed Governor Gavin Newsom's California, the California of the highest gasoline taxes and highest gas prices in the nation, the California that the productive are fleeing in ever-increasing numbers. Evidence suggests that the present political leadership in the once-Golden State is no longer capable of absorbing even the most obvious of lessons.
