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Los Angeles is officially divided into coal.
City officials on Thursday announced that the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has stopped receiving high-powered electricity from the last remaining coal-fired source, a future station in Utah.
“This is a defining moment for the city of Los Angeles,” Mayor Karen Bass said at a news conference. “Coal diversification isn’t just about ending the use of coal in our Power City – it’s about building a clean energy economy that benefits our transition for all Angenos.
Electricity generation is one of the biggest causes of climate change and burning coal is the most destructive form of energy generation from an environmental and environmental perspective. The city is committed to zero-energy in the next decade by investing in renewable technologies such as solar, wind, battery storage and hydrogen.
California is gradually moving away from coal, which provides 2.2% of its electricity by 2024, according to California Energy Commission. Almost all of that came from the Intermountain power project, which provided 11% of LA’s power last year. DWP emerged from another major coal source, the Navajo Generating Station in Arizona, in 2016.
“This change has been years in the making, DHFP Chief Exept Quiñones said in a statement. “It reflects the hard work of our employees, the support of our customers, and the leadership of our elected officials. Together, we’re building a clean, clean energy future for Los Angeles.”
More than 60% of the city’s energy supply now comes from renewable sources, Quiñones said, including The recently completed facility is the Eland Solar-Plus storage facility Kern County, which began serving LA and Glendale in August. The facility is one of the largest solar-plus-battery power plants in the nation.
It’s a drastic change from 20 years ago, when the city’s energy mix was 3% coal and 50% coal, Bass said.
However, LA is not completely low fat. The city is yet to start from new units of natural gas in the country. They can run on a mixture of natural gas fuel and 30% green hydrogen, with plans to keep converting to 100% blue hydrogen in the future. (City officials said Green hydrogen is expected to be added to the Fuel Mix next year).
DWP board again recently approved The $800 million plan is to convert two units at its distribution station in Playa del Rey to run on a mixture of natural gas and green hydrogen, with the same goal of running entirely on hydrogen as more transmissions are available.
Some Energy and Envivoed groups were criticized, saying they are bringing back fossil fuel infrastructure at a time when the city should be focusing more on clean technologies like solar, wind and battery energy storage.
Still, many are celebrating the end of coal power in the nation’s second-largest city as a major step forward — especially as governments work to fight clean energy and promote coal, oil and other coal-based industries.
“It’s an amazing, amazing day,” said Evan Gillespie, a partner at DeCarbonalization nonprofit labs, during a press conference. He noted that when he first moved to Lal About 20 years ago, the case of making a large national coal project seemed like a good idea and funny.
“If all the things, if all the cities, he had the courage and leadership that this town had, today the country would be a very different place,” he said. “I know that the model we built here and the rest of the country and the rest of the world followed in LA’s footsteps for the next 20 years.”
