California Lawmakers want to Cut Red Tape to Ramp up Clean Energy but Rural Communities Push Back

By Deborah Brennan, Calmatters

California Assemblymember Buffy Wicks is feeling a time crunch in California’s quest to combat climate change. So she’s trying to speed up renewable energy source construction and storage.

“We do have to make it faster and better,”  Wicks said recently. “Government has to work better for people.”

Wicks, an Oakland Democrat, was speaking about a Legislative subcommittee field hearing on permitting reform that she held to discuss streamlining renewable energy permits last month. It was part of a statewide tour of several cities to explore permitting solutions for issues such as energy, housing and climate change.

The first stop in the Coachella Valley hearing was the Desert Peak battery storage project in Palm Springs, by NextEra Energy Resources.

It’s silhouetted against the San Bernardino Mountains, surrounded by a field of wind turbines and next to a Southern California Edison substation. The battery storage center draws power from the Palo Verde nuclear generating station in Arizona and renewable energy projects in the desert, said Pedro Villegas, executive director for political and regulatory affairs for NextEra.

Rows of sheds house hundreds of lithium-ion batteries that store power and then feed it into the grid. At full capacity Desert Peak will produce 700 megawatts, enough to power about 140,000 homes.

Facilities like this are key to California’s ambitious climate goals. The state aims to reach net carbon zero — the point at which the amount of greenhouse gasses that humans emit equals the amount removed from the atmosphere — by 2045. In 2022 the California Air Resources Board released a plan to get there.

To do that, California has to cut red tape, Wicks said. Industry experts at the hearing said there has to be less duplication of paperwork, increased staffing at regulatory agencies and better coordination between them.

Wind and solar farms can displace valuable ecosystems and farmland, while battery storage sites pose fire risks, so the state is facing pushback from rural communities that are ground zero for renewable energy development.

Five years ago San Bernardino County restricted new large-scale wind and solar projects on more than a million acres of rural land after residents in some communities complained the projects threatened fragile natural environments and historic sites.

“We need to be mindful of creating sacrifice zones in pursuing climate solutions,” Nataly Escobedo Garcia, policy coordinator for the Fresno-based Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability, told the subcommittee.

Converting traditional farms to solar farms also sparks opposition, Villegas said.

“Especially in rural areas, some folks have a reaction to turning agricultural lands to solar energy,” he said.

Battery storage has gotten bad press lately, with several high profile fires in San Diego County.

An Escondido battery storage facility caught fire in September, prompting evacuations and closures of nearby schools. In May a blaze at a battery storage site in Otay Mesa burned for two and a half weeks, sparking worry about the safety of the high-powered batteries. In September 2023, a Valley Center energy storage facility caught fire.