Perhaps symbolically underscoring the notion that nuclear half-lives are always longer than they seem, the Redwood Coast Energy Authority Board of Directors will once again discuss whether the agency should accept an offer of free nuclear power at its meeting later this month.
Last month, the board, acting with some members absent, failed to reach a decision on whether to accept the allotment of free nuclear energy from the Diablo Canyon Power Plant in San Luis Obispo. By default, it seemed the board’s inaction meant it would pass on the state-mandated offer for an allocation of free electricity that is being paid for by all electricity customers in the state, including RCEA’s own.
But RCEA Director of Power Resources Richard Engel says that after that meeting last week it was determined that while some board members had seemed to feel a motion needed a majority of the entire board to pass, while only a majority of those present was required.
“We believe there was a possibility that if they understood that, they may have voted differently,” Engel says, adding that legal counsel said the appropriate step was to put the item back on the agenda for the board’s Oct. 24 meeting for another discussion. “We’re really not trying to draw out a different outcome at all. Staff does not have a preference for or against this.”
The ongoing local conversation — which will once again see the RCEA board debate straying from a long-standing policy not to add nuclear power to its energy portfolio — stems from state discussions of what to do with its last operating nuclear power plant 500 miles away. Pacific Gas and Electric Co. decided not to seek license renewal for the plant and applied to close the facility in 2018 but reversed course in 2022 after Gov. Gavin Newsom offered a $1.4 billion loan to support its continued operations through at least 2030, with the state facing an unprecedented push for carbon-free power amid unprecedented demand for electricity.
A couple years later, the state now has a significantly larger portfolio of electricity than previously forecast and PG&E is making allotments of power from its Diablo Canyon reactors available to all California Public Utilities Commission jurisdictional entities, of which Redwood Coast Energy Authority is one. And while the energy would come free of charge to the entities, their ratepayers are already funding Diablo Canyon’s continued operations through a fee for public purpose programs.
The item will again come before RCEA’s board with three action options: it can decide not to accept the allotment; accept it and use the free power to decrease its projected $9.5 million budget deficit for 2025 by about $500,000; or accept it and use the $500,000 in resulting savings to purchase other carbon-free energy, further greening the agency’s energy portfolio, resulting in a projected reduction of about 23 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions.
The decision pits board members’ distaste for nuclear energy and the toxic waste it produces against both an increasingly concerning budget situation and an escalating climate crisis and urgent need for clean energy sources.
When the matter came before the board last month, members were clearly split on whether to accept the allotment. RCEA’s Community Advisory Committee met Oct. 8, Engel says, and a majority of its members voted to recommend accepting the allocation.
This article appears in Combating the Barred Owl Invasion.
