Our North County Supervisors are looking to my waterfowl cousins for wisdom these days, drawing upon the adage, “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”
Instead of benefitting the area’s feathered friends, 5th District Supervisor Steve Lavagnino is crying fowl, I mean foul, about battery energy storage system (BESS) facilities being subjected to less scrutiny and fewer regulations than their oil and gas counterparts, aka legacy energy projects. Why the disparity?
The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors discussed the January Moss Landing BESS facility disaster and other battery fires that have been making headlines lately, including a recent Tesla car fire off of Highway 101.
Municipalities, firefighters, energy companies, and residents have had to learn the hard way about fires and other emergencies pertaining to these batteries. “Thermal runaway” is now entering the local vernacular—describing what can happen when a lithium nickel-manganese-cobalt oxide battery catches fire.
Regarding the aforementioned Tesla car fire, county Fire Marshal Fred Tan said that time and distance are the best ways to fight these fires. “It was, ‘Get out of the car, let the fire do its thing,’” Tan said. “Get away and get upwind of it.”
The adage “fight fire with fire” might almost be helpful here. Those fires can’t be put out with water because the oxygen in water could heat up a fire even more, Tan said.
These concerns were enough to prompt Lavagnino to question whether the county requires BESS plants to have some of the legal protections that oil and gas projects must have, namely abandonment bonds and insurance for disasters. The short answer is no. The slightly longer answer is only BESS facilities associated with big utility projects have such requirements.
Fellow North County Supervisor Bob Nelson, representing the 4th District, leaned on another adage, saying there needs to be a level playing field. The county should have the same concerns about these battery facilities as oil projects, like the current Sable Offshore Corp. permit transfer discussion, where a big company is selling off a project to a smaller one that could be less financially stable.
Environmentalists who spoke at the March 11 supervisors meeting said that renewable energy is necessary for the state’s future and grid reliability. Plus it’s “much safer” than oil and natural gas.
“Generating and storing energy comes with a risk,” said Lee Heller with the Community Environmental Council. “We need battery storage. This is safer than anything we’ve been doing.”
But that doesn’t mean BESS facilities shouldn’t be questioned.
Lavagnino asked why people felt the need to hate on oil and gas in the face of the real safety concerns with BESS facilities.
“The environmental community needs to get its arms around that clean energy can make mistakes,” he said, adding that renewable energy projects should also require air and groundwater monitoring, similar to oil and gas. “What’s good for one should be good for the other.”
Concerns of a feather, one might say, flock together.
The Canary is getting out of this coal mine. Send a rope to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Mar 13-23, 2025.