Environmentalists are urging California Gov. Jerry Brown and the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to hold off from considering the joint proposal to close the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant by 2025, allowing for public debate on the environmental and economic impacts of the closure.
The Aug. 11 letter, delivered by Environmental Progress and signed by more than 60 scientists, scholars, and environmentalists, argues that the nuclear plant’s power production will be replaced by natural gas, raising the state’s carbon dioxide emissions.
Plant owner Pacific Gas & Electric Co. (PG&E) has joined a number of interest groups in the proposal, which calls for Diablo Canyon Units 1 and 2 to close in 2024-25, when their Nuclear Regulatory Commission licenses expire. The company cited the state’s shifting energy policies, including the goal of increasing its renewable portfolio standard to 50 percent by 2030, in shuttering the plant.
The plant provides 17,600 gigawatt hours of power output annually, according to the letter, representing 9 percent of the state’s internal energy production and 21 percent of its low-carbon generation.
“The Joint Proposal’s doesn’t come close to replacing this lost low-carbon power,” the letter to Brown reads. “It only mandates 4,000 gigawatt-hours per year of energy efficiency and, optionally, new renewable generation, to replace four times as much lost nuclear output. And much of the demand reduction PG&E forecasts to replace Diablo will come about simply from customers switching from PG&E to alternate electricity providers, with no guarantee that their new electricity supply will come from low-carbon sources.”
The group also cited economic losses of $27 million per year in local taxes for San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties, as well as the loss of 1,500 jobs at the plant that equate to a yearly payroll of more than $200 million.
No decision should be made prior to legislative and public consideration of “how California can most quickly and cost-effectively stop the damage to the climate from our electrical system emissions,” the letter says.
California Energy Commission Chair Robert B. Weisenmiller defended the plant’s closure in an email Wednesday: “Replacing this nuclear plant with fossil-free energy is consistent with our effort to provide more clean, safe and reliable energy for Californians – and meet our ambitious renewable energy, efficiency and emission reduction goals.”
