Los Angeles says so long rocks

Los Angeles has officially broken with coal.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has stopped receiving coal-fired power from its last coal-fired source, the Intermountain Generating Station in Utah, city officials announced Thursday.

“This is a defining moment for the city of Los Angeles,” Mayor Karen Bass said at a news conference. “Decommissioning LA’s coal isn’t just about stopping the use of coal to power our city—it’s about creating a clean energy economy that benefits every Angeleno. This step will further accelerate our transition to 100% clean energy by 2035.”

Electricity generation is one of the biggest causes of climate change and burning coal is the most environmentally and environmentally destructive way to generate electricity. The city has pledged to achieve carbon-free energy over the next decade by investing in clean technologies such as solar, wind, battery energy storage and hydrogen.

California is gradually transitioning away from coal, which provided just 2.2% of the state’s electricity by 2024. California Energy Commission. Almost all of that was from the Intermountain Power Project, which provided 11% of LA’s energy last year. In 2016, DWP divested another major source of coal, the Navajo Generating Station in Arizona.

“This transition has been years in the making,” DWP chief executive Janice Queens said in a statement. “This reflects the hard work of our employees, the support of our customers, and the leadership of our elected officials. Together, we are building a cleaner, more energy-rich future for Los Angeles.”

More than 60% of the city’s energy now comes from renewable sources, Quiñones said. The newly completed Elland Solar Plus Storage Center in Kern County, which began serving LA and Glendale in August. The facility is the largest solar plus battery power plant in the country.

That’s a complete turnaround from 20 years ago, when the city’s energy mix consisted of about 3% renewables and more than 50% coal, Bass said.

However, LA is not completely free of fossil fuels. The city will still draw from new natural gas-fired units at Intermountain. They can run a fuel mix with natural gas and up to 30% green hydrogen, with plans to eventually transition to 100% green hydrogen in the future. (City officials said green hydrogen will be added to the fuel mix next year.)

Also the DWP board Recently approved An $800 million plan to convert two units of its Scattergood generating station in Playa del Rey to run on a mix of natural gas and green hydrogen, with the same goal of running entirely on hydrogen when more supplies are available.

Some energy and environmental groups have criticized the plan, which they say extends the life of fossil-fueled infrastructure at a time when the city should be focusing on sustainable clean technologies such as solar, wind and battery energy storage.

Still, many celebrated the end of coal power in the nation’s second-largest city as a big step — especially at a time when the federal government is working against clean energy and promoting coal, oil and other fossil fuels.

“This is a remarkable, remarkable day,” said Evan Gillespie, a partner at the non-profit Carbonization Industrial Laboratories, during a news conference. He recalled that when he first moved to L.A. nearly 20 years ago, the charge to get the nation’s largest public utility off coal was bold and even laughable.

“If every city, if every city, had the courage and leadership that this city had, the world would be a very different place today,” he said. “I know the model we’ve built here will be followed by the rest of this country and the rest of the world in the next 20 years.”