Virginia-based power firm AES has plans to build a 40-acre battery facility in the Coyote Valley hard up against a conservation area not far off U.S. 101. The valley is “a key wildlife corridor,” says the Sierra Club, that features “open space, trees, and agricultural fields.” The project would be sited on “a 128-acre parcel now used for growing crops,” says the East Bay Times.
Two months ago, a 71-acre working farm in North Coyote Valley was bought by a conservation group for $5.3 million. The Peninsula Open Space Trust said the purchase “advances protections for both farmland and wildlife connectivity in Coyote Valley, one of the most ecologically significant and development-threatened landscapes in the Bay Area.” All told, as much as $160 million has been spent by private groups that want to preserve the valley and the areas around it.
The proposed AES farm, known as the Jewelflower project, would stack up thousands of lithium-ion batteries in shipping containers. Operations are scheduled to begin in 2029.
But not if the environmental groups, state lawmakers and parents who “are mobilizing to fight it” succeed in defeating it.
Parents don’t want it around, because it will be straight across from the Charter School of Morgan Hill where more than 600 students attend classes. One of the fears is fire, and it is not necessarily unfounded. Monterey County’s Moss Landing, one of the largest energy-storing battery facilities in the world, has caught fire multiple times. Last year’s fire caused the evacuation of 1,200 nearby residents. AES facilities in Arizona and Southern California also have a history of super-heated battery fires. The San Diego fire caused an evacuation that lasted two days.
Legislators who oppose Jewelflower include Democratic Assemblymembers Ash Kalra, of San Jose and Gail Pellerin of Santa Cruz, and state Sen. Dave Cortese of San Jose. As far back as 2021 Kalra was fighting “to protect Coyote Valley against efforts to pave it over for more sprawl and warehouses, counter to smart growth and environmental protection.” Cortese is encouraging opponents to sue AES under the California Environmental Quality Act.
It’s the resistance from green activists, though, that seems irregular.
“It’s in the wrong place,” says Green Foothills. “Battery storage facilities belong in industrial areas … not on open space or farmland in the heart of Coyote Valley.”
Kathy Sutherland, who chairs the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority Board of Directors, also believes the “project is simply in the wrong place.”
“Installing an industrial battery facility in the middle of this conserved landscape will undermine everything done by residents of Santa Clara Valley to protect Coyote Valley.”
While “supportive of renewable energy and storage” as a general principle, the authority says it’s wrong to “sacrifice irreplaceable natural and agricultural lands when alternative sites for the project exist.”
There’s no consensus on just where those “alternative sites” might be. The Moss Landing battery farm shares space with a power plant, qualifies as an industrial site, but it’s close enough to neighborhoods to have forced an evacuation. There are also zoning hurdles in industrial districts. Siting battery farms in these spaces is not automatic. Energy author Robert Bryce keeps a running database which tells us there have been 153 rejections of, or restrictions, on proposed battery sites over the last four years in the U.S.
Battery sites don’t take up as much space as solar and wind farms, which are voracious land eaters compared to conventional power sources. But if solar and wind replace natural gas and nuclear plants, there will be cumulative effect. For every new watt of wind and solar, more batteries will be necessary to store the energy made by renewables, which generate electricity only intermittently.
Environmental activists have entered an ideological train wreck zone, where their demands collide and negate each other. So good luck, Sacramento, with that net-zero dream.
Kerry Jackson is the William Clement Fellow in California Reform at the Pacific Research Institute.
