HUNTINGTON BEACH – The towering stacks on Pacific Coast Highway that have served as a Huntington Beach landmark for decades are expected to be leveled to make way for what is being touted as a more environmentally friendly power plant.
It will be a bittersweet farewell when the stacks, called electricity generating units, are pulled down more than five years from now as part of a revamp for the AES Huntington Beach Generating Station. On one hand, they are a familiar sight for boaters, surfers and motorists along the coast; on the other, their destruction will mean cleaner energy production in Huntington Beach.
New state requirements have prompted AES Huntington Beach to come up with a plan to reduce the impact on the environment by changing the way it uses natural gas to provide energy to the community.
“We’re not changing the fuel, we’re changing the technology,” said AES project manager Jennifer Didlo.
The Huntington Beach Energy Project will replace the Huntington Beach Generating Station, which has been running on Pacific Coast Highway and Newland Street since 1958. Changes will include using air to cool generators instead of sea water and using new technology that will allow the proposed plant to power up and be shut off quickly, Didlo said.
The plant will also have lower-profile buildings and give up the industrial look the facility has had for decades.
Roger Johnson, deputy director of siting for the California Energy Commission, said AES is the first company to submit an application to build a new facility but several companies across the state have met with state officials and talked about starting work to revamp their power plants.
“This is pretty good news for California to get these new modern projects replacing the older ones,” he said. “When I look at (AES’s) application those benefits they describe are expected to occur.”
But before Surf City can see this new forward-thinking power plant, the plans have to go through the licensing and approval process. AES will also have to secure long-term contracts with an energy company.
AES’s application with the California Energy Commission, filed June 27, is expected to be reviewed sometime this week, Didlo said.
If the application is deemed complete, a public-review period will follow and various public meetings are expected to be scheduled to let residents weigh in on the project.
If all goes as planned, construction could start in 2015 and the first generators will be online by late 2018, with full implementation by 2020, Didlo said.
The first two stacks are anticipated to come down sometime before 2020 and the other two are anticipated to be demolished in 2022.
Icon gone
Huntington Beach Surfrider Foundation calls AES the facility that creates the most pollution in Orange County.
According to the group, the plant sends about 1.7 million pounds of pollutants into the air every year. About 40 different pollutants are generated from the plant, the nonprofit reports.
AES reports that energy generation plants account for about 1 percent of Southern California’s pollution, with the biggest offender being transportation-related pollution. The proposed plant will greatly reduce how much ammonia, carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide are sent into the air, according to a report on the proposed project.
The stacks, which emit steam vapor that some mistake for smoke, became an unintentional icon in Surf City. But their demise will mean fewer negative impacts on the ocean and beaches, something most residents would welcome.
“The only people that are probably going to be sad about it are the boaters,” said Orange County Coastkeeper Executive Director Garry Brown. “It’s one of the iconic land sites you look at from the ocean to get your bearings.”
Some surfers use the stacks as a marker for how far the current has pulled them from their starting point or to see which way the wind is blowing before heading out to the water.
Huntington Beach residents have their own reasons they will miss the stacks.
“My children have always called them the cloud factory,” wrote Kenny Carmichael.
Kathy Templeton wrote: “Years and years ago I used them as a landmark when I was learning to fly.”
Didlo said that, in her time working to plan the project, she has had several residents ask that the towers be kept intact.
“People have said, ‘You can’t tear down those stacks. That’s how I know where I am,’” she said.
But not all residents have fond memories of the puffing towers.
“They’re a bit of an eyesore, so I’ll be especially happy to eventually see something more environmentally friendly in their place,” wrote Michael DiLuzio.
Some environmentalists say the plan in the works will be well worth losing the 54-year-old landmark.
Changing the energy game
The state is handing down several energy requirements that are slated to come together in the next decade and to change the way California produces and consumes energy.
One requirement is to move away from out-of-state coal and turn toward renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. By 2020, California is requiring 33 percent of all energy come from these sources, Didlo said.
“California is setting itself up for a major infrastructure redo,” she said. “The state has a lot of things lining up that need to come together.”
The state is also requiring coastal power plants to drastically reduce the amount of ocean water they use to cool their equipment by 2020, an issue that has been promoted by environmental groups for years.
Critics of once-through cooling say sucking in ocean water and spitting it back out at a higher temperature harms sea life and affects the ecosystem near these power plants.
AES is proposing to do away with this feature entirely and to use air to cool its equipment.
In addition, the proposed plant will be cleaner and more compact. It would use less natural gas, pump out more megawatts of power and emit fewer greenhouse gas emissions, Didlo said.
The new generators would have technology that would allow them to be powered up and shut off very quickly. This means AES can precisely target how much energy to put out and when, which would fill any gaps that could arise as the state relies more on alternative energy sources.
The current generators take 12-18 hours to start up. The new generators would take 10 minutes, Didlo said.
“When you think about the sun and the wind … you need to have natural gas plants that you can precisely control the output,” Didlo said.
Johnson said it will become necessary for existing power plants to reinvent themselves because the energy grid and wires are already in place and every power plant is zoned accordingly, which makes moving these plants to other areas an unlikely option.
“It’s important for people to know the whole energy-distribution system is set right now,” he said. “If we can take advantage of that and not build new wires I think that’s a benefit.”
All of AES’s proposed components make for a project some environmental groups say they can get behind.
Brown said AES’s proposed revamp is good news for the ocean and Orange County Coastkeeper will support the project.
“You hear people say we should just get rid of (coastal) power plants. What people don’t understand is those plants have been there for years and the entire distribution system … is based on that plant being at that location,” Brown said. “We’re very encouraged by what AES is planning to do to those plants.”
Although AES is on the right track, he says concerns about the impacts of once-through cooling have not been completely quieted.
Orange County Coastkeeper takes issue with the desalination project proposed to be built by Poseidon Resources, Inc. The company would use AES’s intake pipe to convert ocean water into fresh water, Brown said.
“I think it’s going to complicate things with desal,” he said. “That’s going to be a friction. We have, as a group, appealed the regional board’s approval of the use of that intake pipe.”
Environmentalists have been fighting the desalination project since it was first approved by Huntington Beach officials more than five years ago, citing the damage to the environment they say the intake pipe would cause, among other concerns.
However, company officials say their use of the pipe would greatly differ from AES’s current use.
Company spokesman Brian Lochrie said Poseidon would use 127 million gallons of seawater a day compared to AES’s 514 million gallons. He added that less than a pound of sea life would be sucked in a day, or about 25 percent of the daily diet of a pelican.
“For this insignificant environmental impact, Orange County will receive 50 million gallons per day of drinking water, which is about 8 percent of Orange County’s drinking water needs,” Lochrie said.
The company had to submit tweaked plans for a stand-alone project in 2010 to accommodate changes down the road for power plants. A secondary environmental report has since been approved but the project continues to be challenged.
Contact the writer: 714-796-7953 or jfletcher@ocregister.com
