Dan Hirsch Comments on CA Energy Commission’s Diablo Canyon Report

Last year, California’s Governor Newsom succeeded in jamming SB 846 through the State Legislature, shredding the 2016 agreement to shutter the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant by 2025 and authorizing a $1.4B “forgivable” loan to PG&E to instead seek approvals to extend plant operations by many years.

One of the state agencies that would need to approve the Diablo Canyon extension is the California Energy Commission (CEC). Last month, CBG president Dan Hirsch submitted a written comment critiquing a recent CEC report that analyzed the role of Diablo Canyon in the state’s energy grid reliability.

Read Dan’s full comment to the CEC here.

Read the abstract from Dan’s comment below.

“The California Energy Commission (CEC) is rushing to prepare a report, planned to be released in draft in the next couple of weeks and in final form shortly thereafter, that may do more harm to the health and safety of the people of California and the state’s crucial climate goals, as well as reputational damage to the CEC itself, than any other action taken in its history. The prior report was heavily criticized because it appeared to have been directed to reach a pre-ordained desired conclusion supporting continued operation of the Diablo Canyon Power Plant, and then worked backwards from that point to justify that outcome. The first report would not withstand academic scrutiny. The presentation made to date about plans for the new report suggest that same kind of “reverse engineering” is at work––the CEC seems to have marching orders to justify breaching the Diablo phase-out agreement, and is massaging inputs for its new analysis to reach that conclusion.”