In 2019, the California public utility Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) announced that once its Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant closed, they would sell the land it sits on—12,000 acres of Central Coast hills rolling with chaparral and oak called the Pecho Coast. That same year, the California Public Utilities Commission adopted a Tribal Lands Transfer Policy mandating that public utilities disposing of lands give tribes the first right of offer to negotiate a land agreement prior to a public sale. When PG&E offered the lands (at market value) to the yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini Northern Chumash Tribe, or ytt Tribe, they jumped to acquire the lands—or re-acquire them, since they were part of their ancestral homeland. By March 2021, the tribe, along with key partners, had a memorandum of understanding to acquire the entire site.

For the first time since the 1700s, ytt Tribe could reclaim rightful ownership and stewardship of their Pecho Coast homelands. This is one of multiple instances around the United States in which tribes have recognized that large landholdings associated with nuclear power plants, unusually unfragmented and ecologically intact sites, make them strong candidates for restored tribal stewardship. But now, a confluence of murky state policies and settler-colonial values centered around the idea of conservation is complicating the transfer process.

Chumash peoples have lived in what is now California, between Malibu and Ragged Point, since time immemorial. Though often confused for a single tribe, they are not a monolith: There are eight distinct yet related Chumash communities, each with their own material cultures, language dialects, and place-based relationships. ytt Tribe have remained active stewards of their homelands in San Luis Obispo County since the 1700s, even as they endured Spanish missionization, Mexican occupation, and United States settler colonialism—a type of colonial occupation that relies on the theft of Indigenous lands and the belief that Native peoples need to be eliminated and replaced. Their stories and genealogy, relationships, and language, called tiłhini, all bear their continued kinship ties and obligations to these lands.

Built in 1968 in a region dominated by the oil industry, Diablo Canyon generated tense environmental and political debates, leading to protests from organizations such as the Sierra Club, Mothers for Peace, and the Abalone Alliance. For many, nuclear energy posed danger to coastal ecologies and raised alarms about developing power plants on geologic fault lines. For ytt Tribe, nuclear power was just a new wave of the energy colonialism that has and continues to privatize and destroy Indigenous lands.

Over time, however, the nuclear power sites came to be seen as uniquely protected areas. Unlike dams that destructively terraform riverine ecosystems, or oil infrastructure that degrades lands and oceans with leaks and spills, nuclear plants require swaths of undeveloped and therefore somewhat conserved lands around them, creating unlikely possibilities for ytt Tribe to imagine cultivating relationships with these lands for generations to come.

Indigenous leaders see stewarding nuclear sites as their responsibility, even when faced with the realities of nuclear contamination. For example, at the Hanford Site—a decommissioned nuclear production complex in eastern Washington state that is also a Superfund site—the Wanapum tribe, a federally unrecognized tribe like ytt Tribe, maintains that although the site is heavily contaminated, the land remains their kin. Wanapum tribal leader Rex Buck Jr. claims the nuclear realities of Hanford as an unlikely “blessing in disguise,” and has been quoted describing it as a sacred place that invited the nuclear project in order to protect the land from the further invasion and development of the settlers. He adds that Hanford “will heal itself, and the Wanapum will be part of this healing process as caretakers of the land.”

For Indigenous leaders such as Buck, stewarding nuclear sites into the future is an expression of their land-based sovereignty. ytt Tribe shares this kind of vision for the future of the Pecho Coast.

But lately, things have been getting complicated, as the governor’s 30×30 initiative has created complications with the California Public Utilities Commission’s Tribal Land Transfer Policy and endangered ytt Tribe’s reclamation of their homelands. In April 2022, Governor Gavin Newsom proposed to extend Diablo Canyon’s life in order to meet California’s clean energy goals. After the announcement, PG&E put land proposal discussions with ytt Tribe on hold. Five months later, the California State legislature passed Senate Bill 846, permitting Diablo Canyon to operate for an additional five years.

SB 846 included state funds for a Land Conservation and Economic Development Plan for after the plant closed, to be overseen by the California Natural Resources Agency (CNRA). This plan was designed to support “environmental enhancements and access of Diablo Canyon powerplant lands” precisely because of their “pristine” state.

The bill conflicted with the California Public Utility Commission’s policy of giving tribes first right of offer and added new bureaucratic layers to the site’s future. By moving the question of what happens to Diablo Canyon out of the utility commission’s jurisdiction and into the state legislature’s, the bill allowed the legislature to bypass the tribe’s priority access to those lands, creating a loophole to redirect the land back into settler state hands. Instead of Indigenous sovereignty, a rubric of “conservation” and “economic development” (contemporary synonyms of settler colonialism) were now the guiding ideas.

While the tribe experienced this shift in planning as a challenge, they pivoted to operate within the bill’s new rubric. In collaboration with the Land Conservancy of San Luis Obispo, California State Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo, and the local economic development group Regional Economic Action Coalition, the tribe created a conservation and economic development plan that aligned with SB 846’s requirements. Members of the CNRA visited San Luis Obispo in March 2023 to hear a presentation of the plan and to hold a public listening session. During this public comment period, returning land to ytt stewardship emerged as the public’s number one priority for the site.

But when the California legislature approved its budget in June 2023, it accepted a plan for SB 846 that did not specify ytt tribal partnership. Though it earmarked funds for collaboration with tribes to develop a conservation plan, it only gestured to a general partnership with “California Native American tribe or tribes.”

Why the sudden erasure of ytt Tribe?

Some community members and tribal representatives have suggested that the state is backpedaling out of caution about naming the “right” tribal partner. Though at the time of PG&E’s initial land offering only ytt Tribe stepped forward to purchase Diablo Canyon, since then numerous other tribes have made claims to the site.

To determine tribal land claims, the state relies on the California Native American Heritage Commission’s “Most Likely Descendants” list, which uses genealogy and documents to provide hypotheses regarding tribes’ ancestral lands. Though numerous tribes could make claims to the Pecho Coast based on some requirements of the list, ytt Tribe are the only tribe that can document a presence in the region prior to Spanish colonization—a claim that has been investigated and affirmed through genealogy records both by scholars and by PG&E.

Omitting ytt Tribe from this iteration of Diablo Canyon’s future illustrates what academics mean when we talk about settler colonialism as an ongoing structure rather than a one-time event: Native Californians didn’t have their land stolen just once; decision after decision in settler society undermines Indigenous sovereignty.

On the Pecho Coast, California has an opportunity not only to advance its state sustainability initiatives, but to finally honor its commitment to repairing relations with California tribes. As plans for Diablo Canyon unfold, many of us are watching with hope and anticipation to see if California can give meaning to “land back.”

The post Will California’s Quest for Clean Energy Get in the Way of Land Back? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Do we care if climate projects make allowances for the communities they impact?

That’s the question posed by the first-ever auction for leases to create giant wind farms in the ocean off the U.S. West Coast. The auction, completed late last year, awarded rights to build vast flotillas of wind turbines 20 miles off the coasts of San Luis Obispo and Humboldt Counties.

This was supposed to be a clarifying moment in California’s commitment to wind energy. The Golden State, for all its boasting about climate change policy, has lagged behind the East Coast in developing offshore wind power. This is partly because our deeper waters require deploying giant, floating turbines. It’s also because of all the potential opposition in the state—from fishing industries, Indigenous communities, and local stakeholders. We Californians distrust changes anywhere near our beloved shoreline.

In response, the federal government established auction rules that would consider not just the amount companies bid for rights to harness the wind, but whether bidders engaged with local communities. Under the formula, companies who created partnerships with benefits for communities could earn credits to boost their bids, giving them an edge in the auction.

One bidding company did exactly that.

But was it worth the effort?

The center of this head-scratching story is Morro Bay. When offshore wind development became a public issue there nearly a decade ago, citizens reacted with skepticism and anger. They expressed concerns about how construction would impact the shore, and fears about the impacts of turbines on birds, fisheries, or, even at a distance of 20 miles from land, the views and natural beauty of the coast.

Other companies kept their distance from residents. But in 2015, Castle Wind LLC—a joint venture between Washington state-based Trident Winds and a North American subsidiary of the Germany utility EnBW Energie Baden-Württemberg AG (EnBW)—jumped in and started a dialogue with residents and stakeholders.

Local leaders advised Castle Wind to talk with fishermen first, given the struggles of that industry and the questions about how wind farms might impact fisheries. After more than two years of talking, Castle Wind, the Morro Bay Commercial Fishermen’s Organization, and the Port San Luis Commercial Fishermen’s Association forged a novel mutual benefits agreement. Completed in October 2018, the agreement offered three main benefits for fishermen: a new fund for infrastructure improvements for the commercial fishing industry, new training and employment for fishermen, and a process for the local fishing industry to help shape wind project design.

With the fishermen on board, the Morro Bay City Council subsequently approved its own community benefits agreement with Castle Wind. The company agreed to hire local residents to create internships and training programs around the wind farm at local schools and universities, to establish a project maintenance and monitoring facility in the Morro Bay harbor, and to promote local businesses.

Both agreements were popular and productive. Indeed, last year, Castle Wind and the fishermen deepened their partnership by creating a “mutual benefits corporation” as a legal vehicle for carrying out future joint projects. The body was modeled after a corporation formed more than two decades ago to protect fishing activities in California from the impacts of transoceanic fiber optic cables.

Alla Weinstein, the Castle Wind CEO who conducted the conversations, said last fall in a statement announcing the corporation: “Our approach has been to acknowledge, as early as possible, that impacts may occur…Castle Wind has created a platform for the developers to mitigate anticipated impacts of offshore wind to the commercial fishing industry without causing stakeholder fatigue.”

But when the auction was held in December, the benefits agreements and the corporation didn’t make any difference. Castle Wind, even with credits, did not win a single lease. Instead, the leases in areas off San Luis Obispo County went to three higher bidders—each of whom bid over $100 million, among them Equinor, a Norwegian state-owned oil company. None had reached agreements with Morro Bay locals, as Castle Wind had.

The auction has raised many questions about the future of climate and community. Federal officials, Castle Wind, and other bidders have been tight-lipped about the result. Locally, city officials and fishermen’s groups have expressed disappointment, and noted pointedly that the winning bidders had not forged agreements and did not have their support.

In Morro Bay, there is still considerable hope that winning bidders will approach the fishermen, the city, and other communities to execute agreements and make partnerships based on those forged with Castle Wind. That hope is based on the widespread view that Castle Wind’s agreements were thoughtful and well-drafted, and stood to benefit everyone—from the company, which wanted the lease, to the city and its fishermen, who sought to create new job and development opportunities for the city.

That hope also reflects political reality. California needs clean energy, but constructing wind farms will take years—and is unlikely to succeed if local communities and their state and federal representatives stand in the way.

Yes, talking takes time, and climate change is an emergency. But in California, if you want to build new projects to save the climate or anything else, you need the wind, and local communities, at your back.

The post Which Way Are the Winds of Renewable Energy Blowing off the West Coast? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

As we work to find a healthier path ahead, we might look to the past. There is a lot to learn from what happened in the 16th and 17th centuries, a time when people broke free from dependence on our original energy source—wood—and started to burn our first fossil fuel—coal—instead. This energy revolution fueled economic capacity and human ingenuity, launching a 300-year-long boom we’re still enjoying today. It’s useful to see how and why the transformation occurred, so that we can see how we can repeat this feat as we transition from fossil fuels back to renewables.

The shift from wood to coal was an unprecedented and world-changing event. From the moment early hominins came down from the trees, they had used wood to make tools such as digging sticks and spears, and to make shelters. Over thousands of years, humans also learned to use it to make fires to ward off predators, keep themselves warm, and cook their food. Eventually they also used wood to prepare charcoal, burning it in furnaces to produce the materials that enabled them to develop civilizations: ceramics such as pottery, bricks, and tiles; the metals bronze and iron; and commodities such as salt, potash, and alum. Wood-based technologies were perfected by the Greeks and Romans in ancient Europe and the Han Chinese in Asia. The cities, temples, and ships these civilizations built were not surpassed for a thousand years after the fall of the Roman Empire—even by the wealthy nation states of Renaissance Europe. Energy supply problems due to humanity’s reliance on wood seem to have ground progress to a halt.

The constraint on growth was not the scarcity of wood itself; after all, forests still covered over 40 percent of the dry land, and wood could be harvested sustainably because forests and coppiced woodland—stands of trees managed by periodically cutting them at their base—regenerate after they are cut down. Instead, it was a problem of logistics. Wood and charcoal are bulky and fragile commodities, and the energy in woodland is thinly spread, stored in harvest-ready trees scattered throughout vast and often rugged areas. This, and the poor roads of the period, made it difficult to transport wood where it was needed during early modern times. Paris could only grow to be the largest city in Europe, with a population of some 400,000, because it lay on the navigable river Seine, downstream of huge areas of coppiced beech which were floated 120 miles down to the city. Energy-intensive industries such as iron-making, pottery, and glass-making were small-scale affairs, located within working woodlands, well away from towns. Output was low in these isolated enterprises, and innovation glacial.

The impasse was broken only when people learned how to use a far more energy-rich and concentrated fuel: coal, rocks composed of preserved plant material that had built up over millions of years.

People had long known about the flammability of the coal that could be dug up in certain parts of the globe, and the Chinese Song dynasty briefly used it to heat their capital, Kaifeng, in the 10th century. However, in Europe it was not until the 16th century that the rising price of wood persuaded entrepreneurs to invest in mines to excavate coal on a large scale. They began mining the easily accessible coal reserves around the coast of northeast England, rolling the coal along wagon ways to the River Tyne and shipping it to industrial sites and ports along the North Sea coast, especially England’s capital, London. London quickly became the largest city in Europe, its population skyrocketing from 200,000 in 1600 to 575,000 in 1700, and it became a magnet for energy-intensive industries and intellectuals, alike. For the first time, scientists, industrialists, and craftsmen rubbed shoulders and learned from each other. The Royal Society, which was founded in 1660, provided a place where leading scientists could meet and exchange ideas. The organization’s curator, Robert Hooke, worked with city craftsmen to create the series of scientific instruments—microscopes, barometers, watches, and sextants—that science needed to progress. Globemaker Joseph Moxon wrote the world’s first DIY manual there, a guide to trades such as printing, carpentry, and metalwork.

Over the first 30 years of its life, the society transformed science from an intellectual diversion of isolated virtuosi to a closely connected body of men searching for objective truth and aiming to improve their mastery of the world. It was a search that culminated in the triumphs of Isaac Newton’s Principia on the one hand, and Thomas Newcomen’s steam engine on the other. Armed with the new knowledge and inventions, a new manufacturing elite revolutionized the industry and infrastructure of Britain, enabling it to fully exploit this cheap but polluting fuel. They replaced wood-fired open fires with coal-fired iron kilns; they learnt to smelt iron with coke instead of charcoal; they built canals and railways to transport coal, raw materials, and finished goods around the country; and they powered their mills and trains with coal-fired steam engines rather than water wheels or horses. The fossil fuel-powered industrial revolution eventually transformed the whole world, giving us 300 years of unprecedented material growth and scientific progress.

But of course, all this had a downside. Our energy use has increased 20-fold since the 16th century, and coal has been joined by other fossil fuels such as oil and gas, releasing more and more carbon dioxide into our atmosphere. Earth’s atmospheric CO2 levels have increased from preindustrial levels of 280 parts per million to over 400 parts per million, causing an enhanced greenhouse effect that has already increased mean global temperatures by over 1°C. If the trend continues, Earth could experience runaway global warming, with devastating consequences. A temperature increase of just two degrees Celsius would raise sea levels by two feet, endangering coastal communities. Changes in climate patterns, including shifting wind and precipitation patterns, could upend ecosystems and agriculture.

There is no use blaming our ancestors. In the 16th century, people had no idea what coal was; many believed it was some sort of subterranean forest that grew underground, just as trees grow on the surface—a view made more plausible because of the huge number of impressions of fossil leaves within the coal. Under the circumstances, coal seemed to be a bounty from God.

We have an obvious solution to remedy the situation: to reverse the process that started in the 16th century and replace fossil fuels once again with renewable energy sources. Unfortunately, we can’t simply return to burning wood, because forests do not grow fast enough to supply our current energy needs. But in one respect we have a great advantage over the industrialists of the 16th and 17th centuries. Thanks to the scientific revolution that the fossil fuel age unleashed, we have a profound understanding of the world around us, and the engineering capability to transform it in record time. And in the last 50 years, scientists and engineers have even developed the technologies we need to power the world with renewable energy: wind turbines and solar panels, the modern equivalents of the leaves of trees, to produce energy; batteries, hydrogen, and compressed air plants, the modern equivalents of the trunks of trees that store energy; and computer-controlled transmission lines—the modern equivalents of foresters and wagoners—to control the supply.

What we have not had until recently, unlike in the 16th century, was an economic incentive to replace fossil fuels. The last time renewables caught people’s attention—during the oil crisis of the 1970s—it proved more economically convenient to keep burning fossil fuels; green proposals were forgotten with the fall in oil prices during the 1980s. But today, our new sources of power, especially wind and solar, have been developed further so they have achieved economies of scale. Renewable energy is beginning to be cheaper than fossil fuels, just as in the 16th century, coal was cheaper than wood. At last there is a financial incentive for businesses to make the necessary investment.

The expensive and difficult part will be to build the infrastructure we will need to produce, transmit, and store the new renewable energy. The coal revolution in Britain demanded the building of new steam pumps to keep water out of their coal mines, new furnaces to use coal in industry, and new canals and railways to transport coal. It was a process that took many decades and was only possible because it was financed by the riches of the largest empire in history. Today’s change will involve even greater engineering challenges and will be even more costly. It will require a truly global collaboration between business and governments.

With today’s technology we can revolutionize our energy economy far faster than our ancestors could. Like the colliers, engineers, and canal builders of the first industrial revolution, we can transform our world—only this time into a new cleaner, more sustainable, and less polluting one. We only have a couple of decades, but if we act fast enough, we can look back on the fossil fuel age as a short, dirty childhood, during which we learned how to work together to look after our planet. If we don’t, we’ll have only ourselves to blame.

The post How the 16th-Century Energy Revolution Can Help Us Exit the Fossil Fuel Age appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.