To the editor: Visitor contributor Dan Esposito is correct: Southern California Fuel Co.’s push for a hydrogen mix dangers locking us into one other pricey fossil-fuel detour (“Blending hydrogen into gas pipelines would enrich utilities and harm Californians,” Feb. 16). It seems like regulators handing a quicker automotive to a driver with a historical past of crashes. After pipeline failures, explosions, methane leaks and the continuing Aliso Canyon disaster, we are actually being requested to belief the identical system with a extra risky gas and billions in new infrastructure.
In the meantime, the Los Angeles Division of Water and Energy is advancing plans to transform the Scattergood plant to burn a hydrogen mix at a projected value of at least $800 million. Inexperienced hydrogen stays extraordinarily costly. Ratepayers will likely be left holding the invoice.
This buildout is proposed near LAX and the Hyperion Water Reclamation Plant, important infrastructure the place security must be paramount. As a substitute of accelerating distributed photo voltaic, storage and digital energy vegetation, leaders are doubling down on centralized combustion.
Scattergood sits by Dockweiler Seaside, closely utilized by working-class households and communities of colour. Emissions would drift east towards Inglewood and Lennox, neighborhoods already overburdened by air pollution.
Hydrogen mixing will not be local weather management. It’s a bailout of stranded gasoline belongings on the public’s expense.
Andrea Leon-Grossmann, Los Angeles
