Speaker 1: Welcome back to Drill. I'm Amy Westervelt. Today we're going
Speaker 1: to hear from a reporter I had on during our
Speaker 1: last season, Miranda Green from Floodlight, about a news story
Speaker 1: she's got out right now once again about utilities and
Speaker 1: air pollution and the push to maintain dominance for natural gas.
Speaker 1: Miranda uncovered recently that a Los Angeles area air board
Speaker 1: has spent millions to subsidize and promote gas, despite the
Speaker 1: fact that as an air board it's tasked with cleaning
Speaker 1: up air pollution, which gas definitely contributes to. There's a
Speaker 1: utility angle here too, and lots of interesting details that
Speaker 1: Miranda will walk us through. That conversation is coming up
Speaker 1: right after this quick break. Tell me about how this
Speaker 1: story came about.
Speaker 2: Well, Los Angeles, which happens to be where I live,
Speaker 2: is a community that is known for a lot of
Speaker 2: great things. You know, we have wonderful beaches, we have
Speaker 2: great sunshine. We're the Golden State. But when you start
Speaker 2: looking into the data and the details about the air
Speaker 2: pollution in you actually realize that there's some things that
Speaker 2: are really not that golden about it. LA actually has
Speaker 2: the worst smog pollution of any city in the United States,
Speaker 2: which means that the air pollution around us in some
Speaker 2: days you can't see the mountains that you're next to,
Speaker 2: and also means that the air that you're breathing when
Speaker 2: you're out on those runs on the beaches is not
Speaker 2: very good for you. And it's something that local regulators
Speaker 2: and officials have been aware of. There have been decades
Speaker 2: where it's gotten better, in decades where it's gotten worse,
Speaker 2: but it has still remains a major issue in the state,
Speaker 2: despite kind of the messaging that we hear that California
Speaker 2: is kind of on this environmental kick and it's kind
Speaker 2: of the leader. And so I wanted to kind of
Speaker 2: look into that disparity of how California can both claim
Speaker 2: to be kind of at the cutting edge of environmentalism
Speaker 2: but still have such bad pollution that communities that are
Speaker 2: around some of these areas where the pollution is coming from,
Speaker 2: around the ports of Los Angeles, around where some of
Speaker 2: this oil and gas drilling is still occurring, how that
Speaker 2: is still happening, and what's being done about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I don't want to give too much away
Speaker 3: because I want you to tell us more about it,
Speaker 3: but it sounds like a lot of the ways that
Speaker 3: some of the local and state governments are trying to
Speaker 3: get at this are not necessarily solving the problem.
Speaker 4: Yes, and that is, you know, kind of been the
Speaker 4: issue here.
Speaker 2: There's always two sides to every debate, and despite California
Speaker 2: being a largely blue state, there's still a lot of
Speaker 2: arguments and disjointed feelings about how to tackle this issue.
Speaker 2: One of the biggest issues here is that La County
Speaker 2: is one of two airgistricts in the US, both of
Speaker 2: them actually in California, that have never met federal OZEM
Speaker 2: standards that were established back in nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: So they have never been able to just meet even
Speaker 2: basic levels of standards for osen regulations.
Speaker 4: That's staggering.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: And one of the biggest issues is transportation. It's one
Speaker 2: of the biggest sources of pollution and as you can imagine,
Speaker 2: knowing Los Angeles, one of the biggest hurdles. And so
Speaker 2: the argument and kind of the debate here has been
Speaker 2: around what do we do about the vehicles that both
Speaker 2: people are driving, but also the big rig trucks, the
Speaker 2: heavy duty trucks that are responsible.
Speaker 4: You're bringing all.
Speaker 2: The things from the port exactly, and so that has
Speaker 2: kind of been an ongoing debate for decades. I'm sure
Speaker 2: a lot of us remember kind of the debates that
Speaker 2: were happening underneath the bomb And administration when we had
Speaker 2: with arguments that climate change had to be kind of
Speaker 2: a there had to be a transition fuel, and this
Speaker 2: idea that natural gas could be it. We can move
Speaker 2: away from dirty coal, we can move away from dirty diesel,
Speaker 2: and we could move towards a cleaner burning natural gas.
Speaker 2: That is still a concept that I think is still
Speaker 2: heavily being held onto here in California, despite the fact
Speaker 2: that there's been obviously huge leaps and bounds in electric
Speaker 2: vehicles and that there have been calls from a lot
Speaker 2: of people in these communities that there needs to be
Speaker 2: more investment in that area. And that's kind of where
Speaker 2: my reporting starts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this is interesting because it definitely dovetails with
Speaker 3: the reporting you talked to me about a few months ago,
Speaker 3: where there was this effort at the ports of Los
Speaker 3: Angeles and Long Beach to deal with this problem and
Speaker 3: this decision right about are we going to go with
Speaker 3: natural gas powered trucks or electric? But this seems like
Speaker 3: an issue throughout the region that entities are grappling with.
Speaker 3: So what did you find out about how folks are
Speaker 3: looking at this issue.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so one of the things that I realized and
Speaker 2: I wanted to look at again is where is the
Speaker 2: state investing in terms of this source, in terms of
Speaker 2: how to fix this pollution issue. And you know, California
Speaker 2: is a huge state. It has its Air and Resources Board,
Speaker 2: which is kind of an overarching agency, and within that agency,
Speaker 2: underneath it has a lot of local air boards that
Speaker 2: are county wide, and California runs what are known as
Speaker 2: incentive programs, so it takes federal and state dollars. Some
Speaker 2: of the funds are appropriated through the legislature. Some of
Speaker 2: the funds come from when you go to get your ideas,
Speaker 2: you have to pay a fee, and those fees go
Speaker 2: towards these incentive programs, which are largely meant to help
Speaker 2: people invest in cleaner vehicles. And I dove into the
Speaker 2: details there to see, Okay, so what are these cleaner
Speaker 2: vehicles that are being invested in? And I found that
Speaker 2: by and large, the majority of the spending was still
Speaker 2: going towards gas and so, you know, the points of
Speaker 2: these programs are to kind of incentivize both local businesses
Speaker 2: and larger businesses to not just buy the cheapest option
Speaker 2: when it comes to transportation, so ATVs as well as
Speaker 2: cargo trucks as well as big rig trucks to kind
Speaker 2: of invest in not the cheapest but the cleanest, and
Speaker 2: so they would give them money to then buy cleaner options.
Speaker 2: And while obviously electric vehicles are an option here, the
Speaker 2: majority of that is still going towards, you know, helping
Speaker 2: them buy either diesel or natural gas vehicles instead.
Speaker 3: Can you explain a little bit what are the companies
Speaker 3: that these agencies are overseeing and what are the decisions
Speaker 3: that those companies are having to make here in terms
Speaker 3: of vehicle choices.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I can walk you through it.
Speaker 2: So the South Coast Air Quality Management District, which oversees,
Speaker 2: you know, most of Los Angeles County and neighboring counties,
Speaker 2: it basically is we'reonsible for doling out some of this
Speaker 2: grant funding that is determined on the state level, So
Speaker 2: they get hundreds of thousands of dollars annually that it
Speaker 2: can use, and local businesses can apply, so both you know,
Speaker 2: local individuals who run small businesses or big companies can
Speaker 2: apply for some of this funding, and the local air
Speaker 2: quality agency essentially gets to decide, you know, green light
Speaker 2: whether they're going to give it to them or not.
Speaker 2: And they have people figuring out where to give that
Speaker 2: money to where they should be investing that money. And
Speaker 2: you know, that money goes towards anything from replacing older
Speaker 2: diesel vehicles to newer versions, or replacing them with natural
Speaker 2: gas vehicles, or replacing them with electric vehicles. And that
Speaker 2: can include ships as well. That could include trucks, that
Speaker 2: can include investing in natural gas trams on here for Disneyland.
Speaker 2: So it kind of runs the gamut, but at the
Speaker 2: end of the day, the agency is the one responsible
Speaker 2: for determining who gets that fund.
Speaker 3: That's super interesting. What did you find out about in
Speaker 3: terms of lobbying these folks on gas? How has the
Speaker 3: gas industry or local utilities or local companies that sell
Speaker 3: gas for vehicles, have they been trying to kind of
Speaker 3: sway those decisions in the favor of gas.
Speaker 2: You know, what I found within the course of this
Speaker 2: reporting is that there's a lot of really questionable and
Speaker 2: kind of circumspect crossover between the agency and the companies
Speaker 2: that it's overseeing.
Speaker 4: And supposed to be regulating.
Speaker 2: One of the kind of interesting parts about this in
Speaker 2: this reporting I found is that there were hundreds of
Speaker 2: thousands of dollars of the last couple of years invested
Speaker 2: in a pro gas website. Its entire purpose is to
Speaker 2: kind of spread the benefits of what natural gas is.
Speaker 2: So this is the South Coast Air Quality Management District,
Speaker 2: which oversees Los Angeles, San Bernardino Counties, Orange Counties, Rivers.
Speaker 2: This group is supposed to be regulating air pollution. And again,
Speaker 2: this is the community that has never met federal ozone standards,
Speaker 2: has for years, since two thousand and two, been investing
Speaker 2: in this pro gas website called California Natural Gas Vehicle Partnership,
Speaker 2: and it has been you know, spending money on dues
Speaker 2: for this website and helping them run basically community outreach
Speaker 2: and marketing. And some of those other groups that are
Speaker 2: invested in this website are you know, some of the
Speaker 2: oil and gas companies that are responsible for the emissions
Speaker 2: that are being regulated. So I'm talking so cal Gas here,
Speaker 2: and so that was a pretty eye opening thing for
Speaker 2: me to see.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally. You know what this reminds me of too,
Speaker 3: is of energy efficiency programs, where so cal Gas was
Speaker 3: like getting money from the agency to sell its customers
Speaker 3: on energy efficiency but using it to do the Yep.
Speaker 4: Yeah, can you talk a.
Speaker 3: Little bit about because I know the argu is always that, well,
Speaker 3: natural gas does burn cleaner than diesel. That's true, Sure,
Speaker 3: but how much are we talking here and how much
Speaker 3: more benefit would electric vehicles give?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, so, there is a legitimate argument to
Speaker 2: be made about the fact that natural gas does burn
Speaker 2: cleaner than diesel. But the argument that I think most
Speaker 2: people are starting to face at this point is why
Speaker 2: invest in natural gas when you have the option of
Speaker 2: a much cleaner investment, which is electric vehicles. And electric vehicles,
Speaker 2: you know, obviously run off of whatever that electricity is
Speaker 2: that they're plugged into, so it's a mix. It does
Speaker 2: include gas, it could include some coal, But as the
Speaker 2: electric grid gets cleaner, that energy is going to be cleaner,
Speaker 2: So those vehicles are going to be running off of
Speaker 2: a much cleaner mix of energy than a natural gas
Speaker 2: vehicle on its own. The kind of criticism argument against
Speaker 2: that is that, you know, electric vehicles are expensive, they're
Speaker 2: newer technology. It takes longer for them to because it's
Speaker 2: about demand, and so they're not as readily available. So,
Speaker 2: you know, some of the members of the Air Quality Board,
Speaker 2: you know, continue to say natural gas has to be
Speaker 2: part of the solution because it's cheaper. You know, more
Speaker 2: of the incentive money can be spent on buying more
Speaker 2: natural vehicle trucks than electric vehicle trucks. But if you
Speaker 2: look at the other side of the coin, which is
Speaker 2: what the critics are saying, is these incentive programs are
Speaker 2: essentially created to incentivize people to buy something they wouldn't
Speaker 2: buy on their own, to invest in a technology that
Speaker 2: is better than the status quo because the community is
Speaker 2: so out of attainment when it comes to ozone levels.
Speaker 2: And so if we're looking at an area that is
Speaker 2: already failing to meet federal ozone standards, community members that
Speaker 2: are having trouble breathing, that are having issues with asthma,
Speaker 2: the question is why is there still an in something
Speaker 2: like natural gas technology and new or diesel technology one
Speaker 2: there's a better, cleaner solution, even if that means there
Speaker 2: might be fewer of them, even that that means it
Speaker 2: might take more time. This idea of their needing to
Speaker 2: be this kind of transition. You know, technology in between
Speaker 2: just slows down the path towards all clean vehicles in
Speaker 2: the future.
Speaker 3: To be clear, when we're talking about air pollution and
Speaker 3: health impacts, we're talking about you know, asthma and respiratory issues,
Speaker 3: but we're also talking about mortality. There's a pretty direct line,
Speaker 3: and you know about thirty years worth of peer reviewed
Speaker 3: research now that connects premature death with exposure to particular matter,
Speaker 3: which is what people are being exposed to here. So
Speaker 3: it's not just like, oh, well, you know people are
Speaker 3: coughing a little bit more. There's real serious impacts here.
Speaker 3: I think kids in utero who are exposed to particular
Speaker 3: that matter have quite a few respiratory and even cardiac
Speaker 3: issues as well. So you know, we've known this for
Speaker 3: a long time. And yes, maybe ten years ago, you know,
Speaker 3: electric vehicles were not so readily available, But it does
Speaker 3: seem like it's harder to make that argument now. So
Speaker 3: tell me about the California Natural Gas Vehicle partnership because
Speaker 3: this jumped out at me in your story. What is
Speaker 3: it and what do they do and how does it
Speaker 3: play a role in all of this?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you know, the California Natural Gas Vehicle Partnership,
Speaker 2: which is the kind of progas website and partnership that
Speaker 2: South Coast has been kind of investing in, was actually
Speaker 2: started in two thousand and two by South Coast then
Speaker 2: chaired Normal Glover. She was finishing up her tenure at
Speaker 2: the Air Agency and created this and then went on
Speaker 2: to lead it as their chairman, which is kind of
Speaker 2: an interesting, you know, career path. And then two years
Speaker 2: after that she started her own related consulting firm which
Speaker 2: was basically to kind of talk about the merits of
Speaker 2: gas as a clean energy alternative. And this was back
Speaker 2: in two thousand and two. You know, since then, perspectives
Speaker 2: on gas have obviously changed, but the Air Quality Board
Speaker 2: South Coast has still continued to invest.
Speaker 4: So South Coast has been a do paying member.
Speaker 2: It has been paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to
Speaker 2: this website, and in part that money has gone towards
Speaker 2: hiring a consulting firm which runs the website, which sends
Speaker 2: out marketing which you know, puts together its meetings, and
Speaker 2: this partnership has a lot of other clients. A lot
Speaker 2: of those other clients include clean energy fuels and sokel
Speaker 2: Gas and the utility, PG and E. And you know,
Speaker 2: these companies have obviously a vested interest in figuring out
Speaker 2: what the future of gas is in California, and so
Speaker 2: they are also due paying partners. There's you know, the
Speaker 2: connections here and the overlap are just rather striking. And
Speaker 2: what's kind of interesting here is that as I was
Speaker 2: doing this reporting in February, South Coast just kind of
Speaker 2: out of the blue moved to distance itself from the partnership.
Speaker 2: The board voted to turn the partnership into a nonprofit
Speaker 2: and push it out of being anything within its purview,
Speaker 2: transfer all of the remaining money over to this kind
Speaker 2: of new nonprofit model. And I asked them, I said,
Speaker 2: you know what prompted this, and essentially I was just
Speaker 2: told that it was to relieve the agency and its
Speaker 2: staff of the financial and administrative responsibilities related to the partnership.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: But South Coast is still going to remain a do
Speaker 2: paying member, so it'll still be connected.
Speaker 3: Wow. I mean that just seems like such a clear
Speaker 3: conflict of interest there.
Speaker 2: You know, I had this pointed out to me by
Speaker 2: a couple people, and I definitely raised my eyebrows looking
Speaker 2: at it. I think that the fact that the agency
Speaker 2: has decided to itself from the website is indicative that
Speaker 2: they probably have had some people raise concerns about it too.
Speaker 2: But there are other things that I saw looking at
Speaker 2: the kind of looking at the budget, looking at what
Speaker 2: the air Board has been investing in over the last
Speaker 2: you know, decade.
Speaker 4: Has been Those are things that are still continuing.
Speaker 2: What's interesting is that the air Board also has directly
Speaker 2: been paying the same consulting group to let South Coast
Speaker 2: be co sponsor and sponsor of different symposiums. So, you know,
Speaker 2: some of the money that South Coast has paid to
Speaker 2: this consulting firm includes eighty thousand dollars to co sponsor
Speaker 2: the twenty twenty and twenty twenty one Renewable Gas three
Speaker 2: sixty symposium and host a webinar in conjunction with it.
Speaker 3: Even just to be that sort of publicly supportive of
Speaker 3: renewable gas is an interesting choice, I would.
Speaker 4: Say, yeah.
Speaker 2: And you know, I asked them, I said, have you know,
Speaker 2: for example, with the website, you know, do you invest
Speaker 2: in an electric vehicle website of similar you know origin,
Speaker 2: doing similar messaging And the answer was no. So, you know,
Speaker 2: these have just been interesting choices made. Looking at this
Speaker 2: incentive money being used towards all these different programs, it
Speaker 2: gets to really the heart of the debate that I
Speaker 2: think the whole country is facing. But you know, still
Speaker 2: California is facing two, which is is it time to
Speaker 2: step away from gas?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: If it's a bridge, at what point do we get
Speaker 3: off that bridge?
Speaker 4: Exactly?
Speaker 2: When are we ready to jump off that bridge? But
Speaker 2: looking at these numbers, we're not. You know, California is
Speaker 2: not very close one of the programs that receives a
Speaker 2: lot of this money. One of the staffers mentioned in
Speaker 2: a board meeting earlier this year that just seventeen percent
Speaker 2: of the total one hundred and forty one million dollars
Speaker 2: in grants that the board approved just for this year
Speaker 2: for twenty twenty two, only seventeen percent are going towards
Speaker 2: purchasing true zero technologies.
Speaker 3: Wow. And I know that the argument continues to be, oh,
Speaker 3: all electric isn't available yet. Did you find that to
Speaker 3: be true or no?
Speaker 4: Not at all?
Speaker 2: You know, that's a that's an argument that you hear
Speaker 2: over and over again, and I've always had a really
Speaker 2: hard time finding hard data yeah to back that. You know,
Speaker 2: I've heard a lot of anecdotal stories about how, yes,
Speaker 2: we've put in orders and it's going to take seven
Speaker 2: months for it to come, or you know, I've seen
Speaker 2: the breakdown that, yes, electric trucks are obviously more expensive
Speaker 2: than natural gas, but you know, market is driven by demand,
Speaker 2: so you know, if there's a lot of investment in
Speaker 2: truck technology and electric vehicle technology, I imagine that there'd
Speaker 2: be more readily available.
Speaker 4: You know, it's kind of you.
Speaker 3: Know, the chicken and egg kind of thing.
Speaker 2: Build it, they will come, which will come first? And
Speaker 2: that's kind of where the debate, the crooks of the
Speaker 2: debate always lies as, oh, but this technology is readily
Speaker 2: available now. Well, you know, the critics argue, you know,
Speaker 2: you might only be able to switch you know, six
Speaker 2: trucks versus fifty trucks to electric vehicles because they are
Speaker 2: more expensive. But that's a longer term investment because you
Speaker 2: won't have to then switch those you know, natural gas
Speaker 2: trucks to EV's five years down the line.
Speaker 3: Right, right, Yeah. Is there anything that we didn't talk
Speaker 3: about that you want to make sure to kind of
Speaker 3: draw people's attention to in this story?
Speaker 2: You know, I will just say that it's really hard
Speaker 2: to kind of show the picture of the pollution in California,
Speaker 2: because it's a complicated topic and I don't think people
Speaker 2: realize that California, known for all of its great nature,
Speaker 2: is still really really struggling with this issue, and it
Speaker 2: has been really politically divisive. You know, some of these
Speaker 2: these are issues that have been coming up in the
Speaker 2: local mirror race and you know, there have been a
Speaker 2: lot of criticism from local groups about how this airboard
Speaker 2: has been handling this over the years and why they
Speaker 2: have not shifted their focus towards electric.
Speaker 4: Vehicles, and there's been some change.
Speaker 2: There were groups that targeted the La City Council member
Speaker 2: to Busquno for voting against some of these regulations on refineries.
Speaker 2: You know, he was the chairman of the South Coast
Speaker 2: and a lot of criticism against him, and he actually
Speaker 2: just recently stepped down to run for mayor of Los Angeles.
Speaker 4: He dropped recently.
Speaker 2: But you know, there's a pipeline of these individuals making
Speaker 2: these decisions going on to bigger offices in California, but
Speaker 2: still holding the messaging that natural gas and needs to
Speaker 2: be part of the transition.
Speaker 3: That's it for this week. Thanks for listening and we'll
Speaker 3: see you next time.