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