Before getting to the main topic this week, I wanted to give an update on the Moss Landing battery fire. Is the fire out? What did investigators find? My investigation took on a life of its own.
In my search, I found a webpage from Moss Landing plant-owner Vistra Energy, Moss Landing Fire Update – Everything You Need To Know. Everything? Mmm, I don’t think so. That’s the plant-owner side of the story. Here’s an interview with Erin Brockovich in The Mercury News, dated Sunday, March 9, 2025. Mmm, I don’t think so. This is the no-pander zone in either direction.
I’m just trying to determine if the batteries have stopped burning in seven weeks since the fire torched 300 MW of lithium battery storage. The obvious telltale of truth suppression is the lack of news. For example, what about the Blackhawk-CRJ collision near Regan National Airport on February 6, 2025? Searching for the cause of that collision, the latest news I find is from February 14, 2025, indicating the Blackhawk’s altimeter may have malfunctioned. Nothing else has been learned for almost a month? A month later, there has to be more news. Where is our worthless press?
Recent News on The Moss Landing Battery Fire
American Energy Society referenced a Massachusetts Institute of Technology article, dated February 13, 2025 (four weeks after the fire), that cleanup crews were still prohibited from going inside the plant to do a visual inspection. Nothing to see here! Move along, kids.
Five weeks “after” the fire, Lookout Santa Cruz, a digital newspaper, reported the headline, “Moss Landing battery plant fire reignites, but is under control, fire chief says.” The Fire Chief reported flames that broke out seven weeks after the big fire (Figure 1) had disappeared, and only [toxic] smoke was present, and it was in an area that already burned.
How is this ok? Good God, Y’all.
Figure 1 Lithium-Ion Batteries Burning at Scale
Perils in Lithium-Ion Battery Firefighting
How do you fight a lithium-ion battery fire?
- Water? No! Water and lithium-ion battery fires can produce large volumes of highly toxic hydrogen fluoride
- Suffocate the fire with magic foam or a blanket? Nope. Lithium-ion battery materials decompose to produce oxygen when they burn. I.e., they are self-oxidizing.
These fires are like one of the Terminator or Alien films where the monster’s destruction creates more monsters or demons.
A Power Plant Fire, Yawn
Per the American Energy Society article, “This isn’t the first time that batteries at Moss Landing have caught fire-there have been several incidents at the plant since it opened.” Did someone say, “Good God?”
The muteness is deafening, and the reason is noted in the American Energy Society article, “The lawsuit, and Brockovich’s involvement in particular, raises a point worth recognizing: Technologies that help us address climate change still have the potential to cause harm, and taking that seriously is crucial.”
But they’re not “taking that seriously,” as Canary Media’s headline indicates, “Why we don’t need to worry too much about the latest grid battery fire.” They say, “Safety standards and industry practices have improved considerably since construction of the Moss Landing battery plant that recently burned up in California.”
What do I call that? One strike. You blow that, and all credibility is destroyed.
Externalities In Your Grill
Carbon dioxide is considered an externality spewed by the utility industry, and anyone who stays warm in winter, cool in summer, locomotes down the highway, flies through wild blue yonder, buys food and goods at a local store, or shops Amazon.com.
Lithium-ion batteries, whether in E-Bikes, EVs, or utility-scale storage facilities, spew hydrogen fluoride gas, which flows freely through nearby neighborhoods and apartment dwellers. While breathing soot and particulate from dirty diesel engines[1] in the inner city can result in asthma, hydrogen fluoride can be much more acutely destructive or lethal.
When concentrated, as with the Moss Landing fire, they cause “elevated levels of metals including cobalt, nickel, copper, and manganese in the soil around the plant,” which are also dangerous externalities.
Figure 2 Moss Landing Externalities[2]
There are no externality-free sources of electricity. The American Energy Society states, “Low-carbon energy sources like wind, solar, and batteries don’t add to the global problem of climate change. But many of these projects are industrial sites, and their effects can still be felt by local communities, especially when things go wrong as they did in the Moss Landing fire.”
Not mentioned are out-of-site, out-of-mind externalities of child labor and dangerous mining conditions in third-world countries or strip-mining rain forests for the raw ingredients in these batteries. The world’s top producer of cobalt, the Democratic Republic of Congo, produces over 3.5X as much cobalt as the next nine countries combined. As of February 19, 2025, The Investing News Network reported, “cobalt mining in the DRC is plagued by human rights abuses and child labor due to widespread unregulated artisanal mining.”
China, the world’s dominant solar panel producer, is the world’s most prolific and dominant carbon dioxide emitter.
Figure 3 Carbon Dioxide Emitting Hall of Shame
So, I must ask, is the cost of child labor, leveled rainforests, and carbon emissions from solar panel manufacturing factored into the levelized cost of solar and battery storage?
I have a cleaner alternative coming next week. Gee, what would that be, Jeff? Get some rest and tune in then!
[1] Let me be clear – not all diesel engines are dirty.
[2] American Energy Society https://energytoday.energysociety.org/utility-scale-battery-storage-one-step-forward-two-steps-back.html
