The debate over the plant comes as the long-struggling nuclear industry sees climate change as a reason for optimism. He continues to support shuttering Diablo Canyon “in the long term.” In a statement, Newsom communications director Erin Mellon didn’t address the question of politics but said the governor is focused on maintaining reliable energy for households and businesses while accelerating state efforts to meet his aggressive goals for reducing carbon pollution. There were two consecutive nights of rolling blackouts affecting hundreds of thousands of residential and business customers. Newsom certainly wants to avoid a repeat of August 2020, when a record heat wave caused a surge in power use for air conditioning that overtaxed the electrical grid. Newsom “is mindful that problems with electric system reliability can become a political liability and he is determined to take all possible actions to avoid any possibility that the lights go out in California.”

The push to keep Diablo Canyon running “is clearly coming from the governor’s office,” said Matthew Freedman of The Utility Reform Network. Newsom often is mentioned as a possible presidential candidate and an attorney for a consumer advocacy group that routinely challenges plant operator Pacific Gas & Electric in rate cases believes “national political ambitions” are at play. Gavin Newsom, a green energy advocate who supported the 2016 agreement calling for the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant to close by 2025 but now is a leading voice to consider a longer operating run. Now environmentalists find themselves at odds with someone they usually see as an ally: Democratic Gov.

LOS ANGELES (AP) - An aggressive push toward renewable energy has run headlong into anxiety over keeping the lights on in California, where the largest utility is considering whether to try to extend the lifespan of the state’s last operating nuclear power plant.Ĭalifornia is the birthplace of the modern environmental movement that for decades has had a fraught relationship with nuclear power, which doesn’t produce carbon pollution like fossil fuels but leaves behind waste that can remain dangerously radioactive for centuries.

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