Category: Energy

From Voice of San Diego / Oct. 23, 2026

Ever since we broke the news that a huge data center might be built in downtown San Diego, local Democrats have been insisting its time to pump the breaks.

Thursday morning, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria posted a photo of himself signing an executive order that temporarily bans data centers on X.

“San Diego is putting clear rules in place before we allow data centers in our city,” he wrote.

San Diego Councilmembers Sean Elo-Rivera, Joe LaCava and Kent Lee gathered outside City Hall later that day announcing the proposal of a new city law that would place requirements on data centers built under their jurisdiction.

By Alysse Dodge / Fox5 – Yahoo News / October 22, 2026 

El Niño’s impacts are already being felt across the nation, including elevated sea levels and coastal flooding.

For example, Tropical Storm Rachel caused surf to overtop and breach the bulkhead protecting the Long Beach Peninsula on the weekend of October 11-12, collapsing part of one of the state’s oldest boardwalks and leaving eight buildings red-tagged as unsafe. The same storm severely flooded 15-20 blocks of Newport Beach’s Balboa Peninsula, prompting a local emergency declaration.

The East Coast is also being affected by the 2026-2027 El Niño, which the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration says has an 83% chance of being the strongest ever on record. New Jersey and New England coastal communities were flooded by a powerful nor’easter at the end of September.

After storms like these, the response is typically the same — rocks, sandbags and concrete are put on the beach under emergency permits. However, in most states, nothing ensures they ever come off.

The Surfrider Foundation released its annual State of the Beach report on Monday, which focuses on the negative impacts of emergency shoreline armoring.

Once a hard structure is in place, the beach is pinned in place, upland sand replenishment is cut off and erosion accelerates on neighboring properties, which creates a need for more armoring. In some states, temporary structures become permanent without any new permit.

By Debbie L. Sklar / Special to the OB Rag

Before San Diego had satellites, cellphones, or the internet, the Navy was sending messages across the Pacific from a small wireless station high on Point Loma.

The station used a Massie-type spark transmitter — primitive by modern standards but part of a revolutionary technology that allowed ships and shore stations to communicate without wires. It was placed in service on May 12, 1906.

Getting the equipment to Point Loma was an undertaking. According to the Naval History and Heritage Command, the transmitter was unloaded at San Diego’s Santa Fe wharf and hauled up the peninsula by horse-drawn wagon. The journey took nine hours, and the equipment was installed in a small building overlooking the ocean.

The station initially used the call sign TM. It was later assigned NPL, a call sign that remains associated with the Navy’s San Diego radio operations.

The new station helped extend the Navy’s communications network along the West Coast. Wireless allowed operators to exchange messages with ships at sea, reaching far beyond the limits of ordinary wired communications.

By Debbie L. Sklar / Special to the OB Rag

In 1855, a group of San Diegans began prospecting for coal on Point Loma.

The project was an ambitious one. The San Diego Coal Co. hoped to develop the deposit into a local source of fuel and a profitable business for its investors. A local coal supply also could have helped San Diego compete as a coaling station for steamships and potentially benefit from future railroad development.

The men behind the venture were associated with San Diego’s small Mormon community. Among them was Ephraim Green, a former member of the Mormon Battalion who later said he had noticed coal on Point Loma before leaving San Diego in 1847.

The story has acquired a mythology of its own. One version says the Mormon prospectors were acting on a “revelation” that coal could be found there. But the historical record tells a more complicated story.

Reports of possible coal deposits on Point Loma dated to at least 1849. In 1855, Green returned to California and told members of the Mormon colony at San Bernardino about the coal he remembered seeing on Point Loma. He eventually led interested men to the site.

The prospecting soon became a formal business.

The San Diego Coal Co. was formed in November 1855 by Green, H.C. Ladd, George Warren Sirrine and Seth Benjamin Tanner.

by Ernie McCray

I sat the other night
squirming in my seat
as a woman,
Tina Cordova,
a co-founder and executive director
of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium,
spoke about our country’s neglect
in respect
to protecting
people who suffered the effects
of the “Trinity Nuclear Test”
in New Mexico,
how since that day
in July, 1945,

A group of eight or ten of us

By Angelo Haynes

Activists from across San Diego and Riverside counties appeared this week at the county administrative building for a hearing on the Golden Pacific Power Link Project, a new proposed power line that would cross through San Diego County Districts 2 & 5. The project is planned to be a 500-kilovolt electric transmission line that would necessitate a new substation named “North of SONGS” (San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station)  to be built bordering Camp Pendleton in Orange county.

The proposed power lines would be suspended on towers that would be 200 feet tall, or 20 stories, starting with an existing substation near the southern border, south of the 8 in Imperial Valley. The total length of the line would span between 135-145 miles long and would cross through many sensitive habitats and established communities in north and east counties.

SDG&E states that the line is needed to strengthen the regional power network and maintain power effectiveness in compliance with future policy goals of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) and the Calif Independent System Operator (CAISO). The CAISO is an independent transmission planning authority that manages the flow of electricity across 80% of California’s grid in addition to a part of Nevada’s grid.

Feds Want to Begin ‘Review’ of How California Manages Our Coast

By Tammy Murga / KPBS / August 11, 2026

Public hearings this week could influence the future of oil production, rocket launches and other federal industrial projects off California’s coast.

The Trump administration is evaluating the state’s Coastal Commission and other coastal agencies. Depending on the outcome, the state could lose its authority to review and regulate projects that involve the coastline.

Coastal leaders and environmentalists across California, including San Diego County, said the results of the federal government’s new review are already predetermined.

“The current federal administration is behaving in an unprecedented way, and they are very excited to advance offshore oil drilling and other types of projects off the California coast,” said Jennifer Savage, the Surfrider Foundation’s California policy manager.

A routine review that the Biden administration largely completed last year showed favorability with the agencies managing the coast, she said.

In May, however, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said California “has repeatedly and unfoundedly obstructed spaceport development in bad faith.”

Spaceport development could include construction of infrastructure for spacecraft to launch and land. The Coastal Commission had rejected a request last year from the U.S. Space Force to increase SpaceX rocket launches off California’s coast due to concerns over beach closures and environmental and noise impacts.

By Blanca Begert / LA Times / July 31, 2026

California hit a major milestone in May, generating more than half its electricity from the sun in what is believed to be a global first, according to an analysis of federal data.

“California has had a wealth of solar growth in the last five years,” said Abby Lestina, an analyst at Grid Status, a group that tracks electricity supply and demand in U.S. power markets but was not involved with the analysis. “It makes sense that they would reach this goal.”

It’s the first time a large-scale power system is known to have surpassed 50% solar for an entire month.

It’s also the second significant power record set by the state recently. For the first five months of 2026, California made more electricity from solar than from natural gas, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Burning natural gas has long been the dominant source of electricity in the state. This could be the first year that solar beats gas in California’s power mix.

California has been trending in this direction for years, but the boom in new battery storage around the state allows it to save solar power when it’s overabundant and use it when the sun goes down.

Two things happened on last Thursday, August 6th, that affect you and your utility bill.

First, Sempra — the company that owns SDG&E — released its earnings report for the second quarter of 2026, from April thru June, and revealed it made nearly $800 million, a significant increase from the $460 million it earned during the same period last year. The earnings are Sempra’s consolidated profit across California, Texas and infrastructure businesses. SDG&) is a regulated subsidiary and owned utility of Sempra.  SDG&E provides energy for 3.7 million people across San Diego and Southern Orange County.

While Sempra stock holders are reaping it in, San Diego utility customers are having a difficult time paying  their bills. A March 2026 report from the Public Advocates Office at the California Public Utilities Commission found that nearly one in five San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) customers is behind on their bills. The average past due balance for these customers is around $500, reports CBS8.

By Cathy Bussewitz / Associated Press PBS News / July 31, 2026

American oil and gas giants raked in massive spring profits while fighting between Iran and the U.S. impeded petroleum shipments and consumers around the world paid more for fuel and confronted shortages.

The conflict, now in its sixth month, halted most shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway that previously served as a delivery route for a fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas. With global supplies constrained, prices for Brent crude, the international standard, soared from about $70 to above $100 a barrel for much of March, April and May, and at one point reached $126.

The money that oil companies accrued between the beginning of April and the end of June could receive extra scrutiny this year. Gasoline, diesel and jet fuel prices climbed sharply during that period, increasing costs for drivers and airline passengers. Supplies ran low in some countries, leading to sporadic fuel rationing in Australia and government office closures in Nepal and Sri Lanka.

Exxon Mobil on Friday reported that its second quarter profits doubled to $14.53 billion, boosted by record diesel production. The oil giant, based in Spring, Texas, brought in $116.02 billion in revenue, up 42%.

Chevron, based in Houston, nearly quadrupled its profits to $12.07 billion and revenue jumped 56% to $70.06 billion.

Six of Europe’s largest oil companies posted combined first-quarter profits of $22 billion, more than 40% higher than last year.