AES power plant in Redondo Beach retired; redevelopment hangs in the future
Redondo Beach has just seen a long-awaited new year’s resolution fulfilled.
The AES Redondo Beach power plant is no longer producing energy for the Southland. The AES Corporation decommissioned the generating station, which has operated for more than 100 years under various owners, on Sunday, Dec. 31 — something for which the city has spent decades lobbying.
It could still be quite a while, however, until the facility comes down and anything new happens on the 50-acre piece of land.
AES announced earlier this year that it’d stop using the Redondo Beach site at the end of the year. The plant ran on an as-needed basis, sending power throughout the state when demand called for it.
“It took us over 20 years,” Mayor Bill Brand said in a recent Facebook post.
The city celebrated the shutdown on Sunday afternoon — New Year’s Eve — with a ceremonial flip of a switch, symbolizing the plant never having to be turned on again.
“The retirement of the AES power plant,” the city said in a recent press release, “represents a significant step towards a more sustainable and environmentally friendly future for Redondo Beach, and the entire Santa Monica Bay.”
But the future of the space depends on when it’s owner, Leo Pustilnikov, gets an OK from the city to redevelop it into what he wants.
Pustilnikov, who bought the site in 2020, proposed in 2022 to build a massive mixed-use residential and commercial building in the power plant’s place. Redondo Beach, however, deemed the application incomplete and the developer filed a lawsuit to get the court to order the city to process the application.
The lawsuit, Pustilnikov said, will go to trial in March. He said he hopes to start redeveloping the power plant building sometime in 2024.
Besides being currently tied up with the city, AES’ lease precludes Pustilnikov from doing anything at the site for another six months or so, he added.
“AES is proud to have been part of this historic effort to support the state’s grid reliability needs and looks forward to partnering on future renewables opportunities in the state,” an AES spokesperson said ahead of the decommissioning. “AES will work with the owners, the City of Redondo Beach and applicable authorities to ensure a smooth property transition in 2024.”
All of the state’s ocean-cooled, gas-fired power generators were scheduled to close at the end of 2020. The State Water Resources Control Board made that decision in 2010 because of the damage to marine life when seawater is sucked into the plants.
But after rolling blackouts in summer 2020, energy analysts predicted future supply shortfalls as a result of climate change-induced heat waves and the comparatively slow pace of developing clean energy. So regulators then approved extending the life of old generators in Huntington Beach, Long Beach, Oxnard and Redondo Beach through the end of 2023.
The Water Control Board then voted in August to keep the Oxnard’s Ormond Beach Generating Station, Long Beach’s AES Alamitos and the AES Huntington Beach plants open through 2026 so they can serve as a backup source of power during emergencies.
Such emergencies could include large blackout events that are triggered when too many people use their air conditioning units at the same time, such as during a heat wave.
But in Redondo Beach, the AES plant can no longer come to the rescue. When announcing the plant’s closure, however, AES said the Redondo facility was no longer needed.
It’s still to be seen, though, what the site will ultimately look like once it’s redeveloped — and when that will happen.
“No question, the closing of the power plant is an historic event,” Brand said ahead of the decommissioning.
Jim Light, a longtime Redondo Beach environmental activist who has opposed the plant’s operation for decades, echoed that, saying before the shutdown that he’s elated to finally see “that thing” go permanently offline. It’s the fruit of the years many activists have put into the issue, he added.
“When it runs today, it is very polluting and it also kills a lot of marine life,” Light said. By shutting the plant down, “we’re saving ocean marine life and we’re stopping air pollution in Redondo Beach.”
As for a 100-foot mural of migrating gray whales painted by the Wyland Foundation on an outside wall of the building, Pustilnikov said, it will come down as soon as he regains control of the site from his tenant, AES.
Wyland Foundation President Steve Creech, meanwhile, said recently that he hopes the mural will be saved, as it has become an iconic fixture in the South Bay since its creation in 1991.
The mural can be preserved in many ways, Creech said, including being disassembled and reassembled elsewhere, or made into tiles to be put on the future development.
“I think everybody was hoping they would repurpose a portion of the mural in some aspect of the new development,” Creech said. “That’s what we would like to see. It has been a cornerstone for that community for 30 years now.”
Wyland has argued, too, that the mural is protected by the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990, which requires written consent by an artist before the work can be destroyed.
The mural’s future, though, remains unknown. As does the property’s. But one thing is certain: The power plant is no more.
Saff writers Laylan Connelly and Kristy Hutchings, as well as the Associated Press, contributed to this report.