Dispatches from Inland California’s Energy Storage Frontier

Keywords: storage, renewable energy, pumped hydro, batteries
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Saturday
Session Start / End Time: 2/26/2022 03:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/26/2022 05:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 4

Abstract

Kern County, California has long been known as a landscape of resource extraction, dominated by oil production and aquifer-draining agribusiness operations. But in recent years the arid county has emerged as a target for large-scale investments in renewable energy storage. Enormous pumped hydro storage, compressed air energy storage, and battery storage facilities, each valued at over $1 billion, are either moving through the regulatory process or under construction within county borders. Drawing on media reports, public filings, and preliminary fieldwork, this paper develops an account of this emergent storage frontier. In this context, the pursuit of new energy storage arrangements, driven by California renewable portfolio targets, is leading to the re-valuation of lightly populated terrain understood previously as remote, desolate wasteland. Situating the case within literature on resource frontiers, I consider how the pursuit of capitalist value via resource storage both diverges from and aligns with those more-analyzed extractive arrangements.