Guest Commentary | Moss Landing aftermath: Tough love for the battery industry – Santa Cruz Sentinel

By Mukesh Chatter

The Moss Landing battery plant fire was a blow the battery industry didn’t need — especially not one of this magnitude. This wasn’t just another fire; it was catastrophic, occurring at a time when Californians are acutely aware of the dangers of fires. To put this particular battery fire in perspective, the blaze destroyed most of a 300 MW/1,200 MWh storage facility; 1,200 megawatt-hours (MWh) of stored energy represents approximately 960,000 homes or 16,000 Tesla Model 3s. All this energy burned so hot and spread so quickly that the facility’s fire suppression system proved futile, leaving firefighters with no choice but to wait for it to burn itself out.

The incident comes at a precarious time for batteries. The battery industry is navigating an uncertain future, with the potential curtailment or repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act threatening its regulatory and financial stability. The American public isn’t sold on batteries, either. While batteries are necessary for serving soaring energy demand, new battery projects are being battered by understandable community protests due to safety concerns. On top of that, the industry’s heavy reliance on China-centric supply chains has made it a flashpoint in broader geopolitical and cultural tensions.

Batteries play a vital role in nearly every aspect of our daily lives, driving personal convenience, enabling rapid innovation, and underpinning our renewable energy future. The battery industry and the nation at large cannot afford public and political pressure to stop this industry dead in its tracks. It must put a halt to battery fires and battery toxicity. It must develop its own supply chain.

These problems are fixable (full disclosure: I am a co-founder of Alsym Energy, a battery company that uses inherently non-flammable materials that are neither lithium nor cobalt). Indeed, as China has imposed critical mineral export controls, the U.S. battery industry will have no choice but to adapt.
We must first acknowledge the validity of the public’s fear of battery fires. Lithium-ion battery fires are often caused by unpredictable malfunctions, whether at the manufacturing stage, from extreme weather, or some other factor. The result is often catastrophic, especially in stationary storage applications where the energy is stored in vast quantities and the consequences of a tiny defect or runaway battery cell can be devastating. The initial spark on its own isn’t the threat — it’s the highly flammable, highly toxic chemicals inside a lithium battery that make them energy bombs.

We know fires are dangerous, of course, but the threat from toxic gases is also very real. As lithium battery fires rage, gaseous hydrogen fluoride (HF) — a highly toxic and corrosive chemical compound — is emitted into the atmosphere. HF is dangerous even in small amounts because it can penetrate deep into tissues and disrupt basic physiological processes. And when combined with water, HF converts into hydrofluoric acid, which is one of the most corrosive acids that exist. During the Los Angeles fires, homes with battery storage systems or electric vehicles that ignited during the blaze likely released HF, making them unsafe to even visit. Communities near lithium-ion fires bear the brunt of the release of these toxic fumes and harmful particles. Heavy metal contaminants have already been found in the surrounding ecosystems. Moss Landing residents are reporting symptoms including coughing, sore throat, headaches and eye irritation, which I hope are short-lived.

Finally, the battery industry’s dependence on foreign sources must stop. The U.S. must develop its own, reliable battery capabilities to protect its energy security.

We don’t have to live on the razor’s edge. Alternatives to lithium-ion batteries made from non-flammable, non-toxic, and readily available materials are becoming available. This way forward effectively solves all three problems: we can promote energy independence (and reap all the benefits that come with it) while ending large-scale battery fires and resulting toxicity once and for all. Fostering alternatives to lithium-ion batteries, with supply chains entirely within the U.S. or its allies, must be a top priority of the battery industry, investors and policymakers.

If we don’t address legitimate concerns, we risk reputational damage, regulatory scrutiny and a dramatic slowdown in deployments at a moment when the nation needs us to go even faster. Delays in battery deployment will cripple America’s ability to keep pace in the renewable energy transition.

The battery industry cannot say it wasn’t warned. The Moss Landing fire, as bad as it was, was hardly the first battery fire. This particularly stunning disaster, however, must mark when the battery industry got serious about fixing its latent, potentially lethal issues. The nation’s enormous energy needs demand we get serious.

Mukesh Chatter is President, CEO, and co-founder of Alsym Energy and received his master’s degree in Computer and Systems Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.