The Southern California ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles will host a rare joint public meeting Thursday as part of an effort to garner $200 million in state bond money to expand ship-to-shore electrification, or cold-ironing, of the two ports docks.
Scheduled for 11 a.m. on Thursday at the Port of Long Beach Administrative Building at 925 Harbor Plaza, the meeting will be conducted by staff from the two ports and seek public input on the electrification plans as well as other ideas on how to reduce port pollution.
The electrification program, which provides vessels at dock with connections to the land-based electrical power grid thus allowing the vessels to reduce emissions by turn off their auxiliary engines, is part of the two ports' joint Clean Air Action Plan adopted in 2006. As part of the CAAP, the two ports have already installed such ship-to-shore facilities at a handful of docks, including the BP oil terminal in Long Beach and the China Shipping and TraPac terminals in Los Angeles. Hoteling emissions, generated by the auxiliary engines of vessels at dock to run on-board equipment, are among the largest sources of ports-generated air pollution.
The state bond money being sought is part of the latest allocation of funds from the $20 billion Proposition 1B which was approved by California voters in 2006.
