California’s epic heat wave is over. Here’s what we learned

This is the Sept. 15, 2022, edition of Boiling Point, a weekly newsletter about climate change and the environment in California and the American West. The panelists included several government officials charged with solving these problems, including Marty Adams, general manager of the L.A. Department of Water and Power; Stacey Crowley of the California Independent System Operator, which operates the power grid for most of the state; Natasha Keefer of Clean Power Alliance, a government-run electricity provider in Los Angeles and Ventura counties; and Alice Reynolds, president of the California Public Utilities Commission. After the August 2020 rolling blackouts, Steve Berberich, president of the Independent System Operator at the time, said it was largely the commission’s fault for not getting clean energy projects built faster. In other coastal news, El Segundo is suing Los Angeles over fallout from last year’s sewage spill, including what El Segundo officials say are continuing noxious odors from L.A.’s sewage treatment plant, Christian Martinez reports. One possible solution, for China and California both: New technologies under development could make A/C units more efficient, while also ending the use of planet-warming chemicals known as HFCs, the Washington Post’s Shannon Osaka writes.