Was Pasha’s Green Omni Terminal 0-For-3?
Pasha Senior Vice President Jeffrey Burgin called it “a Wright Brothers moment.” Harbor Commissioner Anthony Pirozzi compared it to the moon landing. It was “going to change the world,” Commissioner Ed Renwick said. That was the Pasha Green Omni Terminal project, as presented to — and applauded by the Harbor Commission on May 19, 2016. And they were only approving phase one of three.
“The Harbor Department assembled this team with commercialization in mind,” staff promised in accompanying written material. “The team’s commercialization focus will help make the Green Omni Terminal Project a catalyst for scalable and widespread commercialization.”
But seven years later, on May 25, 2023, Commissioner Diane Middleton had a different view. After ticking the list of equipment outcomes she concluded, “If we look at those facts, that is not what I would call a success, that is what I would call a failure.”
And for good reason: virtually nothing worked as promised — electric yard tractors burst into flames, electric trucks couldn’t make it over the Vincent Thomas Bridge, the three-year time-frame has more than doubled, and the most expensive grant component — the $3.7 million Shorekat emission capture system — ended up increasing greenhouse gas emissions, rather than delivering the 30% reduction that the Port of LA’s environmental manager, Chris Cannon, touted in his 2016 presentation.
While Cannon tried to recast it as “One of the most important projects that we ever did … because we learned so much,” this was clearly not the original intention, and only one project participant — BYD — demonstrably did learn and move closer to commercialization with their yard tractors.
“This project has been the subject of more community comment than almost anything, and we received some just in the last day or so,” said Middleton. “I have to say I really agree with a lot of the community comments,” she said, “except one really important thing. That is, I want to evaluate this based on the facts, I do not want to evaluate it based on personal attacks, and I totally want to disassociate myself from anything that refers to you as a liar.”
But historically, it’s difficult to draw such a sharp line, particularly where the Shorekat system — originally almost a quarter of the grant money — is concerned. And without attention to contradictory and unfulfilled claims in the past, it’s impossible to assess who are trustworthy partners the port, as a public agency, should continue working with in the future.
Middleton was apparently referencing an email from Janet Gunter, communications administrator for San Pedro Peninsula Homeowners United ( SPPHU). “Almost everything about the Green Omni Terminal (GOT) is a lie,” Gunter wrote. “Calling the GOT a success is an egregious misrepresentation of the facts.”
Gunter had initially praised the project concept as “exemplary in its thought for the future and its planning,” but problematic in the process that led to the Shorekat funding, because it involved former Harbor Commission President Nick Tonsich, who is arguably forbidden to receive port funds for clean air projects in light of his role in shaping that market. [The LA City Ethics Commission in Sept.18, 2009 issued an opinion to Tonsich stating in part, “you are subject to a permanent ban on receiving compensation … .regarding matters in which you were substantially involved”.]
Since the $15 million grant funding came from the California Air Resources Board, it was all perfectly legal, staff claimed at the time, as was the fact it was a no-bid process.
“The actions of staff and business dealings of Mr. Tonsich may or may not be criminal, but at minimum they are certainly highly unethical,” Gunter countered in her 2016 public comment. “The public trust is what the Harbor Commission should be concerned about, not whether something is technically legal or illegal.”
Unbeknownst to the board, Cannon had already made two contradictory claims about what the Shorekat system would do in a Dec. 7, 2015 email to CARB staff. On the one hand, he wrote that it was the same as an earlier barge-based system, which provides no greenhouse gas reduction, while on the other, he claimed it would reduce greenhouse gasses — both from the ship emissions it captured and from its own operations. But he only identified the general process for treating the ship emissions, not any specific technology, and the three methods for reducing its own emissions were seriously flawed, as Gunter and others would repeatedly point out after the email came to light.
Initially, Tonsich claimed the CO2 reductions would come from Trimer, a company it was already working with. But this never materialized. Trimer itself had no such technology and two Trimer subcontractors failed to deliver. “The carbon sequestration elements were not able to be carried out and so money was diverted by the Air Resources Board to another aspect of the project,” Cannon told Middleton at the June 3, 2021 Harbor Commission meeting.
In the end, the Shorekat system proved utterly unfeasible — far too slow, bulky and cumbersome to meet Pasha’s needs, so they plan to return it to a barge-based system — although Cannon tried to argue, “the results are mixed,” presumably because it did receive CARB certification in an executive order dated last December, a move that SPPHU strongly objected to in a letter that Gunter attached to her email comment.
“Why issue the EO when you know that another ShoreKat system will never operate under the new regulation and that another ShoreKat system will never be built under the 2007 regulation that was the original basis for CARB approval?” Gunter asked. “Exactly who does this EO help besides CAEM (Tonsich’s company) with its claim that ShoreKat has CARB approval?”
Indeed, a March 28 press release from CAEM carried the banner claim that “ShoreKat’s Highly Efficient Air Pollution Control System Expands Options for Reducing Emissions from Ships and other Marine Vessels” — a claim hardly reflecting Pasha’s first-hand experience.
In contrast to Middleton, “I’m going to be more charitable,” Commissioner Lee Williams said. “I think it’s important that we fail forward fast.”
But seven years for a three-year project isn’t exactly fast.
The micro-grid system is expected to be functional by the end of the year, but it was the driving motivation behind the project, first brought to port staff two years before the grant application
— meaning its completion will have taken almost a decade since initially proposed. The firm behind it, Burns & McDonnell, had previously begun developing similar systems for the military, and their vision — which Pasha fully endorsed — was for a three-phase process, going far beyond just meeting the goals presented in 2016. While Burns & McDonnell has remained in the background as project managers, they’re actually the driving force that first planted the seeds of the idea, then put together the team, as their project manager, Matt Wartian, made clear in the 2016 meeting when the project was approved.
Was this a good approach to have taken? How does their choice of technology partners look in retrospect? Who performed well and who didn’t? None of these questions were even asked, much less discussed by the commissioners, despite what should have been some clear contrasts — none clearer than that between the two makers of yard trackers.
BYD, as mentioned earlier, was the only project participant that demonstrably did learn and move closer to commercialization. Their first generation yard tractors didn’t work, Cannon said, but a second generation is in service at Pasha, with a third generation “being tested at other locations in the port.”
In contrast, two of the three TransPower/Kalmar yard tractors burst into flames — one as a result of such poor design that when making a sharp turn, “the chassis that it was pulling poked into the battery system,” Cannon said. This kind of problem should have been caught by Kalmar in the design phase, and serve as a warning flag about partnering with them in the future. On the other hand, the second caught fire overnight after several months out of service — pointing to a different sort of problem with TransPower’s technology, and resulting in the company pulling its forklifts from the project as well, a welcome sign of prudence on their part.
In short, it’s a welcome start, but not enough, for commissioners to begin questioning staff’s Pollyannaish spin. Commissioner Williams is right. It is important to fail forward fast. And that means it’s important for commissioners to become much more hands on, detail-oriented, and proactive in evaluating the qualifications, capacities and track records of everyone involved. Shorekat was a foreseeable massive failure. Gunter was not alone in pointing it out at the time. Which leads to one last question the commissioners forgot to ask: What can we learn from this to do better next time?