In response to public concerns over fires, the Solano County Board of Supervisors unanimously voted Tuesday to ban permits for new battery energy storage systems for an emergency period of 45 days. The moratorium could be extended for up to two years while county staff figure out how to regulate them and where they should be built. It applies to unincorporated zones, which makes it a passionate topic in a county that cherishes its prime agricultural land.

The ban is also one example of a local government trying to exert permit authority after a 2022 state law allowed energy system developers the option of obtaining permit certifications directly from the California Energy Commission, thus overriding local governments.

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Ruth Dusseault is an investigative reporter and multimedia journalist focused on environment and energy. Her position is supported by the California local news fellowship, a statewide initiative spearheaded by UC Berkeley aimed at supporting local news platforms. While a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (c’23), Ruth developed stories about the social and environmental circumstances of contaminated watersheds around the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Her thesis explored rights of nature laws in small rural communities. She is a former assistant professor and artist in residence at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, and uses photography, film and digital storytelling to report on the engineered systems that undergird modern life.