Battery energy storage systems, or BESS, will not be permitted by Solano County for now. On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to extend an emergency moratorium on permits through Jan. 23, 2026.

The energy storage units are a key component of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s push for California to obtain 100 percent of its electricity from carbon-free sources by 2045. In theory, municipalities can use the energy they store to power their grids with less of a carbon footprint. But questions about their long-term effects persist.

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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.