Los Angeles officials say an $800 million overhaul of the Scattergood Generating Station in Playa del Rey will help the city hit its clean energy targets. Environmental groups suing to stop the project say that's not what the numbers show, and that the city's largest natural-gas-fired power plant is set to keep burning fossil fuel for years to come.
A Retrofit Built Around Hydrogen That Doesn't Exist Yet
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power's plan would replace two aging units at Scattergood with new turbines capable of running on a blend of natural gas and hydrogen, according to the Los Angeles Times. The station sits near LAX and is intended to help meet peak power demand and stabilize the grid as the city works toward its goal of 100% clean energy by 2035, per the same report. LADWP signed off on the plan last year, and cleanly produced hydrogen generates no planet-warming carbon dioxide when burned, but the department's own plan provides no specifics about where that hydrogen would come from or how it would be transported and stored.
That gap is central to the fight now playing out in court. Environmental groups including the Sierra Club, Communities for a Better Environment, Los Angeles Waterkeeper, Physicians for Social Responsibility and Food and Water Watch filed a lawsuit against the city and LADWP in Los Angeles County Superior Court, accusing them of violating the California Environmental Quality Act by failing to adequately define or analyze the project. The Center for Biological Diversity filed a second lawsuit making similar claims, the Los Angeles Times reports.
Theo Caretto, an attorney involved in the case, told the Los Angeles Times the project looks like the city is investing close to a billion dollars to keep a methane gas plant online. Caretto also said a robust hydrogen supply is very unlikely to be available by DWP's 2029 deadline.
City Council Upheld the Environmental Review Before the Lawsuits
The litigation followed a decision by the Los Angeles City Council, which on August 4 voted 10-3 to deny an administrative appeal from environmental groups and uphold LADWP's environmental impact report for the retrofit, with Yaroslavsky, Raman and Hernandez voting to grant the appeal, according to the Sierra Club. The vote was followed by lawsuits from the environmental groups. It was also a reversal of sorts from three years earlier: in February 2023, the council had voted 12-0 to let LADWP proceed with competitive bidding for the green hydrogen retrofit, though even then several members voiced skepticism about public health and environmental impacts, as reported by City News Service via KFI AM 640.
Jason Rondou, DWP's interim chief operating officer and senior assistant general manager of the power system, told the Los Angeles Times the project will provide local electricity and help maintain regional affordability and reliability. Rondou also acknowledged it is theoretically possible the Scattergood units will have to run on 100% natural gas if no hydrogen supply is available by 2030, adding that DWP cannot control what happens to the hydrogen industry.
The Math Behind the Hydrogen Blend
Even under a best-case scenario, the amount of fossil fuel the retrofit would actually displace is limited. A 30% green hydrogen and 70% natural gas fuel blend by volume yields only about 12% of a power plant's total energy input, because hydrogen has a significantly lower volumetric energy density than natural gas, according to a case study from Just Solutions. The same source notes that while LADWP frames the plant as hydrogen-ready, the immediate operational reality is that Scattergood will run almost entirely on natural gas when it's completed in 2029.
There are also health concerns tied to hydrogen combustion itself. While green hydrogen emits no carbon dioxide when burned, its combustion can produce smog-forming nitrogen oxides, according to the Sierra Club. The Los Angeles Basin remains in nonattainment for federal ozone standards, making any added NOx emissions a concern for Westside residents near the plant.
Critics argue that using clean electricity to make hydrogen for combustion is far less efficient than simply powering the grid or batteries directly.
Pipeline Plan Collapsed, Leaving No Delivery Route
The retrofit's hydrogen ambitions took another hit this year when Southern California Gas Co. abandoned its Angeles Link hydrogen pipeline plan, according to the Los Angeles Times. State regulators had ruled that SoCalGas could not charge ratepayers for the project; the California Public Utilities Commission denied the utility's request to bill customers $266 million for Phase 2 engineering of the pipeline on April 30, a decision detailed in filings from the commission. That left Scattergood without a clear mechanism for delivering hydrogen to the LA Basin, even if a supply were eventually secured.
Federal policy has complicated the picture further. President Trump ended a federal tax credit for clean hydrogen production and terminated billions of dollars in funding for hydrogen projects in several states, according to the Los Angeles Times, even after the California Hydrogen Hub had received $1.2 billion under President Biden. Hydrogen as an industry has encountered multiple stumbling blocks in recent years, the paper notes, undercutting the premise that a robust supply will materialize on LADWP's timeline.
Origins in the LA100 Study and a Faster Climate Deadline
LA's hydrogen strategy traces back to the 2021 LA100 study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which concluded that zero-carbon firm generation, including hydrogen combustion, was necessary to meet the city's 100% clean energy goal, according to a petition from the Center for Biological Diversity. The Los Angeles Times reports that NREL found reaching the project's goals through noncombustion alternatives at Scattergood would be infeasible. The City Council accelerated its zero-carbon target from 2045 to 2035 after that study's release.
Ethan Elkind, director of the climate program at UC Berkeley's Center for Law, Energy and the Environment, told the Los Angeles Times the project may conflict with CEQA if it omits hydrogen consumption details or relies on a best-case hydrogen scenario. Environmental groups have echoed that argument in their lawsuits, saying the plan will prolong the life of L.A.'s fossil fuel infrastructure rather than retire it.
Scattergood's Units 1 and 2 produce about 370 megawatts together, while the proposed replacement combined-cycle unit would be rated at up to 346 megawatts gross capacity, according to an LADWP modernization study. The units are also subject to California's Once Through Cooling requirements.
Where LADWP Stands on Clean Energy Progress
LADWP maintains the broader clean energy transition is on track even as the Scattergood fight plays out. The department has invested $5 billion in new clean energy projects over the last two years, including solar and battery storage, and says the Scattergood plan is integral to meeting the city's climate goals, per the Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles reached 65% renewable energy last year and is on track for 80% by 2030, the paper reports, even as solar and battery storage costs continue to fall and those technologies become more widely deployed across California.
The leadership overseeing these decisions has shifted amid the controversy. Former LADWP CEO Janisse Quiñones, whom Mayor Bass nominated to lead LADWP in April 2024, left the utility on March 27, 2026, as part of a planned transition. She had overseen key environmental review steps for Scattergood before her departure. With the lawsuits now pending in Los Angeles County Superior Court, the fate of the retrofit — and whether it truly represents a clean energy future or an extended lease on fossil fuel — remains an open question the courts will have to decide.
