The Brief

The world’s oceans may be vast, but they are getting crowded. Coastal areas are congested with cargo ships, international commercial fishing fleets, naval vessels, oil rigs and, soon, floating platforms for deep-sea mining.

But the Pacific Ocean is going to get even busier: Nearly 600 square miles of ocean off California have been leased for floating wind farms, with more expected. Now the state is considering hosting another renewable energy technology in the sea: Blue power, electricity created from waves and tides.

A new law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in October instructs state agencies to study the feasibility and impacts of capturing ocean movement to create power and report back to the Legislature by January 2025.

The goal is to jumpstart an industry that could fill in the power gaps as California tries to achieve its goal of transitioning to an all-renewable electric grid by 2045.

But for all the interest in renewable energy — and the government subsidies — public investment in ocean energy has lagged. And the technology that would make the projects more efficient, cost effective and able to withstand a punishing sea environment is still under development.

So far, a handful of small demonstration projects have been launched off the West Coast, although none has produced commercial power for the grid. Through 2045, the California Energy Commission’s new projections for future power do not include any wave and tidal power. Yet energy experts say there is great potential along the Pacific coast.

“Of all the energies out there, marine energy has been the slowest to develop. We are kind of where land-based wind was 20 or 30 years ago,” said Tim Ramsey, marine energy program manager at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Water Power Technologies Office.

Energy from waves and tides is generated by an action that the ocean almost always provides — movement. Although wave and tidal devices take different forms, most capture the ocean’s kinetic motion as seawater flows through cylinders or when floating devices move up and down or sideways. In some cases, that movement creates hydraulic pressure that spins a turbine or generator.

As with all developing energy technologies, Ramsey said, the cost to produce wave and tidal power is expected to be quite high in the early years.

Although there have been advances in technology, getting ocean-based projects from the pilot stage to providing commercial power to the grid is the next hurdle for the industry — and it’s a substantial one.

“It’s very expensive right now, and really hard to do. Working out in the water is very complex, in some cases in the harshest places on Earth…Then being able to build something that can last 20 to 30 years. We’ve made progress, but we’re a decade away,” Ramsey said.

State Sen. Steve Padilla, a Democrat from Chula Vista and the author of the wave energy bill, said ocean power has “great potential” but it has been agonizingly slow.

“Folks have been busy focusing on other things,” he said, citing the state’s current push for floating offshore wind development. “There has been a combination of a lack of knowledge and awareness of the infrastructure and impacts. We know the state’s energy portfolio has to be as broad as possible.”

A spokesperson for the California Energy Commission, which is taking the lead on the new state study, declined to comment about wave power, saying its work has not yet begun.

The potential is enticing: The National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimated that the total wave and tide energy resources that are available in the U.S. with current technology are equivalent to 57% of 2019’s domestic energy production. While the report noted that the technologies are in early stages of development, “even if only a small portion of the technical resource potential is captured, marine energy technologies would make significant contributions to our nation’s energy needs.”

The U.S. Department of Energy’s “Powering the Blue Economy” initiative, among others, provides grants and sponsors competitions to explore new and better technology. The fiscal year 2023 federal budget for ocean waves energy is $123 million, Ramsey said.

One program is funding research led by national labs, including designs to improve wave-driven turbines and building better motor drives for wave-energy converters.

Motion in the ocean

The idea of harnessing wave power has been kicking around California for decades. So has the state policy of ordering research into its potential: A 2008 study prepared for the Energy Commission and the Ocean Protection Council concluded that much more research was needed to better assess the potential impacts of wave and tidal energy.

At the time that study was released, one of the technology’s most ardent proponents was a young politician named Gavin Newsom. While mayor of San Francisco in 2007, Newsom proposed a tidal energy project near the Golden Gate Bridge. That idea was scrapped because it was prohibitively expensive.

Not long after, as lieutenant governor, Newsom backed a pilot wave energy project he hoped would be up and running by 2012 or 2013. It wasn’t.

But the dream has not died. California is already hosting wave energy projects, including one being assembled at AltaSea, a public-private research center that supports marine scientists focusing on the so-called Blue Economy. It operates out of a 35-acre campus at the Port of Los Angeles.

Its CEO is Terry Tamminen, a former California environmental secretary, who had a hand in writing the new wave and tidal energy law. Tamminen said wave energy has been ignored by some state and federal officials in the face of “irrational exuberance” for offshore wind.

He said the smaller, cheaper wave energy development would help the state meet its clean energy goal and could produce power well before massive floating offshore wind projects.

One of AltaSea’s tenants, Eco Wave Power, is designed to deploy near shore, in breakwaters and jetties that roil with moving water. Its floating, paddle-like arms bob up and down in waves, triggering hydraulic pistons that power a motor.

Tamminen said the system is “ready to deploy. Within two years we could have a commercial installation of Eco Wave technology.” The demonstration project will be installed at a wharf in L.A.’s harbor and will not generate any significant power, he said.

California is not likely to see much electricity from tidal energy, said Jason Busch, executive director of Pacific Ocean Energy Trust, an Oregon-based nonprofit fostering research into marine energy. He said the state of Washington is more conducive to this new energy, for example, because it has deep bays and estuaries for funneling water through turbine equipment.

“A little bit of homework would have told you there isn’t much of a tidal opportunity in California,” he said.

A small number of companies are preparing to launch pilot wave projects in other states. The Navy operates a wave energy test site in Hawaii; three developers are preparing to launch new projects in the water there.

PacWave, which operates two test sites off Newport, Oregon, is another demonstration project. A California-based company, CalWave, which concluded a 10-month demonstration off the Scripps Institute of Oceanography’s research pier in San Diego, will deploy its wave energy devices in a grid-connected, pre-permitted open-water test. The demonstration at the Oregon site is scheduled to begin next year.

This type of wave-energy device is moored in the open ocean, where it is submerged. Units like this from CalWave will be used in a project off the coast of Oregon that will provide power to the grid.

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Courtesy of CalWave

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Much is riding on the success of the project, which took 11 years to acquire permits. Some testing has been conducted with small-scale versions of the final device, but not in harsh open water conditions and with no expectation of supplying power to the grid.

“It’s the first-of-its-kind full-scale deployment. Not in ‘nursery’ conditions. It’s the real world, off you go,” said Bryson Robertson, director of the Pacific Marine Energy Center at Oregon State University, which is constructing the two testing sites. “We want to prove that we can deliver power.”

Robertson, an engineer who studies wave dynamics, said one of the technologies being tested places large, buoyant squares in the water just below the surface, attached by lines to the sea floor. Kinetic energy is created as the floats bob and pitch with the action of the waves.

Some companies’ technology sits atop the waves and others are fully submerged. Another is deployed on the surface and moves like a snake, with each segment creating energy from its movement. Each bespoke device is expensive, and some of the one-of-a-kind devices can cost $10 million to design and build.

The industry “hasn’t narrowed in on a winning archetype,” Ramsey said. Some smaller designs can be picked up and thrown off a boat, he said, while others are large enough to need a boat to tow them into position.

To Busch, it’s a critical moment for ocean energy, with small companies requiring years to raise enough funding to continue testing. And with attention on the industry, they cannot afford to stumble.

“Early companies that got full-scale machines in the water committed the mortal sin of overpromising and under-delivering to shareholders. One by one they went into bankruptcy,” he said.

“This is the second generation. These machines can only be developed toward commercial viability by putting them in the water and assessing their performance. That process is very long. Companies receive only limited private capital. The venture capital model does not fit marine energy. It’s a long slog to build and deploy and make money.”

In the near future, wave and tidal energy may not provide huge amounts of power in the clean-energy mosaic that will form the grid, but the technology may prove to be one of the most versatile. Experts say marine power doesn’t have to be transported to shore to be useful — it could charge oceangoing vessels, research devices, navigation equipment and aquaculture operations.

Closer to shore, modest wave-powered projects could support small, remote so-called “extension cord communities” at the end of the power supply. Federal researchers also foresee ocean power being used for desalination plants.

Wave-powered generators and other renewables are already supplying all of the needs of the Orkney Islands in Scotland, with the surplus energy used to create hydrogen to run ferries to the mainland.

Lots of unknowns

New technology often comes cloaked in questions: How will the wave devices impact marine animals, shipping and other ocean users? What about transmission lines and possible floating power stations?

“Blue energy synergy" is a future possibility, with wave projects sited alongside floating offshore wind projects, allowing the power producers to share transmission lines and other infrastructure.

The state report due next year is meant to answer those questions and more.

“We still don’t fully understand all of the interactions of the device in the marine environment,” Ramsey said. “Until you can put devices in the water and get long-term data collection, we don’t know. We do try to extrapolate from other industries and activities in the ocean — oil and gas, offshore wind — but that only gets you so far.

“I think the potential is so enormous. If we can figure out how to do it cost-effectively, I know it will get solved. I hope the U.S. is at the forefront of solving that. If we lose a big industry to overseas, that is a lost opportunity.”

Big Bear’s famous bald eagle nest has taken a turn — both of Jackie and Shadow’s eggs have been attacked by ravens.

In the nest overlooking Big Bear Lake, a raven could be seen poking a large hole into, and potentially eating, one of the eagle eggs. The intrusion was noticed on a popular YouTube livestream run by the nonprofit Friends of Big Bear Valley.

Jenny Voisard, the organization’s media and website manager, confirmed the crack in Friends of Big Bear Valley’s official Facebook group, which has nearly 400,000 members, after Jackie and Shadow were away from the nest, and eggs, for several hours Friday.

Voisard told LAist one of the eggs may still be partly intact, but both eggs are believed to be breached. Jackie returned to their nest shortly after the raven left to lay on the remaining egg, according to organization records.

“Our hearts are with Jackie and Shadow always and we wrap our arms around them,” Voisard wrote. “Our hearts are also with you eagle fam, we know how you are feeling now."

“Step away from the screen when needed,” she continued in the post. “Try and rest tonight.”

How we got here

Jackie laid the first egg of the season around 4:30 p.m. last Friday and the second egg around 5:10 p.m. Monday as thousands of eager fans watched online.

It was almost exactly a year after the feathered duo welcomed the first egg of the 2025 season.

Bald eagles generally have one clutch per season, according to Friends of Big Bear Valley. A second clutch is possible if the eggs don’t make it through the early incubation process.

For example, Jackie laid a second clutch in February 2021 after the first round of eggs was broken or destroyed by ravens the month before.

Jackie and Shadow may have the left the nest unattended Friday because they knew on some level "that not everything was right," Voisard wrote.

"We are hopeful however, because bald eagles can lay replacement clutches if something happens early enough in the season," she continued. "The fact that the raven came to do its job so quickly may be just what Jackie and Shadow needed."

A raven is believed to have breached both eggs in Big Bear's famous nest.

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Friends of Big Bear Valley

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YouTube

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Watch the nest

This is a developing story and will be updated.

The Meta researcher’s tone was alarmed.

“oh my gosh yall IG is a drug,” the user experience specialist allegedly wrote to a colleague, referring to the social media platform Instagram. “We’re basically pushers... We are causing Reward Deficit Disorder bc people are binging on IG so much they can’t feel reward anymore.”

The researcher concluded that users’ addiction was “biological and psychological” and that company management was keen to exploit the dynamic. “The top down directives drive it all towards making sure people keep coming back for more,” the researcher added.

The conversation was included recently as part of a long-simmering lawsuit in a California-based federal court. Condensing complaints from hundreds of school districts and state attorneys general, including California’s, the suit alleges that social media companies knew about risks to children and teens but pushed ahead with marketing their products to them, putting profits above kids’ mental health. The suit seeks monetary damages and changes to companies’ business practices.

The suit, and a similar one filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, targets Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and Snap. The cases are exposing embarrassing internal conversations and findings at the companies, particularly Facebook and Instagram owner Meta, further tarnishing their brands in the public eye. They are also testing a particular vector of attack against the platforms, one that targets not so much alarming content as design and marketing decisions that accelerated harms. The upshot, some believe, could be new forms of regulation, including at the federal level.

One document discussed during a hearing this week included a 2016 email from Mark Zuckerberg about Facebook’s live videos feature. In the email, the Meta chief wrote, “we’ll need to be very good about not notifying parents / teachers” about teens’ videos.

“If we tell teens’ parents about their live videos, that will probably ruin the product from the start,” he wrote, according to the email.

In slides summarizing internal tech company documents, released this week as part of the litigation, an internal YouTube discussion suggested that accounts from minors in violation of YouTube policies were actively on the platform for years, producing content an average of “938 days before detection – giving them plenty of time to create content and continue putting themselves and the platform at risk.”

A spokesperson for Meta didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

A YouTube spokesperson, José Castañeda, described the slide released this week as “a cherry-picked view of a much larger safety framework” and said the company uses more than one tool to detect underage accounts, while taking action every time it finds an underage account.

In court, the companies have argued that they are making editorial decisions permitted by the First Amendment,. That trial is set for June.

The state court litigation moved into jury selection this week, increasing the pressure on social media companies.

While the state and federal cases differ slightly, the core argument is the same: that social media companies deliberately designed their products to hook young people, leading to disastrous but foreseeable consequences.

“It's led to mental health issues, serious anxiety, depression, for many. For some, eating disorders, suicidality,” said Previn Warren, co-lead counsel on the case in federal court. “For the schools, it’s been lost control over the educational environment, inability of teachers to really control their classrooms and teach.”

A federal suit

Meta and other companies have faced backlash for years over their treatment of kids on their platforms, including Facebook and Instagram. Parents, lawmakers and privacy advocates have argued that social media contributed to a mental health crisis among young people and that tech companies failed to act when that fact became clear.

Those allegations gained new scrutiny last month when a brief citing still-sealed documents in the federal suit became public.

While the suit also names TikTok, Snap, and Google as defendants, the filing includes allegations against Meta that are especially detailed.

In the more than 200-page filing, for example, the plaintiffs argue that Meta deliberately misled the public about how damaging their platforms were.

Warren pointed to claims in the brief that Meta researchers found that 55% of Facebook users had “mild” problematic use of the platform, while 3.1 percent had “severe” problems. Zuckerberg, according to the brief, pointed out that 3% of billions would still be millions of people.

But the brief claims the company published research noting only that "we estimate (as an upper bound) that 3.1% of Facebook users in the US experience problematic use.”

“That’s a lie,” Warren said.

In response to recent interest in the suits, Meta published a blog post this month arguing that the litigation “oversimplifies” the issue of youth mental health, and pointed to past instances where it has worked with parents and families with features to protect kids.

The federal case faced a key hearing this week, as the defendants argued that a judge should summarily dismiss the case. A decision on that motion is likely coming in the next few weeks, Warren said.

Social media companies, like other web-based services, receive protection from some legal claims under a part of federal law. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act gives legal immunity to website operators for potentially illegal content on their platforms.

Mary Anne Franks, a legal scholar in First Amendment issues at George Washington University who has long studied Section 230, said rather than online content in and of itself, the recent social media cases are focusing on the design of the platforms and their marketing.

“The litigation strategy is saying it's the way that you're providing that space and you're pushing this toward individuals that are vulnerable that is really an issue here,” she said. “It's your own conduct, not somebody else's.”

The companies are making key decisions behind the scenes, she said, and could be held responsible for them.

“You were manipulating things,” she said the plaintiffs are arguing. “You were deliberately making choices about what comes to the top or what is directly accessible or may be tempting to vulnerable users.”

A California state trial begins

Meanwhile, the related state lawsuit went to jury selection this week.

The case, which makes similar claims about personal injury caused by the social media companies, has also drawn nationwide attention, and major industry figures like Zuckerberg are expected to appear on the stand.

The personal injury case focuses on an unnamed plaintiff who claims to have had her mental health damaged by an addiction to social media.

In a last-minute development this week, TikTok and Snap reportedly reached undisclosed settlements in the case. Meta and Google are continuing as defendants.

Franks said these trials could be a tipping point in regulating how tech companies design and market their products. While the companies have faced scrutiny in the past, she said, the glare of examination at trial could be especially bright.

“There's always been talk of it and the members of Congress have kind of said, ‘maybe we'll regulate you,’” she said. “I think now the platforms are really getting nervous about what this is going to mean if they look really bad on the stand.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

On Saturday, Burbank is officially launching a new hiking trail accessibility program for people with disabilities. Two new all-terrain wheelchairs will be available to rent at Stough Canyon Nature Center for use on the fire trail.

The program is the first of its kind in Southern California. Several jurisdictions in the region have beach accessibility programs, but this is the first for mountain trails.

The background

In recent years, Burbank has become a leader in the movement to make sports and the outdoors more accessible to people with disabilities.

Since 2021, the city has launched several adaptive sports programs, including offering wheelchair rugby and fencing, Piper’s Pals youth baseball and basketball, powerchair soccer, boccia and the Burbank Adaptive Sports Expo, which is coming up for its third year running on Feb. 21.

The new equipment

The new all-terrain wheelchairs are the latest in that effort, said Diego Cevallos,  assistant director of the city’s parks and recreation department.

“We are building an ecosystem here in Burbank of robust programming and activities that cater to folks with disabilities,” he said. “Really what we want to do is inspire the community and also our other civic leaders to engage in this movement of making outdoor equity more accessible through programs just like this.”

Burbank is launching its accessibility program with two new all-terrain wheelchairs.

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Courtesy Burbank Parks and Recreation

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The city purchased the all-terrain Action Trackchair AXIS 40 wheelchairs — each about $20,000 — exclusively with funds raised by Leadership Burbank. The community-based organization raised about $90,000 for the trail accessibility program. The remaining funds went to the city’s parafencing program and all staff time associated with maintaining these programs comes out of the city’s general fund, Cevallos said.

How the program works

The program is open to anyone with mobility issues in the region, not only Burbank residents.

You can reserve one of the two wheelchairs by going to BurbankParks.com. The process is a bit clunky, but city staff are working to simplify it.

Once reserved, the user will have to bring a non-disabled companion to assist them and a staff member or volunteer with the Nature Center will accompany them on the trail. That docent will provide nature education during the hike and make sure everything is going smoothly and safely.

Right now, the chairs can only be reserved for up to two hours, said recreation services manager Noah Altman, but he said staff welcomes feedback from the public and will consider updating the requirements for the program as needed.

And an important note: Residents with all types of disabilities can use the chairs — it’s not necessary to have mobility in one’s hands. The family member or friend accompanying the user can remotely control the wheelchairs if needed.

Why all-terrain wheelchairs matter

Mobility challenges are the most common type of disability in L.A. County — around half a million Angelenos have some type of ambulatory disability, according to the county’s Aging and Disabilities Department.

But all-terrain wheelchairs cost around $20,000 and weigh around 400 pounds, making them out of reach and impractical for most individuals to own themselves, said Austin Nicassio, a San Dimas resident and founder of Accessible Off-Road, a nonprofit that advocates and is raising funds for more off-road mobility devices.

Nicassio provided consultation early on in the Burbank accessible trail project effort, and is currently working with L.A. County and California State Parks to bring all-terrain wheelchairs to more areas. The nonprofit is raising money to purchase all-terrain wheelchairs for use in those jurisdictions.

“ It's a huge milestone,” Nicassio said of the Burbank program. “It's going to be absolutely life changing for everyone in Southern California.”

For Nicassio, these efforts are deeply personal. Growing up in the eastern San Gabriel Valley, he used to be an avid hiker and mountain biker.

“Five years ago I was completely able-bodied working as an aerospace engineer, mountain biking, hiking, surfing,” Nicassio said. “My body did whatever I wanted it to do, and I always took it for granted.”

Austin Nicassio uses his all-terrain wheelchair at Frank G. Bonelli Regional Park near his home in San Dimas.

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Courtesy Austin Nicassio

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But in 2022, after a mild case of COVID-19, he started experiencing strange symptoms — muscle weakness, severe brain fog. He was later diagnosed with a condition that affects his blood flow and makes it difficult to stand for long periods of time and impossible to do anything too strenuous. He was also diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome.

“I went from being very active to being a wheelchair user,” Nicassio said.

His mental health plummeted — he realized he used to cope with strong emotions by getting out on the trails or in the ocean. When he finally saved up enough to purchase his own off-road wheelchair, it was “life changing.”

“And not just for me, but for my father, for my wife, for my friends, my whole community,” Nicassio said.

He says he wants to see a world where access to such offroad wheelchairs is the norm.

“ No one has told me that their favorite hike or trail's been paved unless you're disabled, and it has to be,” said Nicassio. “Being out on these trails, a couple miles from the noise, from the trash, from the people, it's life changing.”