With a commitment to achieving the City of LA’s ambitious clean energy goals, new CEO and Chief Engineer of LADWP, Janisse Quiñones, brings to her new responsibilities decades of experience in energy, water, and crisis management. In this timely VXNews interview, Quiñones addresses LADWP’s critical role in Los Angeles’ transition to 100% clean energy by 2035; updates readers on the status of the LADWP's marketmaking innovations in green hydrogen power generation and storage at the Intermountain Power Plant and plans for Scattergood Generating Station; and, highlights significant investments underway to increase capacity of transmission infrastructure to ensure reliability.
Janisse, when you look at the City of Los Angeles’ sustainability goals, much of it falls on LADWP. As the new CEO and Chief Engineer of LADWP, elaborate on the central mission and the evolving daily policy and execution challenges that you've now assumed.
The challenges I’ve assumed in the City of LA—well, I think this is an interesting job just based on the complexity of who LADWP is and the role we play, like you mentioned, in the City of LA. We’re not just the economic engine of LA, but we also have very important events coming up as we transition to clean energy.
For example, we have the World Cup in 2026, the Super Bowl in 2027, and the Olympics in 2028. On top of that, we’re working toward our 2035 goals: achieving 100% clean energy by 2035, 70% local water, and ensuring we meet these goals equitably.
When you think about the complexity of this job, it’s challenging enough to focus on achieving the 2035 goals. Then, you add these key events of national and international significance—where the entire world will be looking at us—and that adds another layer. At the same time, we’re working hard on improving our infrastructure to ensure we’re successful.
You personally bring a wealth of leadership experience to one of the country’s largest municipal utilities. Share with readers your professional background and how it informs your LADWP responsibilities.
I am a mechanical engineer by trade, licensed in five states, including California. I also have a Master’s in Business Administration and a Master’s in International Relations. I’ve worked in the utility business for decades, including at San Diego Gas & Electric, National Grid, Pacific Gas & Electric, and now LADWP. This is my first time working in public power, but I’ve spent years in the IOU (investor-owned utility) world.
I’ve been involved in operations, engineering, customer service, gas, electricity, and now water. I’ve run water energy efficiency projects, vegetation management, and wildfire mitigation programs.
In my military career, I’m a Commander in the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve. I served five years on active duty and now have 15 years in the reserves. My specialty is emergency and crisis management. A significant deployment for me was helping to restore the power grid in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. That experience gave me an edge in managing crises without losing my mind—and even enjoying the journey.
It’s clear from your experience, why the city and the mayor chose you for leadership of LADWP. Re: your responsibilities: the city, as you have said, has ambitious climate goals for 2030. Getting shovels in the ground to achieve those goals is, as VXNews has highlighted for more than a year, the goal. Do you believe LADWP’s—and California’s—ambitious decarbonization goals are realistically achievable?
I believe they’re achievable. But it requires all hands on deck—not just LADWP. I talk a lot about stakeholder collaboration. Our partners, public-private partnerships, the environmental community, the business community, and our customers are all part of the equation.
The way utilities used to operate can no longer be the way we transition to a clean energy future. We need to engage everyone impacted by this transition proactively, making them active participants and advocates for this clean energy journey.
Given the City has prioritized the urgent need for an energy transition, how aggressively is LADWP pivoting from reliance on natural gas for baseload supply?
We’re working a lot on improving our transmission capacity in the basin. We have about 50 transmission projects underway to increase capacity and bring more renewables through our transmission lines. At the same time, we’re also investing in changing our generation fleet’s fuel composition.
One significant project we have coming up is at Scattergood, where we’re implementing hydrogen-enabled turbines. The real question is: who comes first—the technology to burn hydrogen or the availability of hydrogen itself? For us, having in-basin generation is critical. It ensures reliability for our customers and provides resiliency for the region because we can isolate from the CAISO grid in case of emergencies.
Based on studies, we’ll reduce in-basin generation from about 3,500 megawatts to around 2,300 megawatts. This will maintain sustainability, though it won’t be used as a baseload all the time. It will instead be deployed based on resiliency and reliability requirements.
In VX News’s exit interview with former LADWP General Manager, Marty Adams shared that he is most proud of his support for the Intermountain Power Project to have a 30 percent hydrogen blend when the project came on with new units in 2025. He believed that LADWP, by putting its flag in the ground, galvanized a lot of things – ie. new hydrogen plants and other like projects. Do you feel similarly?
We’re fully committed to moving forward with the Intermountain project. By January 2025, our first unit will fire up, and by March 2025, the second unit will come online. We’re transitioning from 1,800 megawatts of coal to 848 megawatts of a hydrogen blend—30% hydrogen and 70% natural gas. The turbines are designed to handle up to 60% hydrogen blending, to reach 100% hydrogen by 2035.
In that region, we also have one of the few salt domes in the nation. We’re building storage with a capacity for days, even up to a month, depending on how many additional salt caverns we create. We’ll produce hydrogen on-site through electrolysis and inject it into the caverns for use when solar power isn’t available.
This will be green hydrogen, produced using excess solar energy that we can’t otherwise use. It’s a win-win: transitioning from coal to hydrogen blending while leapfrogging in technology. What we’re doing is groundbreaking—no one else in the world is doing this right now.
The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) recently issued a decision setting a concrete path to consider reducing and eventually eliminating reliance on the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage facility. Could you elaborate on LADWP’s plans—without relying on Aliso Canyon—to accelerate the deployment of clean power generation and the scaling of decarbonization projects in the basin?
I mentioned the Scattergood project on hydrogen blending—that’s a critical initiative to phase out natural gas use in the region. We’re also working closely with SoCalGas on renewable natural gas and the hydrogen infrastructure via the Angeles Link project. Additionally, we’re part of ARCHES, receiving substantial federal funding to support the generation, infrastructure, and transition to fossil fuel-free solutions in the basin.
Re: new funding, the November 2024 election results are now in, and soon there’ll be a new federal administration. The departing Biden administration and Congress were very generous in support of the projects you’ve described. What’s the potential impact on your plans with a change of the guard?
Every time there’s an administration change, there’s always risk. However, we’ve been in business for over 100 years, and we’ll be here for many more. We continue to drive forward with our strategy. We have a 10-year plan, and we’re now working on a longer-term plan, focusing on how to accelerate it.
We’ll adapt to new regulations and policies as needed to ensure we achieve our goals.
Turning your attention to LADWP’s plans for increasing capacity, which is critical to LADWP’s ability to meet growing energy demand, address the daunting challenges of securing approval for new transmission lines.
We’re not building new transmission lines; we’re improving capacity on existing ones, which allows us to move faster. We have about 50 projects aimed at increasing capacity. For example, we have two direct current lines coming in from outside of California. Recently, we increased the capacity of one line from about 2,500 megawatts to 3,000 megawatts, and starting in 2025, we’ll release about 1,000 megawatts of coal-based carbon to bring more renewables into that line.
That’s our strategy: leveraging existing infrastructure to increase capacity without having to apply for new permits or construct new lines.
In closing, what’s it like working in public power, particularly in such a high-visibility role? Now that you’ve assumed this role and are living it, what are the unique challenges of public power?
I would say the biggest challenge is working through government procedures. Private entities have much more flexibility in how they manage their processes. In public power, we have many constituents, which means more effort is required to communicate with and engage stakeholders throughout the process.
We also need to ensure that we move at a proper pace. Right now, we’re slower than I’d like, but we’re working on streamlining our internal processes to bring our city partners along and move at the speed necessary to achieve our 2035 goals.
As a related question: you recently convened with the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority, where they asked why the permitting and regulatory process in the United States is so cumbersome. You and the President of the Board had to answer. How would you explain to our readers why it’s so complex?
The U.S. has far more regulation than many other countries I’ve worked with, and we also have a lot of stakeholders and multiple agencies—each with its agenda and goals—that need to come together and collaborate. I think the U.S. is committed to maintaining the systems and structures designed when these processes were created.
In contrast, other countries often have more flexibility to adapt and streamline their processes. Dubai, for instance, can move much faster because they aren’t bogged down by the same bureaucratic hurdles we face here.