Proposal for the Coastal Restoration and Reuse of the Davenport CEMEX Plant: Thermal Storage and Water Generation
Search Description: A formal civic proposal to the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors for retrofitting the Davenport CEMEX plant into a California-made thermal energy storage facility. The proposal details rezoning strategies, economic benefits, and an innovative freeze-desalination process using absorption chillers to generate fresh water without plastic membranes.
Labels: Civic Proposal, Santa Cruz County, Davenport CEMEX Plant, Thermal Energy Storage, Freeze Desalination, Grid Resilience, Antora Energy, Water Security.
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Transforming the Davenport CEMEX Scar into California's Green Engine: A Path to Fire-Proof Power, Fresh Water, and School Funding
Proposal for the Coastal Restoration and Reuse of the Davenport CEMEX Plant: Thermal Storage and Water Generation
To: Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors
From: Paul Brian Statchen
Subject: Rezoning and Redevelopment of the CEMEX Facility for Light Industrial Energy Storage and Desalination
For over fifteen years, the decommissioned CEMEX plant has stood as an idle monument on our North Coast. While previous Coastal Restoration and Reuse Plans have heavily favored tourism, hospitality, or residential development, these avenues ignore the profound infrastructure needs of our region. We have an unprecedented opportunity to utilize existing, native California technology to turn this site into a localized economic engine that provides two of our most critical resources: firm, renewable electricity and fresh water.
By retrofitting the existing concrete silos with earth-abundant thermal mass and utilizing waste heat for freeze desalination, we can generate steady municipal revenue for Santa Cruz County with minimal ecological disruption.
1. The Technology: California-Made Thermal Storage
Rather than importing complex, fragile chemical batteries, we can deploy robust, localized thermal storage systems. Companies right here in California, such as San Jose-based Antora Energy, are already manufacturing industrial-scale thermal batteries.
The Mechanism: Excess wind and solar power generated on the grid during off-peak hours is routed to the facility, where it powers resistive heaters. These heaters bring a naturally abundant thermal mass—such as compacted sand or solid carbon blocks—to temperatures exceeding 1000°C.
The Output: When the grid requires power, this intense heat is converted back into electricity via high-efficiency heat exchangers or thermophotovoltaic (TPV) technology.
Material Integrity: The entire thermal apparatus relies on earth-based materials—carbon, sand, firebrick, and steel. This avoids the use of highly toxic mining byproducts and completely bypasses the need for synthetic plastics or complex polymers in the energy storage medium.
2. The Co-Benefit: Freeze Desalination via Waste Heat
In any heat-to-electricity generation system, thermodynamic laws dictate that a percentage of the heat is not converted to power and is rejected as "waste heat." Instead of venting this thermal energy into the coastal atmosphere, we can harness it to solve our regional water scarcity.
The waste heat can be channeled directly into an industrial absorption chiller. Unlike standard air conditioners that require massive amounts of electricity to run mechanical compressors, an absorption chiller uses heat to drive a thermodynamic cooling cycle (commonly utilizing a Lithium Bromide and water mixture).
This zero-electricity cooling can power a Freeze Desalination process for seawater:
Ocean water is pumped into the chiller vats.
The extreme cooling freezes the seawater. As the water transitions into a solid ice crystal lattice, it naturally expels salt and impurities into brine pockets.
The pure ice is separated, washed, and melted into fresh, potable water.
Crucially, freeze desalination accomplishes water purification solely through thermodynamic phase changes. This completely eliminates the need for Reverse Osmosis (RO) systems, which rely on thousands of highly degradable, single-use plastic membranes that eventually end up in landfills.
3. Zoning and Economic Impact
The CEMEX site is currently a patchwork of Commercial Agriculture (CA) and heavy industrial zoning constraints. To make this facility a reality, the Board of Supervisors must champion a Local Coastal Program (LCP) amendment to rezone the immediate footprint of the silos and turbine halls to Light Industrial / Public Facility (PF).
This rezoning strategy offers profound economic benefits:
Municipal Utility Revenue: By operating the site as a county-partnered utility or through land-lease agreements with California energy developers, the county creates a steady, multi-decade tax revenue stream that dwarfs the seasonal fluctuations of tourism.
Water Sales: The fresh water generated by the freeze desalination process can be sold to the local sanitation district or routed to the adjacent agricultural sectors along Highway 1, creating a secondary commodity market for Davenport.
High-Quality Jobs: The retrofitting, maintenance, and operation of thermal batteries and absorption chillers require skilled local tradesmen—machinists, pipefitters, and electrical engineers—creating high-paying, year-round jobs rather than low-wage, seasonal hospitality work.
4. System Transparency
To protect the community's interests, the digital infrastructure and control mechanisms running the grid distribution and water management must be governed by Ethical Source or Source Available software licenses. Ensuring the software remains open and auditable prevents corporate monopolization, allowing our local Santa Cruz engineers to repair, study, and maintain the facility's code independently.
This proposal transforms an industrial scar into a globally recognized standard for sustainable engineering, entirely aligned with the ecological and economic priorities of Santa Cruz County.
Works Cited
Antora Energy. Manufacturing American-Made Thermal Batteries, Antora Energy, 2024,
ResearchGate. Process design and technoeconomic analysis for zero liquid discharge desalination via LiBr absorption chiller integrated HDH-MEE-MVR system, April 2023, www.researchgate.net/publication/370206786.
RRM Design Group. Santa Cruz County unveils Davenport Cemex plant reuse options, RRM Design Group,
Santa Cruz County Planning Department. Davenport Cement Plant Coastal Restoration and Reuse Plan, Santa Cruz County, Oct. 2018, www.santacruzcountyca.gov/Portals/0/cemex/SC%20Coastal%20Restoral%20and%20Reuse%20Plan/Santa%20Cruz%20Coastal%20Restoration%20and%20Reuse%20Plan_20181030.pdf.
Winn, Zach. "MIT alumnus’ thermal battery helps industry eliminate fossil fuels." MIT News, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 25 Jan. 2024, energy.mit.edu/news/mit-alumnus-thermal-battery-helps-industry-eliminate-fossil-fuels/.
Paul Statchen CA USA assisted with Google Gemini AI
March 2026
https://nextdoor.com/p/sPgc7wZzQbcX?utm_source=share&extras=MTc0ODg4MjIz&utm_campaign=1773554721593&share_action_id=2de9630f-0622-4a07-bf4e-dd0185129fa0
ReplyDeleteHey Richard, thanks for digging into the numbers and bringing this up! You are absolutely right that if we were building a standard electricity-to-heat-to-electricity loop, traditional thermal storage falls short of the 80-95% round-trip efficiency of lithium-ion batteries due to thermodynamic limits (though modern thermal-to-electric systems hit closer to 40-50% rather than 10-15%).
ReplyDeleteThe real advantage of the Davenport CEMEX proposal is that it operates as a **cogeneration system** (Combined Heat and Power) rather than a simple battery. Here is how that changes the math:
* **Capturing "Waste" Heat:** We aren't throwing the remaining heat away like a traditional power plant does. The heat that isn't converted back to electricity is channeled directly into absorption chillers to power the zero-plastic freeze desalination process.
* **System-Wide Efficiency:** By combining electricity generation with fresh water production, the overall system efficiency skyrockets to 70-85% or higher, putting it right on par with chemical batteries.
* **Zero-Degradation Materials:** Lithium-ion batteries degrade heavily over 10-15 years, require toxic mining, and introduce severe fire hazards. Earth-abundant materials like sand or solid carbon blocks can cycle heat for decades with near-zero chemical degradation.
This creates a longer-lasting, non-toxic infrastructure investment that guarantees steady utility revenue for Pacific Elementary without the massive replacement costs of chemical batteries down the line. It also means we are paying local pipefitters, machinists, and electrical engineers to maintain native, California-made technology, rather than outsourcing battery replacements to overseas corporations.
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**Works Cited**
"Onsite Energy Technologies." *Better Buildings Solution Center*, U.S. Department of Energy, betterbuildingssolutioncenter.energy.gov/onsite-energy/technologies.
Hi Erik, that is completely understandable. Nobody wants their property taxes or local sales taxes increased, and that is exactly why this proposal is built the way it is: to prevent future tax hikes, not cause them.
ReplyDeleteHere is the breakdown of why we need it and how it gets paid for without raising your taxes:
State Funding, Not Local Taxes: We wouldn't be paying for this out of our local county budget. The California Energy Commission (CEC) is currently heavily funding these exact types of projects. They recently awarded millions in grants specifically to build non-lithium, Long-Duration Energy Storage (LDES) facilities across the state. We can tap into state grant money and private developer capital to fund the retrofit.
Generating Revenue, Not Siphoning It: Once operational, the facility would function either as a municipal utility (an Enterprise Fund) or operate under a land-lease agreement with a private California-based energy developer. That means it generates its own steady, multi-decade income by selling stored energy back to the grid and providing local fresh water.
Curing "Bond Fatigue": This is the biggest direct benefit to local taxpayers. Right now, when Pacific Elementary or other local schools need emergency repairs for leaking roofs or aging portables, the district has to put a new bond measure on the ballot—which directly increases our property taxes. By earmarking a portion of the revenue from this Davenport facility for our school districts, we create a self-sustaining financial safety net. It fixes our educational infrastructure without continuously passing the bill to local residents.
In short, we need it because it takes an abandoned industrial site and turns it into a localized profit center for the county, keeping our tax money in our own pockets while funding the community's critical needs.
Works Cited
"Long Duration Energy Storage Program." California Energy Commission, State of California, https://www.energy.ca.gov/programs-and-topics/programs/long-duration-energy-storage-program.
Hi Peter, you hit the nail on the head! It definitely sounds like science fiction at first glance, so the 🤯 reaction is completely warranted. The link you shared is exactly the kind of native, California-based technology we are talking about for the Davenport CEMEX site.
ReplyDeleteTo answer your question directly: yes, you are exactly right. It is fundamentally a much safer, cleaner, and longer-lasting way to store massive amounts of energy compared to standard chemical batteries.
Here is a quick breakdown of how it works and why the "efficiency" piece is actually a huge win for our specific proposal:
The Technology: Instead of using toxic, flammable lithium that degrades and needs replacing every 10 to 15 years, companies like Antora Energy use excess solar and wind power to heat up earth-abundant materials—like solid carbon blocks—to incredibly high temperatures. It essentially makes them glow like the inside of a giant toaster.
The Safety Factor: Carbon blocks are virtually indestructible, do not catch fire, and can cycle heat for decades with zero chemical degradation.
The Efficiency Equation: You are completely right that simply turning electricity into heat and then back into electricity is less efficient on paper than a lithium-ion battery. However, our Davenport proposal uses a cogeneration approach. The heat that is not converted back to the grid is not wasted—it is captured and routed into absorption chillers to power the zero-plastic freeze desalination process. Because we are producing both electricity and fresh water for the county, the overall efficiency of the whole system becomes highly competitive.
Ultimately, it means we can retrofit those old industrial silos with non-toxic materials, create long-term jobs for local trades workers, and generate steady municipal revenue for schools like Pacific Elementary without the massive, looming replacement costs of chemical batteries.
Works Cited
"Technology." Antora Energy, www.antora.com/technology.