Pacific Fusion – Alameda Point Environmental Report

Cleaning up buried tar left behind by an oil refinery at Alameda Point in the early 1900s did not appear to be a top priority until startup company Pacific Fusion came to City Hall in 2024 with a proposal to purchase about 12 acres of land, including the area where the old refinery was located. The proposal involves building a demonstration research facility, with $900 million in investment capital to back them up.

Two years earlier, in 2022, the Regional Water Quality Control Board (Water Board) had reached a voluntary agreement with Chevron, which bought the refinery in the early 1900s and subsequently closed it down, to clean up the site to meet regulatory standards. But Chevron’s two deadlines for producing a cleanup plan, the first on February 28, 2025, and the second on July 18, 2025, were not met.

More cutting edge green energy research and development may be coming to Alameda Point. A startup company called Pacific Fusion was formed in 2023 with the goal of commercializing new energy production technology. The company wants to purchase property at Alameda Point to research, develop and build their demonstration fusion energy machine.

Unlike conventional nuclear power, fusion energy technology seeks to fuse together atoms, rather than split them. The energy is considered a clean, safe, and affordable form of nuclear power that would revolutionize energy production. It has been only in the last two years that U.S. Department of Energy research labs have finally proven on their equipment that fusion energy is possible.