Tiburon wins $24 mil grant to electrify Angel Island-Tiburon Ferry Co. fleet
Updated: May 21
Tiburon has been awarded a $24 million state grant toward converting the Angel Island-Tiburon Ferry Co.’s three-boat fleet into all-electric vessels. The process will be the first of its kind in California as short-run operators race the clock to meet a looming zero-emissions deadline.
“It’s the biggest step toward greenhouse-gas reduction that we could ever make in this town,” Mayor Alice Fredericks said last week after the award from the California Air Resources Board was announced April 29.
Tiburon applied for the grant in December, with the Town Council vote to accept scheduled for May 15, according to Town Manager Greg Chanis. The town will then use contracted Town Engineer John Moe, as Moe Engineering, to administer the electrification and infrastructure project, which will also require a dock expansion for new charging equipment, the installation of solar panels and an electric-grid upgrade from Pacific Gas and Electric Co.
Fleet owner Maggie McDonogh of Tiburon, a fourth-generation ferry captain whose father founded the private company in 1959, has been seeking assistance since before the state officially announced in late 2022 that all short-run ferries must be zero-emission by Dec. 31, 2025. The law applies to those with routes of 3 nautical miles or less, and the trip between her Tiburon ferry dock and Ayala Cove is about 1 nautical mile.
Without help, she said in February 2023, the cost of the requirement would have put her out of business.
The $24-million grant is from the Air Resources Board’s Advanced Technology Demonstration and Pilot Program, which is meant to support zero-emission efforts in both off-road equipment and vessel projects.
The award is being supplemented by $7 million in matching funds — including from the Volkswagen Environmental Mitigation Trust and Clean Off-Road Equipment Voucher Incentive Project — bringing the total funding to about $31 million.
In a May 2 email, McDonogh said she was grateful for the support of town officials because, as a private business, “we could not have applied for the funding for this project without them.”
“We are looking forward to providing zero-emission transport to Angel Island State Park for all the residents of Tiburon and our San Francisco community,” she wrote.
Of her three vessels, two — the Angel Island and the Bonita — will be converted by San Rafael-based Green Yachts, while a third, the Tamalpais, will be sold and replaced with an electric ferry.
The fleet serves about 100,000 passengers a year, with most visiting Angel Island State Park. The Angel Island is the main service ferry, a two-level 59-footer built by McDonogh’s father, Milt, that can carry up to 400 people. It will get two electric motors, 600 kilowatt-hours of semi-solid-state batteries, a new transmission, an emergency generator and U.S. Coast Guard-required safety equipment. The conversion is expected to be completed in December 2025 and cost about $5 million, according to staff reports.
The Bonita, a 53-foot, 98-passenger water taxi that’s also used for charters, will get an estimated $3-million conversion and be ready in January.
The two-level, 62-foot Tamalpais, which carries 100 passengers and is used for the company’s pleasure cruises, special events and charters, will be sold, with the proceeds and grant money going toward construction of a new $15-million, 135-foot vessel.
Supporting those conversions will require about $8 million in infrastructure upgrades.
Plans in September called for the Angel Island-Tiburon Ferry Co.’s dock at the Tiburon ferry terminal to expand from 9 feet to 12 feet and receive new pilings so they can properly hold new charging equipment.
Solar panels are also being planned for adjacent waterfront buildings owned by Sonoma-based A&C Ventures, according to Graham Balch, the CEO of Green Yachts.
He said PG&E will cover the cost to upgrade Tiburon’s electrical grid to bolster power to the terminal and support recharging up to five times a day and overnight.
Representatives for A&C Ventures and PG&E did not respond to requests for comment by The Ark’s May 6 press time.
Balch has been working with McDonogh since 2021, in anticipation of the change in the law. He said other operators in the state wouldn’t meet the end-of-2025 deadline to be zero-emissions even if they started working on it today, calling it “completely unfeasible.” He said he has “confidence that Angel Island-Tiburon Ferry will be the only operator in California to meet that deadline.”
He said the fleet electrification was “probably the biggest project in the town of Tiburon in terms of dollars in recent years,” noting the regulatory and bureaucratic challenges have made McDonogh “the canary in the coal mine dealing with this problem.”
McDonogh had been rejected for several grants, many because she’s a private entity.
“Even though we’ve got a sprint to do this work on the boat, we’ve already solved a lot of the tough challenges that block other projects,” Balch said.
Balch acknowledged there are some challenges ahead for the project: The state’s funding mechanism will be under maintenance until mid-August, and herring-spawning restrictions limit in-water work between Nov. 30 and June 1. They’ll also face other regulatory hoops and U.S. Coast Guard certification.
“It’s a big project for Maggie,” said Fredericks, Tiburon’s mayor. “Even though it is required by law, we owe her a debt of gratitude for taking it on.”
Reach Tiburon reporter Francisco Martinez at 415-944-4634.
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