San Francisco Offloads Green Power Bills Onto U.S. Taxpayers

Calwatchdog.com ^ | Sept. 19, 2012 | Wayne Lusvardi

[WayneLusvardi]

San Francisco must have taken a chapter out of Laer Pearce’s new book “Crazifornia.” The city’s new CleanPower SF plan garners subsidies from U.S. taxpayers for green-power purchases.

Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But you would have to be crazy not to shift your green power purchases onto U.S. taxpayers if laws provide for it. And what city wouldn’t want to do it if it could cover it up as part of their compliance with AB 32, the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006? San Francisco is “gaming the system,” just as Enron supposedly did in the 2001 state energy crisis. But there is a double standard when municipalities do it.

Major newspapers are uncritically reporting San Francisco’s pending adoption of its CleanPowerSF plan where it would buy electricity from Shell North America’s renewable power business. The new plan is part of the city’s “community choice aggregation” system authorized in 2002 after the state’s energy crisis under Assembly Bill 117, sponsored by Assemblywoman Carole Migden, D-San Francisco.

CleanPowerSF provides an option to electricity customers to choose renewable fuel like solar and wind for their homes. Customers could stay with Pacific Gas & Electric, which previously had a monopoly on providing power to the city. Or they would choose to get clean, renewable power, reportedly for a higher price. Most energy experts agree that renewable power costs much more than electricity from conventional natural gas power plants. So why would San Francisco want to do this?

[cripplecreek]

Yet they want to drain the Hetch Hetchy reservoir thus removing that source of power and water.

Pure brilliance.

[Army Air Corps]

Eco-Ping.

[TurboZamboni]

any wonder why it’s the most expensive place in the country , outside of maybe lower Manhatten?