Posted on 11/22/2006 10:17:48 AM PST by NormsRevenge
Several Southern California cities have abandoned plans to renew long-term contracts for coal-fired electricity, gambling on the availability of adequate alternative energy from cleaner sources.
Local officials told Utah-based Intermountain Power Agency on Monday they wouldn't be renewing their contracts for cheap, coal-fired power, which expire in 2027, and would instead be looking for available alternatives, from wind farms to desert solar power.
"It's a huge change," said Mayor Todd Campbell of Burbank, which is one of the cities that decided to not renew its contract. The others are Pasadena, Glendale, Riverside and Anaheim. They join the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which had earlier rejected plans to renew the contract with Intermountain.
"I think everybody has decided basically not to renew at this time," said Intermountain's general manager Reed Searle. He said the company had worked for three years on the renewals and was now looking at ways to modernize its plants to bring them into compliance with California's landmark greenhouse-gas legislation that takes effect Jan. 1.
Utility managers said researching and building infrastructure to replace the use of coal-fired power will be a costly, risky business.
"It's a very challenging undertaking. All of these technologies are still in their infancy," said Phyllis Currie, general manager of Pasadena Water & Power. "We're still looking at the fact that right now, the Intermountain plant is 65 percent of our energy."
The cities' decision came after increased pressure from politicians and environmentalists.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., wrote a letter to an umbrella group for the cities last week saying she was "shocked and dismayed" by an initial decision last month by Burbank to renew the contract.
Staff members of several utilities met on Monday with state Sen. Don Perata, D-Oakland, who wrote the greenhouse gas legislation, to discuss the issue.
Currie said the utilities wanted to explain how important Intermountain was to California cities. "It's a serious issue when you tell us to walk away from that," she said.
The move could put the region in the forefront nationally of the commercial use of alternative energy in coming years.
Searle said Intermountain was exploring burning biomass instead of coal, or possible burial of carbon dioxide.
Intermountain also extended its renewal offer for any sort of power from the plants until 2023 from the previous deadline of next May. Utility officials hope state regulators will let them renew the contracts if greenhouse gases are reduced.
It's not just costly and risky, it will be a disaster. There is data available on the books right now that shows that the capacity factor for California's vaunted wind farms dropped to something like 5% during their last heat wave. And they think that having something that puts out 5% of its nameplate capacity when it is needed the most is the way to meet an ever-growing demand? What kind of Moonbeams do they having running the place?
LADWP is part owner of the nuclear power plant where I work. They get plenty of power from us. Funny how that isn't mentioned in the article.
Stupid Moonbeams run the place sortof.....time to look for a move....
*******************AN EXCERPT *************************
By Dale RussakoffWashington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 16, 2006; Page A01
COULTERVILLE, Ill. -- Billy Vandom was 220 feet underground, but to him, it was the top of the world. He is a coal miner, a species of well-paid American worker that was on the verge of extinction in these parts for more than a decade.
Now global economic forces have realigned, and coal mining is back. And a new generation of miners is living the good life not seen here since coal was king.
|
"I was able to buy me a new truck and I got my wife a new car," said Vandom, 22, from the helm of an enormous ram car, hauling tons of freshly mined coal through the low-lit darkness of the Gateway Mine here. "We have a new baby boy, and we moved into a new apartment and we fixed up a nice room for him." Vandom has gone from struggling to pay bills with two low-wage jobs -- cooking at the Elks club and changing oil at the local Pennzoil -- to making $20 an hour plus benefits. |
If it weren't for the Clinton-Riady connection, we could be getting huge amounts of clean coal from the National Monument declared by ex-42, seemingly as payback to Riady. The only other source of such coal is controlled by him in Indonesia. President Bush should just declare the area containing the clean coal as no longer protected by the Monument. People could understand this.
Here in blue state Maryland, people are shocked when they hear that more than half of our power comes from coal.
I like your list but I felt compelled to change #3.
1. Cut off nose.
2. Look for nose job.
3. Expect others to pay for new nose.
4. Doctor heads for Cayman Islands.
5. If the nose job doesn't work, go to 1.
Sounds like Mr. Blum has his eye on investing in some Alternative Energy scam companies and needs the wife to guarantee the biz.
No doubt about that. You had Diablo Canyon and SONGS going full tilt at, what, 99+% capacity factor during that heatwave? And wind power is struggling to break the 5% mark for capacity factor. Yet wind gets all the adoration from these wackos and never a word (except bad) about the nukes. These people are getting reliable, zero-emissions, economical energy from nukes yet you never hear a good word said about them.
In his case he's referring to the Palo Verde Nuclear plant which is west of Phoenix in Arizona.
The leftist hypocrites who babble about being "anti-nook" convienently don't mention that L.A. gets a significant amount of power from one of the eeevil nook plants. Which is also convienently located out of sight and out of mind in far away Arizona (all of about 360 miles away in the case of the plant itself, but that might as well be the moon for a lot of people in L.A., they don't even know where Redlands is).
This is the typical California Leftist strategy: NIMBY.
Morons the next Enron is spinning up a way to nail them.
Well, I imagine Palo Verde was probably in the same range of capacity factor, unless they had some of their units offline for scheduled outages. Nuke plant availability literally blows wind power availability away, yet nobody ever mentions it.
In other words you can NEVER trust EnvironMentalists! They're not doing what they're doing to protect the environment whatsoever!!! They have another agenda entirely!!!
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