Posted on 04/15/2007 11:21:19 AM PDT by WayneLusvardi
Pasadena's NIRPY Electricity Integrated Resource Plan
1. NIRP - Variation of acronym for NERP, Nefarious Nonprofit Evil Resident Politick A fascist organization bent on the destruction of the human race! "Integrated Resource Plans (IRP's) are a compromise of failed policies. Ours will not fail." ~The NERP doctrine 2. NIRP - Nonprofit Integrated Resources Plan 3. NERP - Non Energy Reporting news Papers Paraphrased from The Urban Dictionary - http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=nerp
Sum: Will Pasadena's new proposed electricity Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) be a product of NERP - the Nefarious Nonprofit Evil Resident Politick (NERP)? Find out below.
Pasadena Water and Power (PWP) is seeking input regarding the proposed Integrated Resource Plan (IRP). The proposed 20-year plan will ensure reliable and environmentally responsible electric service with stable rates and energy independence. The IRP is PWP's blueprint for meeting the future needs of its customers over the next two decades. The IRP is available at . Comments on the proposed draft IRP should be submitted by April 23, 2007, via e-mail to sendo@cityofpasadena.net; or fax to 626-744-6432. The draft Integrated Resource Plan can be found here: http://www.cityofpasadena.net/waterandpower/pdf/IRP2%20Jan%2031.pdf26). The November 2006 presentation of the draft IRP can be found here: http://www.onwebtelevision.com/irp
The IRP calls for replacing 3 of 5 old local generating units with gas-fired plants and shifting to 20% renewable energy by 2017 to comply with AB 32 and SB 1368, both of which will entail undisclosed and possibly inestimable risky electricity rate hikes.
Noted economist Robert Samuelson has stated that the shift of 20% of our electricity to green power will result in a 40% increase in electricity rates and a 20% decline in the generating capacity of our power plants.
The local newspapers (PSN/PW) are dependent on a healthy economy. Yet those newspapers have not considered it important enough to consider the impacts Pasadena's proposed Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) will have on business and the economy, housing affordability, and social aid programs. The Economic Development and Employment Element (EDEE) to the General Plan (GP) has purportedly not been updated since 1986 - see here: http://www.cityofpasadena.net/planning/deptorg/commplng/GenPlan/econ.asp).
The EIR for the Central District Specific Plan (CDSP) and the update to the General Plan (GP) directly linked increased density to increased local job sources. How can the City attract businesses/jobs without attractive electricity rates reflected in the Economic/Employment Element to the General Plan (EDEE)? Even half of a 40% increase in electricity rates will be passed on to renters of the 53% of rental units in the City's housing stock, affecting many marginal economic population segments. As apartment net income dwindles from higher electricity rates, tax appeals will adjust assessed valuations and the tax base will decline. Will the IRP necessitate an update to the General Plan EDEE and HE (Housing Element)?
The newly formed Environmental Advisory Commission (EAC) has not one person on it representing the business community. Like everything else in Pasadena, it has been handed over to a bunch of activists and non-profits to make business policies for the City. Through the EAC the "Integrated Resource Plan" for the City of Pasadena appears to integrate nonprofits into every aspect of running and advising the city. Even the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce (PCoC) now has been "integrated" (infiltrated) with nonprofits by our mayor. Has the IRP been made to please the Nefarious Nonprofit Evil Resident Politick (NERP) or the body politick?
Yet if the economy and tax base in Pasadena declines precipitously the many nonprofits dependent on the City would be the first to be cut from the City budget. There is no representation of the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce (PCoC) or the Old Town Management District (OTMD) on the EAC.
During its first meeting the Environmental Advisory Commission admitted it hadn't a clue what they should consider their mission and their objectives. Should the City turn over revising its EDEE and HE to make them consistent with the IRP to a bunch of rank (i.e., "green") amateurs? The agenda of next weeks EAC meeting has the IRP on it. Will the EAC and the City be adept enough to know that a revision of the IRP should require a comporting revision of the EDEE? Or will the City just ignore the EDEE as it possibly has for 20 years?
What about the gross negligence of the editors of the local newspapers in bringing this issue to the light of the public? Are they too busy creating ginned-up anti-war and IRS scandal news and tilting local elections to fit their ideologically tinged windmills to care?
By the way the IRP states that:
"the energy policy of deregulation codified by Assembly Bill 1890 (passed in 1996) has been discredited by a(n) historic energy crisis that has resulted (sic) in substantial cost to ratepayers and protracted litigation throughout the state. The goal of AB-1890 of lowering rates in California has failed."
If the PWP can not get the reasons for the 2001 California Energy Crisis right how can they get anything else right? The Energy Crisis was "environmentally caused" when the Clinton-led EPA threatened a shut off of Federal funds if California did not clean up air pollution by the year 2001. In 2001, we were "Running Out of (clean) Sky," not energy per se. To meet this mandate California passed AB 1890 and shut down its old polluting power plants, reducing energy capacity just when out-of-state hydro-power supplies ran short (i.e., "the Perfect Storm"). But this left huge unpaid "stranded debts" (unpaid mortgages) on the old polluting power plants and nuke plants and bad investments in renewable energy.
Not wanting to be thrown out of office for raising electricity rates by 10% or more legislators initially devised a deregulation scheme to let the private sector try to lower rates through competition. However, when the legislature and the governorship went all-Democratic in late 2000, our elected leaders pulled the plug on deregulation and mandated price caps, a "competitive transition" surcharge, and a blockade on the purchase of cheap imported electricity. The effect of this was to induce a pricing fever in the market which compounded an artificial energy crisis in the hopes of paying off the "stranded debts," again hoping to avoid political repercussions. This failed and the $41 billion in unpaid debts were rolled into a revenue bond (to be paid back at three times the cost) and the Governor was successfully recalled from office.
The media, taking their script from anti-business The Utility Reform Network (TURN), misled the public that Enron, not government, created the California Energy Crisis. Once again in 2007 we are reading about new stiffer air pollution enforcement and a risky shift of one-fifth of our energy supplies to expensive green power mandated by the same crowd of legislators who brought you the Energy Crisis of 2001. Should we believe them this time around with their rhetoric about a new ginned-up "Global Warming" crisis as the reason to raise electricity rates?
What constitutes Green power? What is the mix?
The mix is what an Integrated Resource Plan is to recommend. It can be solar, wind, geothermal, methane from landfills, hydro, etc. Such green power sources are not equal however. It costs $1.69 to reduce a metric ton of CO2 by landfill methane but $269 for the California Solar Energy Initiative to do the same (American Council on Capital Formation). But enviros want to put landfills out of business and replace them with recycling centers.
It would be interesting to know from what source the green power was? Electricity is priced by season and time of day. So winter electricity (when there is no cold snap like now when it is cool but dry) might be modestly priced. Electricity at peak price in August is the key to watch for, especially if your utility bought into a wind farm that isn’t producing during a heat wave. Wind farms were producing at 5% of capacity during the California Energy Crisis of 2001 and required back-up redundant conventional power.
The company that I work for now has Nukes and Coal plants that do a lot less in terms of bus bar costs, less than 3.6 cents, why go green?
Green Power is much more costly but the purported reason to shift to it is that it is “clean.” When you look into it further, Pasadena gets most of its power from a coal fired plant in Utah (Intermountain), one of the cleanest plants in the nation. So shifting from dirty coal power would clean the air in Utah. But cleaning the air wouldn’t have real health benefits, but is to clear any haze for the Grand Canyon tourist economy. So aesthetics drives environmentalism, something like the aestheticism which Hitler and Mussolini used to create inspiring mass movements. See my article “California’s Jinxed Air Quality Measures and the Power of the Aesthetic” here: http://antigreen.blogspot.com/2007/01/californias-jinxed-air-quality.html
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