Green Power Idea

Green Power Idea's Appeal Outstrips The Reality

Mar 23 - Daily News; Los Angeles, Calif.

DEPENDING on their mood, which can be altered by the weather or their local politicians, average energy consumers are a fickle bunch. They gripe about failed energy policies and rising prices, but usually without much conviction. And they demand "clean" energy, but resent the higher price tag that comes with it.

Confronted with the lingering aftermath of the 2001 energy crisis, California consumers and politicians have jumped on the bandwagon of renewable energy, the so-called "clean" or "green" stuff that environmentalists and engineers love. "Green" electricity is any kind that's produced without nuclear power or burning fossil fuels, usually by way of solar, wind, geothermal, biomass and small hydro plants.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has set a goal of deriving one-third of the state's electricity from green sources by 2020. "We need to assure adequate and diverse fuel for power generation," Schwarzenegger said in his energy strategy plan. "In the longer term, power price stability will require diversification away from natural gas to assure a portfolio of alternate fuel sources for the state."

But the allure of green power always seems to outstrip reality, mesmerizing elected officials and their constituents because both think the other should love it.

The problem isn't effectiveness, it's cost.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado reports that a typical solar system providing half of a home's energy needs can eliminate the equivalent of a half-ton of sulfur dioxide pollution and 600 pounds of nitrogen oxides. Likewise, a typical 750 kW wind turbine produces an amount of electricity that, if derived from fossil fuels, would produce about 3 million pounds of carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas contributing to global warming.

But there's a price for the environmental benefits, as demonstrated in a Los Angeles city report issued late last year.

According to the report, at the city's Department of Water and Power, average prices at three coal-fired and two natural gas generation sources range from 1.8 cents to 3.7 cents per kWh. By comparison, the half-dozen solar-generated electricity systems from which the DWP draws excess power cost anywhere 50.8 cents to $1.28/ kWh.

That's quite a markup.

And when it comes time to adopting green power technologies, costs always seems to be a secondary consideration, even for the same consumers - you and me - who bemoan that the power crisis pushed up California's retail private-sector utility rates to among the highest in the nation.

That's the logical disconnect. Californians love green energy, but they hate paying the high costs that come with it.

On average, California's private-sector utility ratepayers, totaling about 75 percent of the state's consumers, pay electricity charges twice the national average. While individual homeowners and apartment residents may not be lining up in protest, their consumer organizations and elected representatives are. High utility bills are bad politics. They always have been, always will be.

Just ask the dethroned recall election loser, former Gov. Gray Davis.

The energy crisis of three years ago, which precipitated Davis' demise, brought about a large increase in retail energy rates, but they applied only to private-sector utilities and their largest customers. The vast majority of residents saw little or no increase in their electric bills. Still, even the spectacle of rate hikes was enough to start turning the public against Davis.

Nevertheless, two projects have arisen in the past few months - one private sector and the other public - that drive home the point that, in most cases, consumers and their government officials are ready to give blank checks to anyone promising a few kilowatts from a clean, nonpolluting source.

In early December, state regulators approved a sweetheart deal for Southern California Edison that promises to produce tens of millions of dollars of solar-generated electricity over 20 years. Yet even with the contract signed, the project won't see the light of day without a subsidy for "emerging technologies" from another state agency.

While denying Edison's requests for long-term, conventional power deals to head off the state crisis three years ago, the same state regulators this time welcomed a long-term, expensive deal for a technology that hasn't been proven commercially viable in the scale proposed.

Last December, Los Angeles' Water and Power Commission gave similar seat-of-the-pants approval to a 20-year, $320 million deal for the DWP. Under the plan, the city would get energy from a giant, 40-acre plant site that would turn the city's gardening waste into a combination of organic fertilizer and a gas that, when burned, spins turbines to make electricity.

This Rube Goldberg apparatus has been used quite successfully on a much smaller scale, but the Santa Monica firm that inked a deal with the DWP is talking about processing 3,000 tons of green waste daily - 15 times what has been done anywhere else, using about 20 percent of the yard clipping waste collected in L.A. County.

It could be an elegant way to get rid of the grass clippings that routinely clog our landfills, but the payoff is equivalent to less than 1 percent of the DWP's daily power needs. It also has many logistical problems related to where to put the facility and what sort of traffic and air-pollution mitigation can be done to reduce the impact of trucks carrying 3,000 tons of yard waste daily to the same central location.

Still, politicians continue to embrace these projects, despite their economic and logistical uncertainty, because they are "clean" and pleasing to our sense of protecting the environment. Consumers go along with the ruse because they don't know any better.

At the end of the day, the public is left with the gimmicks that drive up the cost of energy for all. That leaves consumers with little to do but complain after the fact, as usual.