Natural gas replacing nuclear power for San Diego

Feb 20 - YellowBrix

Accusations that the state of California failed to consider clean energy options in replacing power once supplied by the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station are falling on deaf ears, as utility regulators and the state’s top court rejects appeals from local and national environmental groups.

The complaints are centered around power supplies to the San Diego area, which once relied on San Onofre for 20 percent of its electricity, and two gas-fired power plants that have been embraced as early substitutes.

San Onofre was retired in 2013 because of a botched replacement generator project. Environmentalists warn that new investments in natural gas plants will undermine California’s aggressive goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions linked to global warming.

One of the successor plants, the Pio Pico Energy Center southeast of San Diego in Otay Mesa , is slated for construction starting March 9 after the California Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge by environmental groups. Opponents contend the plant, capable of powering nearly 200,000 homes at a time, is not needed to meet San Diego’s energy needs.

San Diego Gas & Electric is seeking approval for a second gas-fired power plant twice that size at Carlsbad , to replace nuclear power and prepare for the imminent retirement of the 60-year-old, gas-fired Encina Power Station .

New Jersey -based NRG would develop the Carlsbad facility, under a $2.6 billion contract underwritten by San Diego -area utility customers.

As the California Public Utilities Commission weighs whether to approve that Carlsbad plant, SDG&E also gathered competing bids in January from developers of both conventional fossil fuel generators and clean energy sources. The goal is to fill an 800 megawatt gap left by the retirement of San Onofre.

The Sierra Club has asked SDG&E to disclose publicly more about the competitive bids — including the amount of energy proposed for each technology and possible start dates for the facilities.

Environmental groups, including the Sierra Club , say approval of the Carlsbad plant as proposed would leave only a tiny slice of the energy pie for alternatives that produce less air pollution.

SDG&E disclosed that it received bids that when stacked together would meet 14,000 megawatts of demands for power — more than six times the prior power capabilities of San Onofre.

SDG&E said further public disclosures sought by the Sierra Club would jeopardize the confidentiality of sensitive information and could lead to market manipulation that adversely affects utility customers. The utilities commission sided with SDG&E on Tuesday, in a shortly worded ruling by administrative law judge Hallie Yacknin .

Matt Vespa , senior attorney for the Sierra Club , said the public deserves more information.

“We just wanted details of how much clean energy was bid in, and how much conventional (fossil fuel), to give a sense to the public, who is very curious about this,” he said. “The public should have some sense of what goes on in there. It’s all going into this black box.”

SDG&E is seeking authorization for the Carlsbad Energy Center at the same time it evaluates the new bids. The overlapping quests for a new energy source in the San Diego area are the peculiar outcome of a race by grid operators to find an appropriate replacement for nuclear power. State law requires consideration of clean energy solutions, like solar power and conservation schemes that reduce peak electricity demands, before new fossil fuel burning power plants are commissioned.

SDG&E says quick-start generators proposed at the Carlsbad Energy Center would replace a much less efficient power plant and help integrate more renewable energy into the grid by filling in gaps in solar and wind power. The project is planned adjacent to existing Encina plant on already developed land, minimizing some environmental impacts.

In filings with the utilities commission, SDG&E noted that the Sierra Club and a long list of consumer groups and special interests have access to sealed information about the bidding process that cannot be shared with the public.

The commissioner overseeing the Carlsbad Energy Center evaluation, Mike Florio , has been swept up in accusations of overly cozy relations between the commission and Pacific Gas & Electric in the aftermath of the deadly San Bruno natural gas pipeline explosion in 2010.

At a conference in September about the Carlsbad power plant application, Florio told consumer groups and special interests with objections to the Carlsbad plant — also known as intervenors — that they might be wasting their time.

“To be quite frank, if I were an intervenor trying to decide how to allocate scarce resources, I would not allocate them to this proceeding,” Florio said at a September meeting about the Carlsbad Energy Center contract.

He did not respond to a request for comment.

As lead commissioner in the case, Florio will either write or strongly influence final recommendations that are voted on by the commission. He also will recommend to the commission how much — if anything — advocacy groups should be reimbursed for their contribution to deliberations.

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