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Emblematic 123-mile Line from Imperial Valley to San Diego

SDG&E’s Power Link is to slated to stretch 123 miles from solar farms of Imperial County to San Diego, where it will deliver power for 685,000 homes. It’s been called the most rigorously reviewed infrastructure project in the state’s history*. It’s certainly been a lightning rod for environmental opposition.

Personally, I don’t get it.

My understanding of the processes involved in the planning and obtaining of approval for the addition of any new transmission lines to the grid is that they are exorbitantly onerous.

Citing the history of the transmission lines that connected the Tehachapi Pass wind farms to Los Angeles, as reported by Thomas L. Friedman in “Hot, Flat, and Crowded,” it appears that the power companies choose their best route according to geography. Then they go to battle for as much as a dozen years. The battle involves environmental reviews and jurisdictional hurdles between stake holders, including state and federal land agencies and also the national forests. Much of the battle has to do with the fact that utilities are intent upon routing new transmission lines through pristine landscapes. So it really takes a dozen years? Isn’t there something to be said for avoiding conflict?

Conflict is expensive in a number of ways.

Costs almost always go up. If the original projected cost of a transmission line is two billion dollars, how much more will the project cost a dozen years later? Surely there would be savings to be had if the project encounters less (or no) opposition and could be implemented more quickly. Not only would the cost of construction pencil out much nearer to original projections, but that would also put the transmission lines into service many years sooner - which probably has an even greater monetary value.

So you ask, how could we reduce opposition and lower regulatory hurdles?

How about the obvious: whenever and wherever possible, new transmission lines should be sited along existing power corridors. Where there are no existing power corridors, the lines should follow highways.

The advantages are many:

• There’s little rationale for environmental opposition to a project that runs down a corridor already marred by an existing phalanx of transmission towers, or an existing highway, or a combination of both.
• Environmental review and permitting could and “should” be simplified and streamlined for transmission projects that follow existing corridors.
• Existing corridors include ready road access, both for construction and maintenance which also reduces cost.
• Recently, some of Southern California’s most devastating wildfires were caused by transmission lines that sparked into overgrown brush. To avoid future liabilities, power companies will need to clear the undergrowth at or near transmission lines. It would be far less expensive for them to maintain brush abatement along fewer, but more intensely utilized corridors.
• Simplified approval means reduced litigation and permitting costs which result in reduced project costs.
• Expedited permitting means that construction costs are kept closer to original estimates.
• Fast track permitting that leads to quicker construction would also translate into earlier utilization, which also has a monetary value.
• The cost savings outlined above would, in all but the most extreme cases, outweigh the potential for additional expense of longer transmission lines necessitated to follow existing corridors.
• The smart grid would be here sooner, instead of later.

So why don’t we get smarter about planning and mapping? Smarter utility planners would get their smart grid quicker and at less total cost - benefiting not only the utilities but also both to the rate payers and the environment.

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*I wonder if that’s utility co. hyperbole or if it really has attained more attention and closer examination than projects like the Diablo Canyon of the 1970’s.

Massive Gas Fired Power Plant Planned for Carlsbad Coast

The NRG plant planned for Carlsbad is unsustainable legacy infrastructure and must be stopped. While many local citizens’ concerns may be centered on the location near the beach, in my opinion, the biggest reason to oppose this plant is that it represents a continuation of the old gray economy precisely when we must usher in a new green economy. Legacy power generation is also terribly inefficient; over 50% of the fuel burned goes to heat waste.

Investment in legacy infrastructure is bad investment. Now’s the time for investment in distributed or centralized sustainable alternative energy; to invest in the world we want our children to inherit – and there is no time left to waste on ill conceived legacy infrastructure.

Yes, gas fired electricity is cleaner than coal and is both safer and faster to implement than nuclear but it’s not clean, not sustainable, and it has a substantial carbon footprint. Gas fired electricity contributes to global climate change and spews air-borne pollution that will cause to health problems for many of our neighbors.

To those who would say, “But we need the power.” If opponents of the NRG plant were to agree, saying, “Yes we need more power.” I’m quite sure that they’d complete that thought with, “But we need to be smarter about where we get our power.” The best source of power is conservation. Since we all waste power, that’s the first, easiest step to meeting power needs. After conservation, local distributed solar – on rooftops and fresh ideas like solar groves in parking lots (www.envisionsolar.com) make sense. Concentrated solar and wind farms would be yet another step.

But we don’t need the power. In the old gray economy, operating off the dumb grid, power companies must have standing generation capacity to meet peak demand — at late afternoon on about five of the hottest days of summer. “If” there were a need, the immediate, easy method to meet that need would be conservation; the least expensive of electricity is efficiency and conservation.

Provided our state and nation move forward to smarten the grid and develop reliable, sustainable, non-polluting energy, this plant will soon be an artifact of bad planning. That spells ratepayer boondoggle. Whether sited at the beach or in an invisible remote canyon it’s bad for everyone, including those who would build it.

To those who say, “Look at the jobs that will be lost if we don’t build this plant.” Opponents respond, “E-x-a-c-t-l-y! We agree. Jobs are important here. That’s also why we oppose the NRG plant: economists indicate that a renewable power facility would generate more than twice as many jobs, both construction and permanent. In a time when jobs are precious, that’s not a trivial concern.

This is more than just a local issue. It’s an international issue crucial to the survival of our species. As Nobu Tanaka, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), stated recently at the November 2008 London World Energy Outlook, “Current trends in energy supply and consumption are patently unsustainable — environmentally, economically, and socially. They can and must be altered.”

The gas fired NRG power plant proposed for Carlsbad is a wrong-headed continuation of the unsustainable legacy power infrastructure and must be stopped. From 2009 forward, we should only allow clean, renewable power generation to be built. Anything else is a nail in each of our children’s coffins.

This isn’t a Roadrunner Cartoon. There won’t be a moment of recognition, mid-air, when we can claw our way back to the cliff. In the real world, the gray economy is like this: we’re all in the same gray vehicle, in a fog, hurtling towards a cliff. Most of us know the cliff is there, and we also know that we need to apply the brakes, so why can’t we agree that now is the time to stop and not merely change, but… find direction?

The Time Is NOW!

Now that we’ve stepped into a new era of imagination, it’s time for the possible to be given its due. In that world, there’s at least one more step that can be contemplated, one that would take us beyond the goal of sustainability. And that is restoration.

Imagining a future where sustainability becomes the norm, then and there (but also here and now) the project of restoration becomes ever more pertinent, plausible and even possible. Because it is necessary.

Imagine a time when mankind, in a global action, begins to carefully, meticulously, lovingly restore the lands, the forests, the waters and seas to their aboriginal, vibrant, life-supporting thriving beauty. Brown fields burst into vegetable gardens. Crumbling corals, no longer choked in agricultural effluent, begin to re-grow, teeming with fish and invertebrates. Strip mines start to slowly heal as incipient forests sprout from those wounds. Imagine when the air blown west across the Pacific is no longer laden with toxic pollution that comes tandem with mountains of consumer “goods” that no one really needs, which – disposed too soon — have too short a useful life when measured against their true and total cost.

Imagine a future where man has learned to begin living in sustainable harmony with each other and with the planet, and we then turn our attention to healing our own pasts and to restoring our planet, which we sometimes used to call, “god’s green earth.”