Proposed Carlsbad NRG Plant
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?
This entry was posted on Sunday, February 22nd, 2009 at 4:02 pm and is filed under Economy, Energy, Environment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.