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Tuesday, Nov 24, 2009
The electricity industry and the GOP blame NIMBY neighbors for the crisis. Critics say they're trying to turn out the lights on democracy.
Jan 30, 2001 | Calpine's Metcalf Energy Center is a $300 million, 600-megawatt natural gas power plant that may one day sit on a hillside overlooking south San Jose. But before its turbines ever start generating electricity for power-famished Californians, it must first win approval from the California Energy Commission. And that is no simple task, as a quick glance at the Metcalf Energy Center's CEC docket indicates.
The docket currently overflows with more than 1,000 entries that add up to a two-year, 3,000-page record of public debate and unresolved discord. Along with complaints brought by networking giant Cisco -- which reportedly has its eye on that same south San Jose hillside for its own expansion purposes -- the docket includes endless reams of "air quality data requests," "notices of need for additional time to respond," "letters of opposition" and "letters of concern." There are also revisions of Calpine's initial application, revisions of those revisions, "workshop sign-up sheets" and several cases of "testimony in the areas of: Project Description, Compliance and General Condition, Geology & Paleontological Resources, Cultural Resources."
No wonder the California Energy Commission has this running joke: "No plant gets approved unless the paperwork weighs as much as the plant itself." The docket is a Sisyphean boulder of information -- no sooner is one request for information satisfied than an avalanche of additional requirements comes tumbling down.
Is there a better way? Calpine and other power wholesalers think so. Although nine new power plants are scheduled to come online in California in the next three years and a dozen more are under review, the wholesalers are currently lobbying California legislators for reforms that would supposedly speed up the process: fast-track approval of new plants that sit on old sites, faster and fewer instances of public input and changes in the tax structure. California, argue the wholesalers, should be more like Texas, where the average approval time for power plants is a nimble eight to nine months. Two new power plants will come online in California this summer, says Calpine spokesman Bill Highlander. If the approval process for those plants could have been accelerated by a mere six months, says Highlander, it "would have made a significant impact on the present situation."
The wholesalers aren't the only parties pointing figures at California's regulatory system. Washington's newly ascendant Republicans are also harping on the dangers they say are wrought by overheated environmental concerns. As the California electricity crisis worsened, aides to President Bush repeatedly cited the state's woes as evidence proving environmental restrictions should be relaxed -- specifically recommending that the nation move quickly to open an Alaskan wildlife refuge to oil and gas drilling. Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, told the Los Angeles Times that California's crisis is essentially a lesson on the consequences of "environmental extremism."
But blaming California's regulatory regime and environmentalism for the state's energy crisis isn't supported by the evidence, say some researchers. The present crisis "is a 'Perfect Storm' scenario," says Robert Burns, senior research specialist at Ohio State's National Regulatory Research Institute. "There are so many unforeseen factors hitting California all at once -- the price cap, rising prices, increased demand. It's very complex."
The call for relaxed environmental scrutiny is nothing less than a call "to do away with regional oversights and public reviews," says Daniel Kammen, director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at UC-Berkeley. "It's a classic end run around the issue." And while it's true, he says, that certain aspects of California's approval process could use tweaking, the idea that it needs an overhaul is without merit. Some reforms have already been enacted, making California's approval system at least as fast as several other states' and ultimately "as efficient as it needs to be," Kammen says. Enacting additional reforms, say Kammen and other energy researchers, could have dire consequences -- not just for the environment but for democracy.
"When you don't include public comment, you've got Russian Communism," says Amory Lovins, CEO of the Rocky Mountain Institute, an energy policy nonprofit. "It just doesn't work."
