As Usual - Latest In Long String Of Surprise Corporate Deals From The Mayor Bad For Environment And Consumers

Yesterday's round in the Combustion Turbine (CT) battle was lost to the Mayor. The SFPUC Commissioners unanimously caved and voted to pass a resolution that ok's a sham deal just set up by Mayor Newsom that will make fossil fuel emissions and planet heating CO2 missions worse for THREE decades longer than with the current Mirant plant, and spend hundreds of millions of public and rate payer dollars on 30 more years of fossil fuel investments when those hundreds of millions could instead be spent solely on clean renewable energy to replace Mirant within just a few years. The JPower CT deal will extend fossil fuel electricity use and grid dominance in San Francisco 30 years longer - directly competing with the Community Choice renewable energy project by gobbling up 200 megawatts of energy capacity and the grid transmission line capacity that could have been given exclusively to the Community Choice renewables.

Michela Alioto-Pier, will hold hearings soon to develop a 100% clean energy alternative to Mirant and the CTs. We can help them get the Supervisors to vote for a clean energy solution. Lets roll up our sleeves and get to it.

Here are the deeper details on why this CT deal is so bad..

Why The Deal Is Far Worse For The Bayview

1) Lower Smoke Stacks That Are Closer To The Neighborhood: The CT plant will have -much- lower smokestacks that will be four blocks closer to Bayview. This means that carbon particulates and smog generating chemicals will disperse much more directly and quickly to the Bayview, than the pollution that comes from Mirant.

2) At Least 13 More Years Of Pollution When Mirant Would Close On Its Own In 3 Years, Or Even Sooner!: Only the Mayor's office, the amazingly deceptive SFPUC staff, and Cal ISO could be so cynically clever as to convince us that the Bayview will get -less- toxic exposure if we set up a polluting power plant deal with JPower for at least 13 more years of fossil fuel generation in the Bayview, when Mirant's highly polluting diesels will be forced by the Clean Air Act, strong local activism, and lawsuits to close by 2009 or sooner. And the 206 megawatt Mirant natural gas turbine will be made obsolete by both the 360 megawatts of local renewables and efficiency that will be installed under the Community Choice energy project by 2011, and the 400 megawatt Transbay Cable which will be built by 2009. And if we don't waste hundreds of millions of ratepayer and taxpayer dollars on the CTs and instead spend that revenue on building even -more- renewables faster, those renewables will allow us to close Mirant's gas generator even sooner. Don't forget that clean water regulations will demand the closure of Mirant's natural gas plant by 2009. If we have enough renewables online by then, we can use those clean water regulations to sue for the immediate closure of Mirant!

3) Another Possible Toxic Gentrification Project Like The Lennar/Redevelopment Project: Mayor Newsom's office has been working hard behind closed doors to work out a deal with Mirant that will get their agreement to close. So we are about to enter into a for-profit real estate deal with Mirant on a currently polluted power plant site; and Health Dept. Director Mitch Katz was at the Board of Supervisors this week with the SFPUC staff claiming that this CT project deal will result in -zero- pollution... Sound familiar?

4) Fewer Jobs: Vastly fewer jobs will be created with the small scale four acre installation of three existing CT gas turbines, when we could instead immediately move to construct and install solar panels, wind mills, and efficiency projects all over the Bayview and the City. Under legislation being created by the Ella Baker Center and other groups, a -lot- of those jobs would come to the Bayview.

Why The Deal Is Worse For Workers, Other Oppressed Neighborhoods, And The Planet

1) JPower Is NON-Union.

2) Polluting Other Workers And Neighborhoods: The JPower deal will install a Combustion Turbine at the SFO airport that will be allowed to run for commercial purposes until at least 2038! The pollution from that turbine will fill the lungs of workers at the airport and low income residents in neighborhoods near the airport.

3) JPower is in Burma! SFPUC Commissioner Normandy revealed yesterday that JPower has operations in Burma. The Board of Supervisors -just- passed a resolution directing the City to refuse business with any company doing business in Burma.

4) More Global Warming: Because the JPower CT project will run at least 10 years longer in the Bayview than Mirant, and for at least 30 years at the airport, the Planet will get decades more climate crisis amplifying CO2 and leaking methane (natural gas) much of it from inefficient and dangerous Liquid Natural Gas imported from overseas. The airport is about to install solar panels on its roofs. Why does it need a natural gas turbine..?

5) Less Solar And Wind: The 200 megawatts of CT fossil fuel power that will be in place for -decades- longer than Mirant, will reduce the need to switch immediately to a renewable energy infrastructure.

6) Higher Cost Energy: The world's supply of natural gas has peaked, and the price of natural gas will skyrocket and never go back down. So the CT project will rob us of millions more public dollars as it moves forward. Millions that could be spent on stable priced renewable energy instead.

7) The Worst Possible Message To A Fossil Fuel Addicted World: The entire world looks to San Francisco for innovative examples on energy and social justice. We would send the worst possible message to the world by building a fossil fuel power plant in our own city limits, at the very beginning of what must be a renewable energy century...

The fight is not over. We can, and will, stop this travesty in the Board of Supervisors.

peace

Eric Brooks