Wow! The plot thickens...

Now you're cookin' with some actual facts and good reporting.

This is a fascinating story if true.

And it shows precisely why environmental and social justice groups have had such a hard time convincing some progressive supervisors to join our side to oppose the peakers, when it is obvious, for the sake of the planet, and the Bayview, that they should.

Specifically on your public power note - What public power? A polluting plant that will be spending the next 18-30 years attempting to pay itself off and just break even, if we're lucky? And if natural gas peaks and permanently spikes in price (as oil has) during that 18-30 years (which is highly likely), San Francisco will lose tens (perhaps hundreds) of millions of dollars because the plant will -never- pay itself off.

A few years ago, R.W. Beck did a study showing us how we could take over PG&E's power lines and -make- hundreds of millions of dollars for San Francisco, not lose tens to hundreds of millions. Your peaker version of 'public power' would do the latter, while continuing to pollute the Bayview for decades. And if by setting a bad example to the world, it contributes to a continuing global climate crisis without end; the Bayview will end up under water.

This isn't public power - it's public debt - along with decades of public pollution and potential eviction by flood.

Eric Brooks
San Francisco Green Party
Sustainability Working Group

eric,

jeez.
come on and face the facts: PG&E is way WAY better at this stuff than you are.

while your colleague joshua arce was talking big and writing: "At some point this admittedly complicated issue must become a serious policy discussion, and I think it finally has," and while he claimed that your work was "the most important catalyst for turning the City around on this issue." the FACT was that PG&E was (effectively) pushing what they always push - a continued monopoly on local power generation.

they used you as a cover, they are STILL using you as a cover, and you are only too willing to be that for them.
so face the fact: they are USING you, and playing you for chumps.

you have never faced the engineering reality: the state ISO requires local power generation.
you have never faced the other engineering reality: the peakers are cleaner than the Mirant plant.
and you aren't facing the political reality: PG&E owns this issue at city hall until there is a united front against them.

if there could only be a unified effort to get PG&E out of the electricity monopoly, THEN we could work together to push them out for good, build a sustainable energy future, and retire the peakers before they are ever turned on. instead, you are shielding PG&E and protecting their power monopoly, at the expense of the people of Potrero Hill and the Bayview. get a clue.

Eric, I'm dubious about the peaker plants, too, for all the same reasons you are. But I think it's important to understand the politics here, and the fact that public power has to be part of the discussion.

Of course public power has to be part of the discussion. As Ross Mirkarimi recently pointed out, this plant wouldn't even be on the table if we were a public power city.

Indeed, worthless polluting power plants that get us into hopeless environmental and economic debt are not public power. Taking over the grid is public power.

As to -your- comments 'factcheck' why don't you reveal who you really are and tell us all what you yourself are doing to promote public power and green energy, and to get PG&E out of the City. (My guess is that you are doing little or nothing. Otherwise you would openly reveal yourself instead of taking hyberbolic cheap shots from the side lines.)

The organizations I am involved with helped found the Community Choice Energy Alliance to fight for large scale renewables and public power at the same time, while kicking PG&E out of the energy game.

And PG&E isn't playing anybody, they are (in their eyes) just cynically taking advantage of circumstances. The coalition we founded last year to stop the peakers finally started getting some traction with the Board of Supervisors recently and it was only then that PG&E started turning on the juice.

And as I have said before, PG&E's meddling has actually made it harder, not easier to stop the peaker plants. We would be happy to see them sit this one out.

cheers

Eric

Tim,

I can tell you that after sixteen environmental and social justice organizations wrote to the Mayor and the Board on April 28, our organization, Sierra Club, and others met with the Mayor's Office to discuss the power plant issue (Mayor Newsom was on his way to Israel). Community power advocates such as Steven Moss of San Francisco Community Power were present and city ownership of any power plant-free solution to shutting down the Potrero Plant was very much on the table.

The real story here is that the Mayor's Office has finally come around to understanding that the staff at the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) have squandered many, many opportunities to shut down Potrero without these new power plants. SFPUC staff were recently grilled by the Local Agency Formation Commission, by their own SFPUC Commissioners, and by Supervisors Mirkarimi and Alioto-Pier in committee, and incisive questioning has revealed that the SFPUC staff have been stubbornly unwilling or willfully unable to ever revisit the 2004 proposal to build the 200-megawatt peaker power plants. In fact, some members of the SFPUC staff seem to have become de facto power plant lobbyists, fatalistically misleading the Mayor and Supervisors into believing that we cannot push Cal-ISO back and demonstrate that San Francisco, like Seattle, can go power plant-free when we close the Potrero Plant.

When the power plant proposal was heard by the Board in committee on May 5, both SFPUC GM Ed Harrington and Deputy GM for Power Barbara Hale were finally forced to concede that the SFPUC has not -once- proposed an alternative to these power plants to Cal-ISO since the Action Plan to build them was finalized in November 2004. Cal-ISO stated as much in an April 11 San Francisco Examiner article, and during their visit to the SFPUC last October 19.

What you see now is the Mayor responding to strong pressure from environmental and social justice groups to end his support for the peaker plants and gather all of San Francisco's community and energy stakeholders to do what the SFPUC staff have never done: craft a comprehensive 2008 Action Plan for closure of Potrero, one that does not include new fossil fuel-burning power plants which would needlessly pollute San Francisco, and most especially our Southeast communities, for another 18 to 30 years.

Joshua Arce
Brightline Defense Project

Well, Joshua, I'm glad you feel that the community input has reached the mayor's office. But I'm not as optimistic as you are about the way Newsom works. Honestly, I think seven PG&E lobbyists have more clout with this mayor than 16 (or 100) environmental groups reprsenting tens of thousands of members. When environmental and social-justice activists like yourselves complained about this plan -- and you've been fighting for months. The mayor knew all about the environmental problems, and he was still supporting the peakers ... until PG&E showed up.

That's how things work.

Publicly owned green eneryg is the right phrase here. The notion Newsom is now putting forward that it might be okay to retrofit the Mirant plant is terrible. Whatever solution he proposes, all of us need to let him know that a plan that leaves PG&E in control of generation and transmission is not acceptable. Agreed?

eric,

your organizing is not equal to PG&E, sorry.
you have the equation backward.

first things first, get PG&E out of the room by approving the peakers and pushing a public power initiative in november. then we can get a cleaner future.

otherwise, PG&E calls the shots, and none of us can do anything about it.

agreed on no retrofit, that's the worst idea of all.
but with the requirement that the city have some capacity to generate power 24/7, the transbay cable isn't enough to close mirant. the ISO has a reliability contract that has to go somewhere - mirant or something else.

Unfortunately, PG&E is indeed a heavy hitter in this political moment. But equally so is the strong community and environmental organizing. Newsom needs a real environmental record to run for higher office. This is a golden opportunity for him to build that credibility and he knows it. He'll play ball.

We just need to take the next week or so to make it clear to him that we will not settle for a future that does not immediately set San Francisco on a path to publicly owned green energy.

First things first, no new fossil fuel plants.

Then we can duke it out with the Mayor over details of a new plan and get an energy future that's better for all of us.

Eric

Mirant will definitely be easier to close down if we say loud and clear - No retrofits. Close Mirant the moment that the Transbay Cable comes online.

Tim,

Our concern is that years have already been wasted and golden opportunities have been missed to close Mirant-Potrero without these new power plants by those in the driver's seat. Instead of revisiting the 2004 Action Plan and commissioning a comprehensive analytical picture of the San Francisco energy landscape in 2008 heading toward 2010, like that prepared by SF Community Power and posted previously on this blog, we see something like the April 2008 Sierra Research presentation that the SFPUC paid for to justify its argument that the new power plants can be cleaner, or less dirty, than the old.

Cal-ISO has offered, at a minimum, that these new power plants are overkill in terms of what would be required to close the Potrero Power Plant under a 2008 Action Plan ("S.F. Extension Cable Will Unplug Powerplant" Oct. 8, 2007). For Cal-ISO, an organization that the SFPUC's own expert witness Mike Florio testified on May 5 "loves power plants" and is "addicted to fossil fuels," to acquiesce to "less" local generation is an invitation to a courageous City of San Francisco to go a step further and declare its intention to become power plant-free.

SFPUC staff are seemingly unhappy with the fact that the Mayor is turning away from their agency and toward community and energy stakeholders for a power plant-free means of closing Potrero. Yes, PG&E is one of those stakeholders. But they're not the only one, and as the SFPUC staff have indicated for many, many months PG&E alone cannot offer an alternative to the CT power plants.

Instead, the City must take Cal-ISO head-on. If the SFPUC staff feel powerless to challenge Cal-ISO they need to disengage.

We want the City to push Cal-ISO back; we have the brain trust in groups like SF Community Power and the engineers that they work with to arm the City's leaders with the knowledge to do that.

No one wants to retro-fit Mirant; when it came up as one of the different options that the Mayor's Office was looking at we all indicated that the real solution is in pushing Cal-ISO, discarding the 2004 Action Plan for a power plant-free 2008 Action Plan. We argued that a Mirant retro-fit is only remotely an option if Unit 3 (gas boiler, super-heated bay water) were to shut down on or shortly after January 1, 2010 as scheduled, with as many of the 3 Mirant peakers as possible shutting down at the same time and the City taking ownership/control of any remaining peakers, to be shut down when we say when.

Obviously, Mirant is probably loathe to part with any portion of its power plant and this is an academic exercise, but if the City could gain control of peakers that we all agree shut down sometime in 2010 or shortly thereafter (certainly less than the 18-30 years required to pay off the $273 million new CTs) there is a tremendous win for San Francisco and the Southeast communities when the City goes power plant-free forever.

Instead, the SFPUC staff have left us all with a terribly compressed timetable and they are not helping by bucking the Mayor, who really does seem to be listening, and undermining the work of the environmental and social justice groups who have no interest other than to see San Francisco shine at this moment and stand as a leader on environmental justice and climate change.

We may not have much time, but we do have the energy to get us there.

Joshua Arce
Brightline Defense Project

joshua and eric,

you are posting press releases under a blog post that details exactly how PG&E is handing your ass back to you.

wake up to reality, please.

the state ISO (and by the way, the I stands for INDEPENDENT) requires local power generation in order to prevent blackouts when transmission lines fail. that is not a political question of 'standing up to the ISO,' it is an engineering reality that you have never been able to address.

the peakers are cleaner than the Mirant plant, period.

and PG&E totally owns this issue at city hall until there is a united front against them.

Cal ISO is a private nonprofit set up 11 years ago by the State. We say no to the State on all sorts of things that we deem ridiculous (most recently the brown apple moth spraying plan); and Cal ISO's pontifications about our energy security needs are indeed ridiculous.

The federal government itself tells us we can't have medical marijuana - we defy that edict. The feds tell us we have to kick out and arrest our undocumented citizens - we defy them.

Cal ISO is peanuts compared to the Bush administration. We can and must say no to Cal ISO and both reject the peakers -and- close Mirant by 2010 so that San Francisco can stop burning fossil fuel for energy within two years.

And I very much will be campaigning to pass public power.

This sort of garbage doesnt surprise. Psssh look at how the PG&E and Edison and all of them have bought the progressives and environmental groups. We were doin so well fro years and then the industry decded they couldnt beat us and the courts so they started planting their people in the environmental groups and now run the agenda at those places. Look at how the NRDC came out against mandating less polluting trucks at the port of Long Beach and how they are coming out against the renewable energy referendum coming up in November. Green groups coming out against cleaning up air pollution??? This screams conflict of interest and scandal.

PG&E is smart when it comes to playing the game. They put their money and people in the right places...kind of like a chess game. They got their pawns all over the place. These guys have financially bankrolled the Greenlining Institute to the oh so sweet tune of $.5 million big ones and in turn Greenlining comes out against the renewable energy referendum.
So to see that PG&E is running the show at the mayors office doesn't surprise me...

I think anyone who believes that SF will be "fossil free in 2 years" is an idiot. Shutting down Potrero and not building the peakers means you are simply NIMBYizing the fossil that those brand-spanking new Combined Cycle Combustion Gas Turbines that both PG&E is building and Mirant want's to build in the east bay. Every single "plan" involves the extension plug of the HVDC cable proposed by Transby Cable.

Every single statement that falsly implies SF can be fossil fuel based on solar and windmills is a liar. It can't be done IN the City and any engineer will tell you this, not without bankrupting the City.

The City needs in-city generation, and not just for back up power in case of a black out (the Potrero peakers saved the City while the state went black several times over the last 2 decades) but for overall grid stability. SF as the BIGGEST energy user around needs to take some responsbility in producing it's own power instead of shovling it off to residents in Contra Costa County.

In city generation provdes a REAL basis for a TRUE public power system where generation and distribution combine to form a public power system, not the fantasy solar projects envisigned by some at an expense way and above that of the peaker units.

Lastly, peakers units are not dispatched for profit...they have deals that provide a revenue stream from the CA-ISO based on availability, not actual running time. There is no "lobbying", there is simply grid requirement. If voltage falls in the city and there is too much transmission congestion then you need in city peaker power. It's not a question of 'profit', it's reliability question. The peakers (The City's or Mirant) negotiate contracts based on the financial solvency of the project, and that includes paying the costs based on payments for standard commerical loans.

David Walters