i would say that joe's points aren't speculative, but well a reasoned gaming of how a profit seeking corporation will respond when given the opportunity to make a profit. unless agreements between the city and mirant are binding and legally enforceable we can expect the actions of the well intentioned to facilitate the construction of a new privately controlled merchant plant in the city's southeast.

Mirant Power Plant -Will- Close In 2010 -

Tim, your facts are simply incorrect. The California Independent System Operator (Cal ISO) which is the agency that runs the California electricity power grid, has stated flat out that it will release the main plant at Mirant from its 'Reliability Must Run' (RMR) status in January 2010 when the Transbay Cable is installed. (This has been confirmed by SFPUC Deputy GM for Power, Barbara Hale.) What this means is that Mirant corporation will no longer be getting any financial payments from the State to run that big smokestacked gas boiler plant (which provides 94% of the Mirant site's electricity).

With natural gas prices rising, and with the very decrepit condition of the old boiler, there is no way that Mirant will keep running that big, bay polluting, expensive to maintain, generator.

Without the State's subsidy payments, it would be financially foolish for Mirant to do so, and Mirant has indeed already said as much, and made clear that it will close the boiler after it is released from RMR status.

So don't worry about the smokestack. It's history. Our key job now is to push hard for the Clean Energy Act and get the City to shut down -all- of Mirant by 2010 (including its small peaker turbines) and replace it -solely- with renewable energy and efficiency projects.

unanswered questions...

* is there anything that the ISO can do to mandate the closure of a plant?
* how many hours will mirant's plant be permitted operate once the retrofit is complete?
* if a plant is retrofitted to burn natural gas and comply with clean air & water laws will it make economic sense to run it as a merchant facility regardless of an RMR contract?
* what kind of env. mitigation program will a mirant retrofit trigger?

Answers To Your Questions -

In order:

* The ISO can't mandate anything.

* Retrofitted Mirant turbines would be permitted for the same 800 hrs per year under its current permit, and would likely continue to run much less frequently as they already have been doing, at only 190 to 250 hrs per year.

* With currently rising natural gas prices it probably wouldn't make economic sense to run the retrofitted turbines for profit; and in any case, Mirant's permit on those turbines only allows them to be run for emergency peak generation and reliability needs; which is why they have been running so few hours in real life.

* The retrofit plan shouldn't mandate any additional mitigation except for pollution controls on the turbines themselves.

Tim,

I read Mr. Boss' letter to you and I'm not sure what his argument is exactly. I glean that he has a concern that Mirant Unit 3 will not shut down in 2010, as Cal-ISO has indicated, closing 94% of the Potrero Power Plant while we deal with the remaining units. It's my understanding that the City has secured Mirant's agreement to close any unit that Cal-ISO releases from "must-run" status, and that the Unit 3 smokestack is no longer "must-run" once the Trans Bay Cable comes online in 2010. Perhaps the Mayor's Office can address this concern tomorrow.

I do note that Mr. Boss' argument is not that the new CT power plants would be cleaner than retrofitting the remaining Potrero units; we recently learned from the SFPUC's Ed Harrington and Barbara Hale that the retrofit option is cleaner than building the new CTs.

Mr. Boss was present on July 1, 2008 at the SFPUC Citizens' Advisory Committee when Deputy General Manager Barbara Hale confirmed that if the Board's directive to study a "transmission-only" solution does not work, retrofitting the remaining Potrero units for the short-term is cleaner than building the new power plants. You can hear for yourself, as first Mr. Boss, then me, and then Ms. Hale weigh in by clicking here.

You can also hear the entire hour-long CT debate here.

Thanks for your continued attention to this issue.

Joshua Arce
Brightline Defense Project

eric and joshua,

please stop trying to bamboozle people with misreadings of the facts.
here is what you are wrong about.

first, the ISO release of the mirant plant from its RMR contract is DEPENDENT on a retrofit program - either the City CTs or the mirant retrofit. if the City CTs are rejected, mirant has ZERO reason to pursue a retrofit of its turbines - they can just shut the turbines down instead and keep happily operating unit 3 with an RMR contract. they can use the state's $ for a retrofit to instead retrofit unit 3 for air cooling instead of water cooling. and there isn't a thing we can do about it, because there is NO signed contract for the retrofit.

(and by the way, if a signed contract for the retrofit magically appears as a result of this public pressure, it should be publicly reviewed, just like the mirant retrofit plan ... ... that hasn't had a single moment of public review yet. your rush to judgment for mirant and against public power really looks very suspicious.)

second, the retrofitted mirant turbines, under the mayor's 'plan,' allows the turbines to run 4000 hours a year, just like the City's CTs, except for mirant there is NO mitigation program for pollutants. only the city-owned CTs have any mitigations at all. everything else about their operation is 'your understanding,' or 'they would likely continue,' or 'probably wouldn't,' NOT actual FACTS.

your claim about a mirant retrofit being 'cleaner' is based first, on whether a retrofit actually happens, and second, on a welter of suppositions and hopes, NONE of which are contractually obligated. in fact, almost all of your arguments are based on mirant doing LESS than it is allowed to do up and down the line, and the City CTs doing a lot MORE than they are permitted to do by contract.

reality is a lot different than that.

Here's a post from Tony Kelly that didn't post right so I'm reposting it:

eric and joshua,

please stop trying to bamboozle people with misreadings of the facts.
here is what you are wrong about.

first, the ISO release of the mirant plant from its RMR contract is DEPENDENT on a retrofit program - either the City CTs or the mirant retrofit. if the City CTs are rejected, mirant has ZERO reason to pursue a retrofit of its turbines - they can just shut the turbines down instead and keep happily operating unit 3 with an RMR contract. they can use the state's $ for a retrofit to instead retrofit unit 3 for air cooling instead of water cooling. and there isn't a thing we can do about it, because there is NO signed contract for the retrofit.

(and by the way, if a signed contract for the retrofit magically appears as a result of this public pressure, it should be publicly reviewed, just like the mirant retrofit plan ... ... that hasn't had a single moment of public review yet. your rush to judgment for mirant and against public power really looks very suspicious.)

second, the retrofitted mirant turbines, under the mayor's 'plan,' allows the turbines to run 4000 hours a year, just like the City's CTs, except for mirant there is NO mitigation program for pollutants. only the city-owned CTs have any mitigations at all. everything else about their operation is 'your understanding,' or 'they would likely continue,' or 'probably wouldn't,' NOT actual FACTS.

your claim about a mirant retrofit being 'cleaner' is based first, on whether a retrofit actually happens, and second, on a welter of suppositions and hopes, NONE of which are contractually obligated. in fact, almost all of your arguments are based on mirant doing LESS than it is allowed to do up and down the line, and the City CTs doing a lot MORE than they are permitted to do by contract.

reality is a lot different than that.

Real Estate Corruption In Peaker Push? -

Perhaps Joe Boss and Tony Kelly (of the Potrero Boosters) would like to clarify for us a couple of key points around their being the -only- two Potrero Hill residents to repeatedly lobby and attend hearings on behalf of the expensive Bayview polluting 'Peaker' project.

It turns out that Joe Boss (who is on the Power Plant Taskforce that keeps approving the Peaker project) also just so happens to be a private real estate consultant who has manipulated Potrero Hill redevelopment projects in way to funnel hundreds of thousands of real estate deal dollars to nonprofits run by his own wife, and guess who, his fellow Potrero Booster Tony Kelly. For proof of this, click on the link for the November 2007 edition of the Potrero View newspaper at http://www.potreroview.net/archive.html and read pages 1 and 20. The direct link is at http://www.potreroview.net/Archives/PV_Nov_2007.pdf

What does this have to do with the Peakers? Well, it also just so happens, according to Joe Boss himself in public remarks he made July 1st at the SFPUC Citizens Advisory Sub-Committee on Energy, that there is currently -another- big redevelopment deal going down in Potrero Hill, at and around Pier 70. Boss says that as soon as the old Mirant power plant closes, development values in the Pier 70 redevelopment area (which is right next to Mirant) will double!

I wonder mister Boss if you, or any of your real estate clients, or your wife's and Tony Kelly's nonprofits stand to make any money off of such a turn of events...

Can you answer that question?

And if the answer is yes, this means that you have been unethically, and possibly even illegally, using your position on the Power Plant Taskforce to push an expensive and highly polluting power plant proposal onto the lower income and people of color neighborhoods of the Bayview Hunters Point (which would increase their already high rates of life threatening asthma and cancer) just so that you can enrich yourself, your family, your friends, and your private real estate clients.

I repeat. Do you have an answer to these questions Mr. Boss? Mr. Kelly?

Tony,

I'm basing my understanding of retrofit peakers being cleaner on the SFPUC's Barbara Hale's statements to that effect at the SFPUC Citizens' Advisory Committee (CAC) two weeks ago: http://www.brightlinedefense.org/files/mp3/july_1_2008_sfpuc_cac_barbara_hale_explains_comparative_emissions.mp3

The debate going forward is about retrofitting the remaining units versus the Board's "transmission only" solution; building the new power plants is no longer an option.

Eric,

I've wondered about the whole property angle too on this issue since Joe Boss brought it up at the same CAC meeting (http://www.brightlinedefense.org/files/mp3/july_1_cac_joe_boss_discusses_real_estate_and_cts.mp3). I think we all thought this was a debate about environmental health and energy policy, I wish this whole land use/developer component had been on the table the whole time.

Josh

eric,

first, the answer to your smear masquerading as a question is no.
i'll add that i don't receive any money for my nonprofit work - for my work in theater, or as a neighborhood activist. i have a day job that is unrelated to all that. (yes, i'm overemployed.) that was noted in the View article you referenced as well.

second, why are you unable to actually discuss the City's policy about public power and environmental justice? why can't you answer my questions about your misstatements above? it's interesting that, months into this debate, you don't bother to bring up a vicious (and inaccurate) personal attack until ... .... there are policy questions that you can't answer.

third, i have a hunch that your attempted smear is really an attempt to get back at me for my comments at last tuesday's PUC meeting, where i showed that commissioner sklar was likely guilty of dozens of violations of the City Charter and the Governmental Conduct Code in his hypocritical pursuit of a mirant retrofit at the exact same time he was on record as supporting the public CTs at the Commission. (i will soon have public records from the City confirming those charges.) judging from your support of sklar and your attack on me, it appears that documented (and illegal) hypocrisy by government officials is ok by you, as long as that hypocrisy kills public power.

fourth, perhaps your attack is a way of deflecting the legitimate question of the A. Philip Randolph Institute (a known front organization for PG&E, as reported often here at the Guardian) and their funding of your associates at Brightline Legal Defense. it's interesting that you don't have any suspicions about their agenda being compromised by that direct connection to PG&E.

fifth, my response to the Potrero View article is on page 3 of the same issue you linked, November 2007. it should answer your questions, just like it answers those raised by the View. it figures that you would ignore those answers, just like you selectively ignore many facts about the competing CT proposals, and just like you ignore the points i raised earlier about your misstatements in this thread.

sixth, as the President of the Boosters, who have worked for a decade on issues revolving around the Potrero Power Plant, i have a duty to represent their positions, and the organization has voted unanimously, multiple times, to support the public CTs as the cleanest way to close the Mirant plant, just like we voted to support the closure of the Hunters Point plant in solidarity with our neighbors in Bayview. i know you don't like my showing up on a tuesday afternoon when almost all of our members are at their jobs, but it's actually my responsibility to represent them.

seventh, there are plenty of reasons to support the public CTs over a mirant retrofit. they truly are cleaner units, as i stated in the comments above (which means that YOU are actually pushing the dirtier polluting combustion turbines onto the residents of Potrero Hill and the Bayview). but, partially because of the fact that a mirant retrofit means dirtier power generation, it's actually you and joshua that have tried to make it an issue about money. i've said before that i think that's rather offensive; we should not be basing environment justice discussions on how much environmental justice we can buy.

but eighth, since you brought up the issue of money - claiming that the mirant retrofit costs the state's ratepayers (and maybe the City) less - it is only fair to bring up the true and complete cost to the City of a mirant retrofit, which does in fact include the value - TO THE CITY, not to private developers - of land THE CITY OWNS at pier 70. that concern was brought to my attention by Port staff, and echoed by the Mayor's Office of Economic and Workforce Development, and if financial impacts to the City truly matter to you as you have often claimed, you should be aware of their concerns.

ninth, i am aware of the Port's - meaning THE CITY'S - financial interest in pier 70, because i serve on their citizens advisory committee for seawall lot 337 and their southern waterfront advisory committee. i am sure i would not be on those committees, nor would i have served on the City's Arts and Open Space task forces, nor would i be the president of the Boosters and on the board of the Potrero Hill Merchants Association, unless i had rightfully earned a reputation for fairness and solid neighborhood advocacy. (the Potrero View article you link acknowledges this as well.)

so tenth, eric, i will put my record of advocacy up against yours any day, ESPECIALLY when you have been such a fact-shading political hack on this issue of the Potrero Power Plant, even in this very comments thread; and ESPECIALLY when you respond to legitimate policy issues - and questions about your own willful inaccuracies - with off-base and vicious personal attacks.

Incorrect Tony. The Cal ISO has said that it will remove the Mirant boiler RMR status in 2010 regardless of other factors, and the deal to retrofit the diesel turbines has a limit of 800 hours per year run time. Period. Mirant's own union head actually stood up in a public hearing and said his workers fully support that minimal run time as a critical part of the deal.

Get your facts straight.

"at the possible risk of brownouts in high-use periods"
anyone here know the cost of that sort of think in damaged appliances and computers.

a typical office building with 200 computers will loose 3 computers and 2 weeks of total lost work time for one brown out, that is at least a few thousand dollars,
I have seen it cost small manufacturing companies somewhere in the range of 5K for every brownout.

all you need is 2 brownouts for a company to get there own diesel generator. and a diesel generator is often lower price to run than buying power from the power company, although it is not legal to use that as your primary power, I have seen places that use it for most but not all the power they need so that they do not get noticed and so that they get cheep reliable power (and they do not spend the money to keep it clean burning).

if you go for a plan that has brownouts, you may loose more control over power generation.

the economy already needs help, do you really want to tax the economy that much more with brownouts ?

Tony,

I posted this last night, but it looks like it's not gone through until the morning. Re: the APRI issue you raised this morning, we dealt with this on the blogs recently with a blogger named "factcheck," explaining that all of our work on this issue has been pro bono. And every ounce of effort that must be spent trying to bury these CTs once and for all is time that we can spend better with programs like our free legal advice service that we have implemented with Supervisor Ammiano's and Assemblymember Ma's office.

This is what I posted yesterday:

Tony,

I'm basing my understanding of retrofit peakers being cleaner on the SFPUC's Barbara Hale's statements to that effect at the SFPUC Citizens' Advisory Committee (CAC) two weeks ago: Barbara Hale explains comparative emissions

The debate going forward is about retrofitting the remaining units versus the Board's "transmission only" solution; building the new power plants is no longer an option.

Eric,

I've wondered about the whole property angle too on this issue since Joe Boss brought it up at the same CAC meeting (Joe Boss discusses CTs and real estate).

I think we all thought this was a debate about environmental health and energy policy, I wish this whole land use/developer component had been on the table the whole time.

Josh

joshua,

again, stop with the bamboozlement.

first, even if your work representing APRI is 'pro bono,' APRI is still directly funded by PG&E, and your connection to them stands. which i am sure is why you are happy to insist that the debate is now between a mirant retrofit and a PG&E transmission solution.

second, the barbara hale statement relies upon, as i said earlier:
'first, on whether a retrofit actually happens, and second, on a welter of suppositions and hopes, NONE of which are contractually obligated. in fact, almost all of your arguments are based on mirant doing LESS than it is allowed to do up and down the line, and the City CTs doing a lot MORE than they are permitted to do by contract.'

third, you and eric have been insisting on bringing money into this discussion; remember all the times you've insisted that even if the public CTs are cleaner, they'll have to run longer because they cost so darn much? in my opinion, it's disgusting to have an environmental justice argument based on how much environmental justice you can buy, but YOU brought that argument here in the first place.

fourth, the 'real estate values in the area' are for CITY LAND, owned by the CITY, on PORT property. if you're going to try to judge this CT issue based on relative cost to the City, AS YOU DO, the value of the City's assets should be considered. the impact of a mirant retrofit - or continued Unit 3 operation - on pier 70 is a cost-to-the-City issue, not a private development issue.

try different lies next time, please.

Children With Asthma More Important Than Property Values -

Tony - To your ten points:

1,5,8,9&10) I didn't ask if you stand to gain. I asked if your nonprofit stands to gain. And the Potrero View article speaks for itself. You and Joe were clearly involved in some very shady dealings, and that makes your strange tag team maneuvers on the Peakers and Pier 70 highly suspect. It's worth noting that both the Pier 70 -and- Peaker projects contain very similar 'public benefits' packages to the one your nonprofit 'profited' from to the tune of 150 thousand dollars.

2,6,7,8&10) You are simply incorrect on these points. The Cal ISO and SFPUC have stated clearly and on public record that the Mirant retrofit (which I am also opposed to by the way) clearly pollutes less than the proposed Peaker project. Period.

3&4) Sklar should be indeed removed but not for corruption. I have no love whatsoever for either Richard Sklar or the A. Phillip Randolph Institute (APRI). In fact, during the fight against the peakers, the coalition I founded, STOPPP, expressly forbade APRI from involvement in our campaign because of APRI's PG&E connections, and Brightline didn't know about those connections until I revealed them to Joshua personally. APRI is no longer Brightline's client and never paid Brightline a cent. Most importantly, both APRI members -and- Commissioner Sklar have recently publicly attacked the outstanding SF Clean Energy Act, a November ballot measure which will commit San Francisco to becoming a 100% community powered, clean energy city (which PG&E opposes and is already actively attacking). Because of -his- opposition, Sklar should definitely be replaced on the SFPUC; and APRI should definitely stop debasing itself by taking PG&E's money.

8&9) As my subject line indicates, when children and workers in the Bayview Hunters Point are dying of asthma and cancer because of power plant pollution, it is absolutely unconscionable to put their lives into a financial equation against your precious property values in Potrero Hill. You epitomize environmental racism Mr. Kelly.

Public Property Equals Big Private Profits -

Give me a break Tony, anyone who even knows the most rudimentary facts on the ground about public property knows that it is most frequently leveraged by big corporations (and real estate hawkers like Mr. Boss) to make massive private profits, usually while spewing toxic wastes on our community. Can you say Lennar? Stadium? Asbestos? Candlestick land for -one- dollar to a private corporation?

Unfortunately for your argument, Joshua and I haven't told a single lie, and you are grasping at some very flimsy straws.

eric,

just a reminder, you somehow can't manage to answer these questions about your latest misstatements of the facts (posted earlier in this thread):

1. the ISO release of the mirant unit 3 from its RMR contract is DEPENDENT on a combustion turbine program. you claim unit 3 is losing the contract anyway. that is NOT TRUE. read the ISO letter again.

2. the retrofitted mirant turbines, under the mayor's 'plan,' allows the turbines to run 4000 hours a year, just like the City's CTs, except for mirant there is NO mitigation program for pollutants. only the city-owned CTs have any mitigations at all. that means the City CTs are CLEANER, end of story.

your claim about a mirant retrofit being 'cleaner' is based first, on whether a retrofit actually happens, and second, on a welter of suppositions and hopes, NONE of which are contractually obligated. in fact, almost all of your arguments are based on mirant doing LESS than it is allowed to do up and down the line, and the City CTs doing a lot MORE than they are permitted to do by contract.

if you can ever manage to discuss energy policy again, try to deal with these issues. thanks.

i'll address your continuing smear in another post.

eric,

in response to our repeated erroneous claims of RMR removal and limited hours of operation.

from the ISO letter of june 2 2008:
http://www.sfbg.com/blogs/politics/CT%27s%20Packet%206.3.08.pdf
'When Trans Bay Cable comes on line, the Mirant retrofits do not have to be in service in order for the CAISO to remove the RMR status from Potrero Unit 3. This is true even though the Mirant diesel units will have to be retrofitted one at a time, and work will have to be carefully phased.'

eric, this has been reported often to mean that transbay will lead to the unit 3 RMR removal IF A RETROFIT IS HAPPENING. so how can you claim that the RMR would be removed 'regardless of other factors'? what if ... there is no CT program? your claim is simply your invention, nothing more.

from BOS resolution 080779, june 3 2008:
'Mirant has proposed to retrofit Potrero Units 4, 5, and 6 to run on natural gas, install emissions reduction equipment, and obtain air permits allowing the units to run up to 4000 hours per year;...'

you claim 'the deal to retrofit the diesel turbines has a limit of 800 hours per year run time.' feel free to show documentation of that. otherwise, you are, once again, making stuff up.

Tony,

I can appreciate that you don't like being branded with a certain label because of the report in the Potrero View that Eric has alerted us to.

The same as I don't like being labelled as respresenting PG&E because one of the 4 parties (APRI) in a class action lawsuit (that incidentally also included CARE, an organization that sues PG&E) we filed to stop the peakers has received money from PG&E. That the lawsuit was thrown out in March, ending our representation of APRI, CARE, Lynne Brown, and Regina Hollins, means it's kind of a tired argument that you're lodging against me.

What I did to get around the spin that was thrown against me by the pro-power plant folks was to continue doing good work on this issue and just go on the record as saying that neither I nor Brightline has ever received a penny from PG&E.

What you should do is go on the record as saying that the article that Eric has dug up is false. Just go on the record as saying that you never received a dime from this community benefits package discussed in the article for your theatre.

Or if you don't think it matters then don't. But let's move on and get back to the issues: environmental health and environmental justice.

Joshua Arce
Brightline Defense Project

Tony, read. The very text you cite says that RMR on Unit 3 will be removed when Transbay comes online, regardless of the status of the Mirant diesel turbines or the CTs. You are so biased toward this peaker project that you can't even grasp what is right in front of your face. The worst case scenario is that no retrofit will be done on the Mirant turbines. However, no one in the environmental and environmental justice movement working to get rid of all fossil power plants in the city is going to allow even that scenario to continue. In fact, our coalition has already begun campaigning to close all of Mirant by 2010, and we expect to prevail, just as we are doing in the peaker battle.

As to the 800 hours, the proposed plan from the Mayor's office describes two scenarios for the City to choose between. One option would indeed allow the Mirant turbines to run for commercial purposes and at longer hours, however the other option allows only run time for emergency power needs and reliability (meaning the turbines wouldn't run any more than they do right now - at around 200-300 hours per year with an 800 hour per year cap). And the resolution that the SFPUC Commissioners passed unanimously at their last meeting expressly adopts that low run time option.

And your claim that the retrofitted Mirant turbines will be dirtier because they won't have mitigations is totally bogus. The comparison which led the SFPUC to admit that the Mirant retrofit was cleaner accounted for all mitigations and improvements on both the retrofits and the CTs.

-All- of those numbers were compared, and the retrofit came out the clear winner in that full comparison. you are throwing up false straw men.

And based on previous similar emission comparisons that we have already see over the last couple of years between the old and proposed plants, -even- the un-retrofitted diesels would be cleaner than the CT project. So clearly the wisest course of action is to sell the CTs and then either scrap in 2010, or retrofit one by one over time, the Mirant diesels.

eric, read closer and try to stop overhyping the facts.

the text i cited said that the RMR would be removed if a CT program was not COMPLETE. notice the ISO's phrase, 'work will have to be carefully phased.' what happens if there is no CT program at all ? then ... unit 3 keeps operating. JUST LIKE I SAID. that's what i mean when i say you always shade the facts - just like you do when you claim to the board of supervisors that you oppose the mirant retrofit, but then you claim to the PUC that you support their resolution ... supporting the mirant retrofit. maybe you should talk with yourself about what your position really is, and then get back to me?

feel free to share the documents proving the mirant retrofit is cleaner. i would love to see them and review them. and if they really do prove what you say, i will happily and quickly support whatever is truly cleaner. for real. (i don't think that's true for you, and that is disappointing.) i suspect that you will once again try the money argument dodge to skew that scenario. but seriously, share the documents. prove your argument.

but most important, you really should stop acting like you and the City have a choice about anything regarding mirant as soon as the public CTs go away. because then, the choice will be between ... a mirant retrofit and mirant's unit 3. and without signed contracts, which we DON'T HAVE, we have no say in mirant's decision. they can run unit 3 on an RMR contract as long as they like, retrofitting it (with state money) to be air-cooled; or they can do the retrofit. they have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders to do whatever makes them the most money, and they don't have to consider our city's energy policy. by fighting against public power before you fight for green power, you are handing over san francisco's energy future to a corporate boardroom in atlanta GA.