Joel Blau wrote:
>A biographical note: William Tucker is the guy who used to argue that rent
>control caused homelessness.
well, he's wrong on that one, but he might be right on other things.
> > The American Spectator -- April 2001
> >
> > California Unplugged
> >
> > Environmentalists dreamed of soft power. The state woke up in the dark.
> >
> > by William Tucker
> >
>....
> > Looking back over the past 25 years, one thing soon becomes dramatically
> > clear. The current situation was planned from the beginning. Almost a
> > quarter-century ago, California officials became entranced with the idea
> > that the centralized generation of electricity -- the system of building
> > large generating stations and distributing power through electrical
> > transmission lines -- was becoming outdated. Instead it would be
> replaced by
> > a "distributed" system of generation that would be anchored by much smaller
> > industrial "co-generation" plants. This "small-but-beautiful" system would
> > eventually atomize into a world where almost everyone would supply
> their own
> > electricity through backyard fuel cells, windmills, or solar panels. This
> > strategy, called the "soft path," has led California to where it is today.
I think that this is a total distortion. I guess Tucker hasn't studied
California. On this level, the mistake was that the California folks
decided to over-specialize in natural gas-fired plants. These are very
clean, but it turned out to be a mistake when the price of natural gas rose
steeply, partly as a result of the deregulation of the pipeline prices.
> > ... With Lovins acting as
> > an adviser, the state rewarded utilities for investing in energy
> savings for
> > their customers. The commission granted the utilities higher rates if they
> > would rebate customers for buying energy-efficient appliances. In 1991,
> PG&E
> > hired Lovins and Berkeley physicist Arthur Rosenfeld to head a $10 million
> > program applying energy-efficiency ideas to new and existing buildings,
> with
> > considerable success. Altogether, PG&E has spent $1.3 billion on
> > conservation since 1976, displacing 2,300 megawatts of new power -- a
> > relative bargain. From 1983 to 1995, Golden State energy consumption grew
> > only half a percent per year, 20 percent below projections. Ratepayers
> saved
> > $1 billion in electrical bills. California now ranks dead last among the 50
> > states for per-capita consumption of electricity.
here's the conservation that I referred to in my previous missive on this
subject. However, it's a _big mistake_ to assume that Lovins has any real
power. The governors of California in recent memory -- the ones who built
the basis for the current energy emergency -- were Republicans Deukmeijian
(sp?) and Wilson, who had no respect for what they saw as hippy-dippy small
is beautiful stuff.
> > At the same time, California stopped building coal, nuclear, and oil
> > "base-load" plants.
it's suspicious that the author simply ignores the role of natural gas
(until later). He's clearly got an axe to grind.
> >In 1991, residents of the Sacramento Municipal Utility
> > District even voted to close down the Rancho Seco Nuclear Plant, though it
> > still had years to go in its life cycle.
of course, that would have prevented years of creation of nuclear waste
that's unprocessable -- in addition to the creation of a very radioactive
plant. But I guess this character doesn't care about externalities.
>As a result, California also ranks
> > 49th in its per-person capacity to generate electricity.
Nice rhetorical trick. He goes from what he sees as the outrageous proposal
to shut down a nuke to blaming the victim (California). Notice that the
difference between being 50th in terms of use and 49th in terms of
productive capacity suggests that California as surplus capacity, though
perhaps not very much.
> > ... The mechanism for eliminating coal plants from California was air
> pollution
> > regulations. As a result, the state now has no sulfur dioxide emissions
> > (acid rain) and ranks 40th in emission of carbon dioxide per square mile.
> > "Since the late 1960s, we've known environmental regulations made it
> > impossible to burn coal in Southern California," says Steve Hansen,
> > spokesman for Southern California Edison. "The only option was to build
> > out-of-state."
But they have been building in CA. This self-serving quotation also ignores
the fact the restructuring (a.k.a., "deregulation") _actively encouraged_
SCE and other producers to become mere distributors of electricity and to
sell off all their plants. (It's typically harder for new companies to get
into a market than for established ones to expand capacity.) The companies
were encouraged to redistribute their wealth to the out-of-state holding
companies. It also encouraged them to "game" the market. They could
restrict the construction of new plants without losing.
I'll let someone else comment on this article at greater length. As I've
said (too many times), this isn't one of my special fields.
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
