http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-climate20apr20,0,4318459.story
Some public suppliers are likely to pay high fees, while private companies may reap benefits from a cap-and-trade system under consideration.
By Margot Roosevelt, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
April 20, 2008
Fighting global warming is the feel-good cause of the moment.
But in California, the self-congratulation that followed the 2006 passage of the nation’s first comprehensive law to curb emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases is fast turning to acrimony.
A ferocious behind-the-scenes brawl over how to regulate electricity plants, the biggest source of carbon dioxide after motor vehicles, has pitted Southern California’s public power generators against its for-profit utilities.
Why? Because some taxpayer-owned utilities, such as Los Angeles’ Department of Water and Power, get close to half their electricity from the nation’s dirtiest energy source: coal.
And under the system envisioned by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to implement the greenhouse gas law, utilities would probably be required to buy the right to pollute from the state.
On Monday and Tuesday, the state’s utilities and energy commissions will hold public workshops in San Francisco on proposals that could make high-carbon polluters such as the DWP, the nation’s biggest municipal utility, pay dearly. Investor-owned companies with cleaner nuclear and hydroelectric power could reap windfalls since they might pay proportionately less. And, overall, the money the state collects could be redistributed based on which utility sells the most electricity — and investor-owned ones such as Southern California Edison are atop that list.
A decision on how to control greenhouse gases from utilities will be made by the California Air Resources Board at the end of the year. But scenarios under consideration have Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and DWP chief H. David Nahai on a lobbying streak in Sacramento. Nahai recently accused the utilities and s of promoting “a scheme to line the pockets of large corporations” and “shift billions of dollars away from our communities and our customers and into the pockets of for-profit utilities.”
Los Angeles’ customers, who thus far have benefited from some of the lowest rates in the state, could shell out $450 million to $700 million a year — money that the utility was planning to spend building wind and solar plants. Smaller coal-reliant cities, such as Anaheim, Burbank and Pasadena, also could pay high fees. Customers’ bills could soar under such a plan, municipal utility directors, including Nahai, warn.
If I understand this correctly, electric companies, such as Pasadena’s, would pay for using coal to generate electricity. That money would then be distributed to all California utilities based on how many customers each has? So we would pay into the fund and our money goes to Edison, PG&E and Sempra, huge corporations that would probably turn our money over to stockholders as a dividend.
Sounds like a good plan to me, if you’re a utility that’s paid considerably into political campaigns of people like the Governor and others. Not so good if you’re a customer of a public utility.
Begs that old question, what’s my motivation to create cleaner energy when all my money’s being given to the bigger companies? Explain to me how this isn’t another attempt to gain the electricity markets in favor of stockholders and corporate profits?
Maybe somebody ought to be thinking in terms of incentivizing creation of clean energy by putting that money back into the green energy programs of the polluters.
It’s also fair to remind all that Pasadena’s contract for coal powered electricity is long term, and the plants are in Utah, not California.
For me, I’d like to see a program that actually reduces greenhouse gasses instead of simply redistributing green (money).
Paul
