Department of Water Resources
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
November 4, 2008
5. Agencies, Programs, People –
Newsom, supes tangle over S.F. power plant
San Francisco Chronicle
Utilities putting new energy into geothermal sources
Geothermal sources draw power firms in quest for renewables.
Environmental group sues to derail planning for Cambria desal plan
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Newsom, supes tangle over S.F. power plant
San Francisco Chronicle – 11/4/08
By Robert Selna, staff writer
(11-03) 20:41 PST -- Despite San Francisco's national reputation for environmental initiatives, a 40-year-old fossil-fuel power plant on the city's eastern shore continues to spew particulates and chemicals into the air while dumping scalding water into the bay.
And the most immediate opportunity for cleaning up the Potrero power plant south of
Newsom's plan is not popular with some supervisors and residents because it represents a rejection of a decades-long effort - one that Newsom and regulators once supported - to replace the Mirant plant with a city-owned, cleaner one that would still run on fossil fuels.
Critics of Newsom's proposal say there is no proof that a retrofit will reduce emissions to levels expected of modern power plants, such as for the proposed city generators.
For now, the city needs to have a power plant of some kind located in town because the state power grid monitor, the California Independent System Operator Corp., requires the city to produce enough energy to handle emergencies or shutdowns elsewhere.
While the city has a plan to pursue renewable energy sources in the future, power grid officials say they believe that meeting their requirements with alternative energy, such as solar and wind power, is years, if not decades, away.
Position changes
Less than a year ago, Newsom, the city's Public Utilities Commission and other city leaders signed on to a plan to close the Mirant plant in anticipation of opening the new city-owned plant just blocks away. At a news conference alongside Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, Newsom said the symbolic agreement with Mirant represented "an important day in the history of the city."
But by this summer, Newsom and the SFPUC had changed their minds. They wanted to retrofit three Mirant units - changing them to run on natural gas instead of diesel - and shut one down.
Newsom's reversal came in the context of the city securing more power generation. In 2007, a project was approved to sink a power cable in the bay floor that will run from
While the cable will not deliver enough juice to satisfy all of the state's requirements, grid officials have said the cable could allow the city to shut down the largest of the four Mirant power units - making the retrofit plan a viable alternative to building a new power plant.
That retrofit option received backing from a variety of supporters, including Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and some environmental advocates, who object to building a new fossil-fuel plant in
Newsom, who has promoted
Last week, Newsom said he agreed that retrofitting the Mirant plant is not an ideal option, but that it's the best for now.
"I can't believe people would want to build new power plants at this time," Newsom said. "First, you retrofit, and then you find alternative energy sources, and then you shut it down eventually ... I'll veto any legislation to build new power plants."
Retrofit bashed
Newsom's retrofit resolution was unfavorably reviewed last month at a hearing before a supervisors' committee.
During the hearing, Supervisor Sophie Maxwell and Peskin, who have both worked on the proposal to build a city-owned power plant for nearly a decade, expressed exasperation.
"We had something that had gone through the process, and now (the mayor) wants to short-circuit that process and bring in something different," Maxwell said.
Both supervisors said that neither the mayor's staff nor the SFPUC have provided proof - other than claims from Mirant - that the retrofit will lead to acceptable emission reductions. And they are angry at what they see as a poorly researched and hasty proposal.
"We started asking questions about the feasibility of that plan, and the answers were, frankly, not good enough for government," Peskin said. "They did not pass the laugh test."
Meanwhile, the Mirant plant chugs away, emitting smog-producing nitrous oxide, sulfur, carbon dioxide and particulates, and sucking in 226 million gallons of bay water every day. Studies show that the heated water is sent back into shallow waters, where it stirs up polluted elements, including copper, dioxins, mercury and PCBs, dispersing them throughout the bay.
Residents of Dogpatch, where the plant is located, are worried about their health and say they have had it with the politics.
"It's easy for the city and for environmental groups to say 'We want green,' but they haven't been living with this for so many years," said Janet Carpinelli, vice president of the Dogpatch Neighborhood Association. "We want green, too, but I've been here for 25 years breathing this stuff ... this neighborhood is getting lost in the politics of the city and the green versus not green arguments."#
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/11/04/BACF13S15S.DTL
Utilities putting new energy into geothermal sources
Geothermal sources draw power firms in quest for renewables.
By Marla Dickerson
Reporting from
Tucked into a few dusty acres across from a shopping mall, it uses steam heat from deep within the Earth's crust to generate electricity. Known as geothermal, the energy is clean, reliable and so abundant that this facility produces more than enough electricity to power every home in
"There's no smoke. Very little noise," said Paul Thomsen, director of policy and business management for Ormat Technologies Inc., which owns the operation. "People don't even know it's here."
Geothermal energy may be the most prolific renewable fuel source that most people have never heard of. Although the supply is virtually limitless, the massive upfront costs required to extract it have long rendered geothermal a novelty. But that's changing fast as this old-line industry buzzes with activity after decades of stagnation.
Billionaire Warren E. Buffett has invested big. Internet giant Google Inc. is bankrolling advanced research. Entrepreneurs are paying record prices for drilling leases in places such as
"This is the new gold rush," said Mark Taylor, a geothermal analyst with the consulting firm New Energy Finance in
Global investment in geothermal was around $3 billion last year,
A lot of that new investment is in the
The area around the Salton Sea in
In October, the Bureau of Land Management said it planned to open more than 190 million acres of federal land in
"I've been at this 25 years, and I've never seen anything like it," said Shevenell, a research hydrologist. "Money is falling out of the sky."
Geothermal has been harnessed for industry since at least the 1820s. Operators tap natural reservoirs of scalding water and steam trapped thousands of feet underground, drilling wells to bring the heat to the surface to power turbines that feed electricity generators.
Costing about 4 to 7 cents a kilowatt-hour,
This so-called baseload generation is coveted by power companies, which are under pressure to boost their use of green energy.
"It's a 24/7 predictable supply," said Thomas Fair, the company's head of renewable energy. "That means a lot to a utility."
Greenhouse gas emissions are minimal in geothermal operations, and the size of the fuel supply defies imagination. There is 50,000 times more heat energy contained in the first six miles of the Earth's crust than in all the planet's oil and natural gas resources, according to the environmental organization Earth Policy Institute.
The challenge is extracting it. Geothermal energy production requires three things: heat from the Earth's core, fractured rock to make it easy to get to and water to transport the heat to the surface.
Traditionally, developers have sought out pockets of hot water and steam hidden underground. Prime areas lie along continental plate boundaries, which is why
Still, these reservoirs can be tricky to pinpoint. They're also expensive to reach. A geothermal well can cost $5 million or more. The result: The U.S. currently derives less than 0.5% of its electricity from geothermal.
Some say the key to harnessing this energy source on a massive scale lies with a technology known as enhanced geothermal systems, or EGS for short. The idea is to engineer the necessary conditions by pumping water into the Earth's crust and fracturing the hot rocks below. Heat from the Earth warms the water, whose resulting steam is channeled back to the surface, powering turbines to create electricity. The water is then pumped back underground.
Though still in its infancy, EGS has the potential to open up much of the planet to geothermal development. Tiny plants are already online in
Google.org, the philanthropic arm of the Mountain View, Calif.-based search engine company, is trying to push EGS in the
Google is urging the
EGS "is indeed the sleeping giant of renewable energy," Dan Reicher, director for climate change and energy initiatives at Google.org, said during a recent industry conference in
Some industry veterans such as Shevenell are miffed that EGS has grabbed the spotlight when there's plenty of energy to be extracted quickly using conventional techniques. Still, she credits Google for helping pump life into a dormant sector.
"This country is in an energy crisis," she said. "We need energy now, and this is a proven way to get it."#
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/environment/la-fi-geothermal3-2008nov03,0,1048819.story
Environmental group sues to derail planning for Cambria desal plan
San Diego
By Kathe Tanner, staff writer
A lawsuit filed in San Luis Obispo Superior Court last week asks that a judge order a stop to all preliminary work, including testing, on
“The (district) adopted findings that construction and operation of the un-designed and un-sited desal facility would have no significant effects on the environment but did not have any data, information or analyses to back the findings up,” said
“The (environmental impact report) ignores underwater marine plants, animals and habitats,” she said.
Hawley and attorney Michael Jencks are handling the suit for LandWatch, which sees marine concerns “as a statewide issue that needs to be addressed by the court,” Hawley said.
The district hadn’t yet received the complete lawsuit by late last week, but district legal counsel Art Montandon said LandWatch can’t challenge just one part of the agency’s water master plan.
“You challenge any portion of the plan, you challenge it all,” Montandon said. “The court would have to invalidate the whole thing.”
But, he added, that wouldn’t halt the district’s work on a desalination plant.
Because there is no legal requirement for the district to have such a plan, stopping it “won’t stop desal or delay it one second,”Montandon said.
“Any final desal project would have a site-specific, complete environmental review” of its own, he added.
District board member Greg Sanders, also a lawyer, said the lawsuit is “a total loser” that will wind up “costing the district between $100,000 and $200,000 to defend, including any appeal.”
He called it “a waste of the taxpayers’ money to have to defend this. … By adopting the Water Master Plan and certifying the (environmental report), we in no way completed the (California Environmental Quality Act) process for desal.” #
http://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/story/516869.html
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