This article is reproduced from the San Diego Union Tribune Opinion page, November 16, 2008. To read SDG&E's arguments in favor of the PowerLink, click here

Power politics
Should the state approve SDG&E's Sunrise Powerlink? A final decision could come at the Dec. 4 meeting of the state Public Utilities Commission.

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San Diego Gas & Electric originally favored a northern route through the Santa Ysabel Valley for the proposed Sunrise Powerlink. A more southerly route now seems more likely. Eduardo Contreras/Union-Tribune
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--><!-- BYLINE --><!-- CREDIT -->November 16, 2008

No, it's based on expensive myths

By Michael Shames, Executive Director, www.ucan.org, the Utility Consumers' Action Network

UCAN was founded in 1985 to protect consumers from San Diego Gas & Electric corporation. 

Myth: the line was needed by 2010. Myth: that it would save consumers money.
Myth: that it would facilitate renewable energy development.

The Sunrise Powerlink myths have been destroyed.

San Diego Gas & Electric's three-year campaign to trick the public into
accepting the necessity of a new $1.7 billion transmission line through
Anza-Borrego State Park has been exposed by the California Public Utilities
Commission to be one of the most expensive misinformation campaigns conducted in
San Diego's history.

Since January 2005, SDG&E has spent more than $35 million pursuing
approval of the project. At least $4 million of that was spent specifically to
generate public support for the project. The effort was partially successful; it
succeeded in attracting the support of many local politicians and almost every
business group in the region. It even spawned some local editorial support. It
turns out that all of these supporters were fooled.

Oct. 31 was a truly haunted Halloween in SDG&E's executive offices. On
that spook-filled day, two proposed decisions issued by the PUC debunked almost
all of SDG&E's claims in support of Sunrise.

One decision, by two experienced PUC administrative law judges who oversaw
three years of hearings, recommended against any power line being built in the
foreseeable future.

The judges rejected almost every one of SDG&E's primary arguments in
support of the power line. Myth: the line was needed by 2010. Myth: that it
would save consumers money. Myth: that it would facilitate renewable energy
development. They also pointed to the utility's refusal to consider a number of
feasible alternatives to Sunrise.

On the same day, an alternate decision was released by a PUC Commissioner
sympathetic to SDG&E's efforts to build the transmission line. Commissioner
Dian Grueneich found that Sunrise is not needed to meet the state-mandated 20
percent renewable energy portfolio and, moreover, that it would increase
greenhouse gases. She agreed with the judges that SDG&E didn't need a new
line until 2014. Additionally, she found that Sunrise could promote the
development of new coal-fired generation in the western United States, which
conflicts with California's policy to move away from coal power. She did,
however, say the line could be built if certain conditions were met, including
that such a line would take a more southern route than the one originally
proposed by the utility through the state park.

The proceeding now enters a political phase in which Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger's publicly stated desire to build more transmission lines must be
reconciled with the evidentiary facts that establish Sunrise as an unnecessary
and expensive extravagance.

The five members of the Public Utilities Commission, appointed by the
governor, will be under pressure to accede to the wishes of their boss and the
state's utilities, which lust for the billions of dollars of guaranteed
long-term profits that will come if these expensive infrastructure projects are
approved.

In the coming weeks, the state's ratepayers will have a ringside seat to see
whether political expediency will triumph over clear facts.