SDG&E's 3-Pronged Plan to Raise Your Rates
UCAN News
Medical experts say the worst burn a person can get is an electrical burn. They’re expensive to treat and take a long time for recovery. Now, SDG&E is aggressively plugging a three-pronged plan that will hold you hostage to out-of-control energy costs.
If approved, the so-called $1.3 billion Sunrise Powerlink will span Imperial County, scar the Anza-Borrego State Park, and then desecrate the mountains in Warner Springs. From there it will uglify Ramona, and ruin stretches in the Rancho Penasquitos/Carmel Valley area. The worst part of this whole plan is that it probably isn’t needed. If that isn’t bad enough, it INCREASES our dependence on imported power.
Painful Prong #1: SDG&E makes $1.8 billion profit from a project that “costs” $1.3 billion.
What some might call “creative financing” is in reality a massive big-government-sanctioned financial swindle of San Diego ratepayers. Recently, FERC, (the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) approved a guaranteed profit margin for SDG&E. What this means is that SDG&E could net up to $1.8 billion in PROFITS on an investment of $1.3 billion. How is that possible? Ask the bank that holds your mortgage: over 30-40 years the miracle of compounded interest can generate some pretty incredible sums of money. When that investment is guaranteed by regulators, it becomes cash that a utility can literally bank upon. So why is SDG&E pushing so hard to get this project approved by regulators? Just follow the money!
SDG&E’s justifications are three-fold. First, it insists that the line is needed to help San Diego comply with the state mandate that 20% of our power be from renewable sources. The big problem is that SDG&E also admits, (although it is hidden in the 2,117-page application), that renewable power can be imported into San Diego by the existing Southwest Powerlink that also happens to traverse Imperial County just twelve miles from SDG&E’s proposed new line.
Painful Prong #2: Complete dependence on imported power
SDG&E insists that the project will pay for itself through access to cheaper power located outside of San Diego. Logically, it is hard to accept the notion that power plant operators in Arizona or Nevada will sell power for substantially less money than it could be produced in California. Desert is desert and, besides, land costs aren’t the primary cost driver for electricity. The fuel source is — natural gas, specifically. And the cost of natural gas in those states is not appreciably less than the cost of natural gas in California. (The same can’t be said about gasoline, but that’s an entirely different story).
Painful Prong #3:
Protection from “terrorists, fire, and earthquakes”
SDG&E argues that the transmission line will protect us from blackouts. It argues that the system is precariously dependent upon just two existing transmission lines. This is a shameful scare tactic. The application doesn’t answer the obvious question: Rather than rely on imported power at all, why not just build more generation here in San Diego County? We have the sites and we have the natural gas. And we have more sun than just about anywhere else in the United States!
These are the questions that UCAN’s experts are analyzing. CPUC, the California Public Utilities Commission, is expected to hold hearings on this proposal in mid-2007. We’ll have more for you then. In the meantime, beware of utility execs peddling power lines. For all you know, you may be buying a deed to the Brooklyn Bridge.
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