'Renewables' a magic word to sell public on Powerlink<!---- END STORY TITLE -------->
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SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE April 27, 2008 - Dean Calbreath

Two weeks before Christmas 2004, a handpicked group of 12 movers and shakers met at Lou & Mickey's Seafood and Steak Restaurant in the Gaslamp Quarter to talk about San Diego Gas & Electric's plans to build a new power line.

For several hours, the group – which included two San Diego City Council members – talked about how the public would react to the power line, as well as discussing the “political cover” that elected officials would need to support it.

In the end, the group decided the best argument SDG&E could make was to emphasize that the project would bring renewable energy to San Diego County as well as making the system more reliable.

Eight months later when Edwin Guiles, SDG&E's chairman, unveiled the Sunrise Powerlink project, he echoed the findings of the focus group.

"By tapping into the developing renewable energy market in the Imperial Valley, we can improve our overall system reliability and the environment at the same time,” he said.

To Sunrise's critics, the focus group's stress on building “political cover” raises questions about SDG&E's emphasis on getting renewable energy through Sunrise. Is it real, or is it public relations?

“The focus group told them to focus on renewables,” said Michael Shames, who heads Utility Consumers' Action Network.

Shames and other critics say the talk of renewables is a smoke screen. The real purpose of the line, they say, is to create a connection with the state power grid so SDG&E can transport power from gas-fired plants in Mexico.

A deal like that would generate profits for SDG&E's parent, Sempra Energy, that San Diego ratepayers would not share in, the critics say. In the meantime, Sunrise would cut a broad swath through Anza-Borrego Desert State Park.

SDG&E denies that the emphasis on renewables is a PR ploy. It says the Mexican plants are already connected to the California grid and there are no plans to build more.

“If we are going to have any of our renewable goals, we have to have Sunrise,” said Mike Niggli, SDG&E's chief operating officer. “Renewables in Imperial Valley cannot be developed without it.”

At this point, SDG&E is lagging behind the statewide switch to renewable energy, which includes solar, geothermal and wind generation. Despite a state mandate requiring utilities to draw 20 percent of their energy from renewables by 2010, SDG&E is only at 5.5 percent, compared with about 14 percent at Pacific Gas & Electric and 16 percent at Southern California Edison.

SDG&E plans to tap into solar and geothermal energy in Imperial Valley. But there's no guarantee how much renewable power would come over Sunrise. Once the power line is built, Niggli said, it will be up to the California Independent System Operator, which oversees the state's energy network, to decide what mix of energy sources it will use.

“The ISO will operate it for whatever provides the lowest cost and highest benefit to the state,” Niggli said.

Critics say there are plenty of quick and easy ways that SDG&E can boost its renewables without Sunrise. They point to Edison, which is erecting solar panels on industrial rooftops. And they say that if SDG&E wants to bring renewables from Imperial Valley, it can use its existing Southwest Powerline by reducing the amount of fossil-fuel energy it carries.

Besides bringing in renewables, Niggli said one reason SDG&E likes its proposed route for Sunrise is that it runs close enough to the state power grid to allow for a connection at some point. He said that would allow the company to bring even more power to San Diego County.

That sounds a bit like a previously proposed power line known as Valley Rainbow, which SDG&E promoted as a way of connecting San Diego County's lines to the state grid. “There's not an exact continuum between (Valley Rainbow and Sunrise), but there may be some similarities between the two,” Niggli said.

In December 2002, the state Public Utilities Commission ruled that Valley Rainbow was simply not needed for economic or reliability reasons. In April 2003, it rejected SDG&E's last appeal. Roughly a year later, SDG&E started planning for Sunrise. In October 2004, SDG&E drafted a public affairs plan whose aim was “to chart a political course that provides SDG&E with the greatest chance possible to license and build a new 500 (kilovolt) transmission line in its service territory.”

Which brings us to the 2004 Gaslamp meeting of 12 “trusted SDG&E allies,” as they are described in a memo by Southwest Strategies, a public affairs firm SDG&E hired to develop support for the power line. The attendees included representatives of the Chamber of Commerce, Economic Development Corp. and Sycuan and Barona Valley casinos, who all opined on methods for building community support for Sunrise.

“A number of comments seemed to focus on how to sell this thing,” Pete Headley, who then headed the San Diego Military Advisory Council, recalled last week.

City Councilman Jim Madaffer warned that the public generally looks askance at power lines. Then-Councilman Michael Zucchet said he felt SDG&E had not been forthright in its positioning of Valley Rainbow. Labor leader Jerry Butkiewicz – who would become an employee of Sempra Energy in December 2007 – said public officials might not support the line for fear of upsetting voters.

“Elected officials might not support a new transmission line unless they believed 'political cover' existed to get behind such a project,” the Southwest Strategies memo said. Among the suggestions was that support should come from a grass-roots, “bottom up” movement rather than from the top down.

Eventually, SDG&E formed its own grass-roots group – the Community Alliance for Sunrise Powerlink – to get its message out. Using SDG&E funds, the group has erected billboards along the freeway, emphasizing Sunrise's use of renewables.

This is not to say that SDG&E isn't sincere in its desire for renewables from Imperial County. But the talk of renewables might look less like “political cover” if the utility were more aggressively pursuing renewables from elsewhere, too.

Dean Calbreath: (619) 293-1891; dean.calbreath @ uniontrib.com