What's The Right Answer?

It's not often that you can hang the "bellwether" tag on Victorville, CA, but there's a fight underway in the high desert between environmentalists and energy companies that raises some questions that need to be answered throughout California.

An article in Sunday's Victorville Daily Press reports on a lawsuit brought by NRDC and others to scuttle plans for two gas-fired power plants proposed for the area. The lawsuit asks the not-unreasonable question: "Why are we building fossil fuel power plants in the face of a mandate to reduce greenhouse gas emissions?" (I say "not-unreasonable" because it is a legitimate question that speaks more to the regs and mandates flying out of the capitol building in Sacramento than it does to any environmental or business agenda.)

The article then makes the one point nobody seems willing or able to address: "The dispute underscores a basic disagreement over whether green energy is ready for mass production and whether the cost pencils out."

The write-up also notes the following-- which should be good fodder for discussion:

Analysts have acknowledged that the supply of natural gas has peaked in the United States and supplies from Canada are expected to be shrinking in the coming year. With the bulk of natural gas reserves in Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the two High Desert power plants would become increasingly dependent on foreign sources of the volatile substance, which is expensive and delicate to ship. LNG terminals to receive such shipments have not yet been built or even sited, promising to delay any relief from the crunch for a decade or more.


Meanwhile, demand for energy will continue to grow. According to the California Independent Service Operator, which monitors the state power grid, demand could outstrip supply within the next two years, possibly leading to a repeat of the rolling blackouts which troubled the state in 2001.

Rolling back progress? [Victorville Daily Press]