Hyping new power lines: industry dresses coal and gas in renewables' clothing

The electricity industry wants to build massive new transmission infrastructure, and it is telling us that this will bring renewable energy to California - but the truth is much less encouraging.

Utilities are promoting new transmission projects as necessary for renewable energy, but taken as a whole their current proposals would convey very little renewable energy.

The state generally relies on investor-owned utilities to propose transmission projects. The utilities continue to focus on transmission for gas- and coal-fired generating plants, not renewables. The "let the market decide" approach is not working.

For example, the Frontier Transmission Line would run 1,000 miles from Wyoming to California. Promoters speak of moving 6,000 MW of coal power and 6,000 MW of wind power, but their primary purpose is to expand production of coal power in Wyoming. The line could also move wind power, but only if someone happens to develop some as an adjunct to the wave of coal power. Fortunately, in late 2006 California passed legislation prohibiting California utilities from contracting for large amounts of power from low-efficiency power plants, with the specific intent of excluding conventional coal-fired plants. The future of the Frontier Line is now uncertain.

Sunrise Powerlink would run from the Mexican border near El Centro via San Diego County to tie in to the Southern California Edison (SCE) grid in the Los Angeles area. The line is being hyped by San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E) as critical to maximizing renewable-energy development in Imperial County, but SDG&E is proposing a flawed solar technology. In reality, the primary purpose of the Sunrise Powerlink is to allow SDG&E's unregulated parent Sempra to sell to SCE electricity generated in Mexico using imported gas from Sempra's Baja California LNG terminal.

Sunrise would pass through the heart of the Anza-Borrego State Park, damaging the park and setting an ominous precedent for other state parks.

A major transmission line known as the Green Path North, scheduled for completion by 2010 by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) and the Imperial Irrigation District (IID) to move Imperial Valley renewable energy to the coast, avoids Anza-Borrego and will cost much less than Sunrise. Since neither LADWP or IID is regulated by the California Public Utilities Commission, however, the CPUC is institutionally blind to the project. Yet Green Path North will render Sunrise redundant for renewables - but available for fossil power.

Nevada Hydro Company's Lake Elsinore Advanced Pump Storage (LEAPS) transmission project would add another interconnection between the SCE and SDG&E transmission grids. The scheme is to pump polluted Lake Elsinore water 1,600 feet uphill every night, store it behind a 180-foot dam located in what is now a pristine canyon in the Cleveland National Forest, and release it during the day to generate hydroelectric power to sell at daytime peak rates. Nevada Hydro implies that the project will use wind and solar energy to lift water, but for the foreseeable future the majority of the pumping power would come from fossil-fuel plants.

One bright spot among California renewable-energy transmission projects is the Tehachapi wind-collector transmission system, designed to access up to 4,000 MW of additional wind power. SCE will develop this project. The system will serve only the Tehachapi wind fields, which are in effect a transmission cul-de-sac, eliminating the industry temptation to game the line and use it to access power from pet fossil projects.

The federal Energy Policy Act of 2005 gives the Department of Energy two years to designate critical energy corridors, essentially energy superhighways. The intent was to shut out critical review at the state and local levels. California regulators have fought this federal power grab in what has historically been a state concern, but the state's own laissez-faire approach to transmission is doing little to accelerate renewable-energy development at remote sites.

To genuinely maximize renewables development, the state needs transmission-access regulations that prioritize access for remote high-value solar, wind, and geothermal resources and assure that the lines are not co-opted in favor of conventional power plants. The purpose of the lines - renewable energy transmission - must be clear, simple, and nonnegotiable.

Bill Powers, P.E., chair of the Border Power Plant Working Group and member, Sierra Club California Energy and Climate Change Committee