IE Business Daily Business news for the Inland Empire.
Why don’t our elected officials or the media care?
The shutdown of the San Onofre Nuclear Generation plant permanently eliminated over 2000 Megawatts of electrical power from California’s electricity supplies. This is approximately 20 percent of Southern California’s total electrical energy supply.
San Onofre, located just South of the city of San Clemente at the northern edge of Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base, was the largest single provider of electrical power operating in Southern California providing reliable, clean energy to customers of Edison, San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E) and, interestingly enough the City of Riverside’s Municipal Electric Utility.
Originally opened in 1968, San Onofre expanded in 1982 with the addition of two new generation units. However, the plant was temporarily shut down in January 2012 due to premature wear in steam generators installed in 2010. Edison publicly announced that it would make efforts to repair SONGS. It was, after all, 20 percent of our power supplies and was almost fully depreciated and paid for by Southern California electrical customers.
Additionally, San Onofre was the largest provider of non-carbon emitting power on the grid.
This is where things get strange. On June 7, 2013, Edison made a surprise announcement that it would permanently close San Onofre. More disconcerting, was that the Public Utilities Commission quickly approved the proposal.
Now, according to a few news reports and court filings, it has been revealed that Edison held clandestine meetings between its executives and Public Utilities Commission President Michael Peevey (also a former President of Edison) on shutting down San Onofre and, more important to electricity customers, how to divide the cost of the $4.7 billion decommissioning.
Under the agreement negotiated in closed door discussions, electricity customers who had already paid for the power plant would be responsible for $3.3 billion of the $4.7 billion to shut the plant! Investigators obtained warrants and obtained information including emails between Edison and PUC President Peevey, and even the napkin that the original deal was first written on in a meeting between an Edison executive and Peevey that took place in, of all places, a hotel in Warsaw, Poland. No, we aren’t making this up.
An Administrative Law Judge on Wednesday issued a ruling asking Edison why it should not pay a $34 million fine for unlawful communications between Edison and its regulator, the Public Utilities Commission.
But this really is not the biggest issue. Outside of the notable investigative reporting by the San Diego Union Tribune, most newspapers and especially our elected officials, from the Governor, to the Attorney General on down haven’t said a peep. Potential criminal conflicts of interest, obvious violations of state open meeting laws, sticking electrical customers with the cost of corporate mistakes, and what did our elected officials do in Sacramento? They threw now former PUC President Mike Peevey a big retirement party!
While our leaders in Sacramento are throwing parties, electricity customers have to come up with $3.7 billion for a power plant they already paid for including decommissioning costs that they now have to pay for twice. Electrical customers also bear the cost of replacing their largest single electricity generator, which was producing electrical power at about 1.6 cents a kilowatt hour, with more expensive and less reliable solar generation that requires even more expensive peak natural gas power generation when the sun isn’t shining.
Even more amazing is that, with all the talk about the State of California’s aggressive actions to combat carbon emissions and the consideration of even more legislation to require expensive renewable energy and the reduction of gasoline use, the electricity from San Onofre emitted NO carbon and was 20 percent of our power supplies is ignored by our Globe Hopping Governor who never misses a chance to blame anything and everything on Climate Change.
It’s great having friends in high places. I wonder what the Pope thinks about it.
