Here is the way several California cities are reacting to the Governor’s attempt to stop global warming. They are racing to beat the implementation of his anti-carbon dioxide statutes, January 2007.
COAL: Calif. cities lock in contracts through 2027 before law takes effect
E&E Publishing
Several California cities recently acceded to Intermountain Power Agency’s request to renew contracts for coal-fired power because California’s new greenhouse gas law will ban such actions once it takes effect Jan. 1, 2007.
The public utilities advisory board of Riverside, Calif., voted unanimously last week to ask city officials to renew their electricity supply agreement with Utah’s IPA beyond 2027.
Burbank officials also voted last week to extend their contract with the utility to 2044. Meanwhile, power managers for Glendale and Pasadena said they would ask their cities to do the same within the next three weeks. Anaheim officials are weighing what to do, a spokesman said.
The cities’ current contracts with the utility are not set to expire until 2027, but IPA officials said they needed to know now if the cities wanted to extend the agreements because of the looming implementation of SB 1368. SB 1368, designed to cap greenhouse gas emissions from some industries in California, requires the state to cut GHGs by 25 percent. It passed as a companion piece to other legislation this year. A state Assembly version of the law, AB 32, could take several more years to implement.
Officials from the various cities said that they had been paying off capital costs to construct the Utah power plants since the late 1980s and that if they did not renew now they would lose the right to buy power for about 50 percent less once those costs were paid off in 2027 because of the passage of SB 1368. “It would be akin to paying off the mortgage to your house only to have it revert to the previous owner,” Pasadena Water & Power General Manager Phyllis Currie said (Janet Wilson, Los Angeles Times, Nov. 4). — RJD
