Don’t like Pacific Gas & Electric Co.? Then you might be relieved to hear your town and Humboldt County are working fast to give you the opportunity to have a local electricity provider.
Last week, the Redwood Coast Energy Authority formally invited an alternative provider to take over for PG&E’s electricity. A “request for proposals” asked businesses to submit qualifications to buy electricity, administer billing and provide customer service. Proposals are due Jan. 15.
If the Energy Authority is successful, it would be a major change in the way Humboltians receive their electricity. PG&E would still maintain the power lines, but a new supplier would use them to deliver the energy.
Instead of stockholders, a countywide community choice program would have its own citizens as benefactors.
The authority’s plan would take away the profit incentive of those who invest in PG&E to make money. The new “shareholders” would be regular residents instead of investors. The “investing” part would become a routine payment for electricity delivered. There would be no utility money management diversions — like the $5 billion that disappeared from ratepayers when PG&E filed for bankruptcy in 2001, or the state Division of Ratepayer Advocates’ estimated $28 billion that was reaped from the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, or the Humboldt Bay nuke’s decommissioning fund bordering on $1 billion.
PG&E also devotes time and money to lobbying the state to undermine community choice and alternative energy programs, as noted by Michael Winkler, Arcata mayor-at-presstime and partner and energy analyst at Redwood Energy.
Energy Authority Director Matthew Marshall said a switch away from PG&E may also bring modest savings for rate payers.
“We’re hoping that we can achieve [savings for customers] in the ballpark of 2 percent or so – which isn’t huge for an individual customer’s bill, but would add up to maybe $2 million or more per year communitywide, which is a significant amount of money that can go back into the local economy,” Marshall said.
Along with the authority’s bid for outside help to deliver a non-PG&E power source, it’s been taking votes from the county and cities, from Arcata to Rio Dell, to support the change. It has the two-thirds majority required to implement the PG&E alternative, noted Marshall, even without Eureka, which is set to vote sometime this month.
“We’ll hopefully be moving forward with this step in the first quarter of 2016,” Marshall stated.
According to Winkler, the “weighted” votes from the county and city are: Humboldt County 40 percent; Eureka 18 percent; Arcata 12 percent; Fortuna 10 percent; Rio Dell 6 percent, Blue Lake 5 percent (the town rejected that share so far); Ferndale 5 percent; and Trinidad 4 percent.
Having a voting share doesn’t mean the municipalities are giving money to the effort.
“We are not expecting or counting on any financial support from the county or cities — the key support we need from them is just to opt into the program so we have a solid customer base,” Marshall said.
Humboldt would be following Marin and Sonoma counties as one of the first to provide electricity outside PG&E’s monopoly. Winkler said there’s a lot of potential in the move.
“The key advantage to residents of Humboldt County from community choice is keeping more of the millions of dollars we spend on energy in Humboldt County producing local jobs and increased economic activity,” Winkler said. “I feel that the best ways to spend these savings are to re-invest the money in increased local electricity generation, increased energy efficiency and in fuel switching from imported fuels to locally generated renewable electricity.”
Feeling the Biomass Burn
There are many ways to make electricity — nuclear fission, solar thermal and fossil fuels, to name a few. Basically, anything that can boil enough water can turn a turbine. In Humboldt, that includes burning trees and other forest vegetation, called “biomass.”
As an adjunct to creating a community choice alternative to PG&E, some politicians hope their support will also fuel an upsurge in biomass development on the North Coast.
Biomass would be “a win all the way around,” according to Humboldt County Supervisor Ryan Sundberg, because it provides jobs at biomass plants, rids forests of “scrap fire fuel” and provides money to promote green energy. Supervisor Rex Bohn is also a major biomass supporter, but Winkler said this form of energy generation is a mixed bag.
“The advantages of biomass plants are (the) use of a local waste product and local jobs and economic activity. The major disadvantage of the biomass plants is relatively high cost of electricity production compared to other renewable sources such as solar and wind,” Winkler said.
Unfortunately, burning biomass impacts Humboldt Bay’s toxicity. Dioxin, a highly toxic compound, is released from some wood burning. It is an accidental toxin released by heat. For instance, the state warns against burning driftwood fires due to dioxin pollution. It’s also locked into some forest biomass from historical herbicide spraying and is unlocked during burning.
“State-of-the-art scrubbers to eliminate air pollution are critical for any new biomass energy facility to ensure that air emissions don’t further exacerbate dioxin contamination of Humboldt Bay and farmlands,” noted Humboldt Baykeeper Director Jennifer Kalt. “Any type of combustion produces low levels of dioxin, but if wood chips from timberlands that have been treated with herbicides are the primary fuel, dioxin pollution could be a serious concern, especially if the herbicides are chlorinated chemicals.”
On Oct. 30, the state ordered utilities to build or buy 90 megawatts of new biomass and livestock waste power plants, subsidized by utility rates and through the California Energy Commission. (For scale, PG&E’s fossil-fueled power plant on the Bay is 163 megawatts.) Another 50 megawatts is set aside by state subsidies and requirements for burning from forest clearing.
This article appears in For Rent.
Sooner than later, we will need community generated and maintained energy sources. This is a good start.
Fossil fuels and nuclear have zero long term sustainability.
Hopefully, we will make an informed decision based on science, not financial interest: http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/issue… http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/issue…
Sounds interesting but would this end up leaving Humboldt county to deal with the nuclear waste at the power station? Not like it was going anywhere any way, but something to think about. If we decided to go with biomass stations, what about the history of higher cancer rates in the Humboldt hill area because of the burning of “slash” and left overs from timber processing on Samoa? Can sequestration really protect people from the dioxin pollution?
Humboldt leaders like Ryan Sundberg: While it is spectacular that you are shifting to Community Choice, please, please rethink your enthusiasm for biomass. Biomass actually results in higher greenhouse gas emissions (not lower).
For details see: http://biofuelwatch.org.uk
Blue Lake Power has operated in violation with the clean air act since it re-opened in 2010 and polluted the air, night sky and quiet. It only re-opened thanks to the tax breaks and government stimulus funds paid for by the taxpayers in excess of $6m. We have since had the displeasure of dealing with a company that stiffs the city of Blue Lake on its bills and ignores it’s environmental permit requirements.
Blue Lake has turned the other way on these issues to keep the rent and water bills rolling in and the NCUAQMD has helped by ignoring their own rules. These facts are clearly laid out by the notice of violation issued by the EPA last year. Let’s not pay a premium for power and support bad actors like Blue Lake Power. They shut down because they couldn’t compete with other renewables. Let’s keep it that way find a new vision for the Blue Lake industrial area rather than continue taxpayer subsidies in the form of a Community choice.
There are cleaner alternatives that cost less. Biomass is needed to dispose of wood chips but not for power. A quick web search will show biomass is not a clean energy. Let’s not confuse the issue.
Biomass is just as pollutant as burning fossil fuels. This is not a clean energy plan, it is a local carbon burning industry revamp. We should invest in clean energy. This plan is selling out the Humboldt people for a few jobs in a dying market. Why would anyone support three dirty energy plans coming to town, our back yard will be so dirty. This is an opportunity to invest in our real community but the heavy lumbar money has its fingers in the Mayor. He wants cheap energy and local jobs and is willing to destroy our environment to do this. This will create worse air quality for Humboldt, and will put more emphasis and lazy logging making the trash worth money. Please call pual pitino and let him know. No biomass investing. Use what you got on the way out towards real clean energy. Don’t be fooled. Switching from burning fossil carbon fuels to renewable ca bom fuels is not the answer.
Burning wood waste laced with dioxins from the tons of herbicides the lumber companies spray on our watersheds and cow manure is a great way to make electricity. Why not burn old tires too? Look how great the burners in Blue Lake have done. Its also great that we will be subsidizing local millionaires to run it instead of ones who live out of town. They might even save us 2% on our bills, whoopee!! Just leave it to our “non profit” scam artists. It will also give the lumber companies a new market to clear-cut and sell miles of forest land when the lumber market is slow, just chip it up and burn it.
I forgot to mention how wonderful it is that the North Coast Journal is there to be a cheerleader for every “non profit” scam and brutal thing the police and the Humboldt County Debtor’s Prison(County Jail) does to help turn Humboldt County into a mini Third World Country.
I’m sorry if the last comment was kind of mean. The Journal is basically a feature magazine and a good one at that. I shouldn’t expect investigative journalism with hard questions, a lot of research, interviews with conflicting views, and a muckraker attitude. A magazine like that won’t have to many ads around here.