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TechnoratiLos Angeles Will End Use of Coal-Fired Power
LOS ANGELES - Los Angeles will eliminate the use of electricity made from coal by 2020, replacing it with power from cleaner renewable energy sources, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said.
![[Employees work beside a conveyor belt at a coal mine workshop in this April 15, 2008 file image. REUTERS/Stringer
]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/coal-2_1.jpg "coal-2.jpg")
Consumers of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the largest city-owned utility in the United States with 1.45 million electricity customers, will see higher power bills in the fight against climate change, he added in his inaugural speech for his second four-year term as mayor on Wednesday.
California does not have any coal-fired power plants, a leading contributor to greenhouse gas pollution, but the LADWP now gets 40 percent of its electricity from coal plants outside the state.
"LADWP will deliver 40 percent renewable power, with the remainder coming from natural gas, nuclear, and large hydroelectric," said Villaraigosa.
Coal and natural gas-fired power now account for 76 percent of the electricity delivered by the LADWP. By 2020, the LADWP expects to cut its carbon emissions by up to 60 percent from 1990 levels, according to the mayor's office.
Villaraigosa said the LADWP will meet its goal of getting 20 percent of its power from renewables by 2010.
"We applaud Mayor Villaraigosa's bold decision to move Los Angeles beyond coal," said Bruce Nilles, director of the Sierra Club's efforts to end coal-fired power plants. "The decision to replace coal with cleaner energy alternatives is key to boosting job creation and economic growth."
The LADWP also wants to cut overall electricity use by 1 percent a year for the next 10 years, Freeman said, through energy efficiency.
On Thursday, Deputy Mayor David Freeman said the LADWP will continue to use power from the coal-fired 2,250-megawatt Navajo Generating Station in Arizona until 2019 when its current contract expires. It takes 21.2 percent of the plant's output.
Freeman, the one-time head of the federal Tennessee Valley Authority, said negotiations have not yet begun on how and when the LADWP will leave its contract as lead owner of the 1,800-megawatt coal-fired Intermountain plant in Utah.
It takes 44.6 percent of the output of Intermountain in a contract that extends to 2026.
Together, Navajo -- 477 MW -- and Intermountain -- 803 MW -- can deliver as much as 1,280 MW of power to Los Angeles.
RATES TO RISE
Villaraigosa and Freeman said the elimination of coal-fired power will also mean higher electricity rates. LADWP customers pay an average of about 12 cents per kilowatt-hour.
Freeman said eliminating power from coal will one day increase rates but they will remain competitive with the 15.5 cents per kwh of the average Southern California Edison customer. SCE, a unit of Edison International, has nearly 4.9 million power customers and covers Los Angeles County outside of the city of Los Angeles.
The Navajo plant can deliver power at 3 cents per kwh, and the Intermountain power is between 4 to 5 cents per kwh.
Freeman said that coal power costs will rise as rules limiting carbon dioxide, including a cap-and-trade system, are implemented.
But "costs to society" such as higher medical bills for lung-related diseases, including asthma, will drop.
"The rates are going to go up," said Freeman. "There is no way you can bring in renewable energy and not have some rate impact when you replace coal. But the value to society even aside from global warming is going to be positive."
(Reporting by Bernie Woodall; Editing by Marguerita Choy)
18 Comments so far
Show AllWhy end it by 2020? Why not NOW ?
The notion that Californians "necessarily" have to pay higher electrical costs as they wean themselves from coal power imported from other states, while reducing power consumption is completely untrue.
Any peaking plant using natural gas can cheaply and easily be equipped with a "cooling tower" based on the Atmospheric Vortex Engine concept (aka Plan B). see http://vortexengine.ca
By incorporating this modification, their electrical output can be increased by up to 30%, without the need to import and burn any more natural gas than is currently used, with the cost for the incremental power being only a few cents per KWh, a fraction of the cost of other renewable "alternatives".
Transmission loss from the Arizona plant to Los Angeles is probably 15%. The inefficiencies are the price we pay for "free enterprise", the purpose of which is to increase efficiencies. USans always take the rational approach but only after all other approaches self-destruct.
"Why should the consumer pay the extra costs for "greener" energy?
It is not the consumers fault the gov. did not make this a priority."
The answer to your question can be found in the sentence that follows it: "Because the government is making it a priority."
Why should the consumer pay the extra costs for "greener" energy?
It is not the consumers fault the gov. did not make this a priority.
We will just be giving the coal to China and India and I bet they will not have to pay nearly as much as we did for our energy.
At this time in my life I do not want to ride public transportation or struggle.
The technology should be available to make this an easy transition. But I can see like everything else no plans were made.
"At this time in my life I do not want to ride public transportation or struggle."
Kiss your guzzler goodbye. The only reason you're getting gas artificially cheap are the wars for oil and government subsidizing them. Peak Oil and Peak Coal are coming and you'll just have to learn to make the switch rather than act as a selfish snob. Alternative fuels might not be cheap but at least you gas guzzlers will be forced to learn a crude lesson from Mother Nature as she gets back at you.
As an Oregonian, I now understand why my state is supporting the construction of a controversial LNG terminal and natural gas pipeline through pristine forest and productive farmland to be piped to California. In order to reduce CO2 emissions, Oregon must sacrifice for California, Arizona and Utah. Frankly, I don't believe our trade off is the best bargain. Natural gas piped to California to generate electricity there will not last indefinitely. Natural gas is a finite resource.
Our national energy policy must incorporate 'decentralized' power systems, ideally beginning with Plug-in hybrid vehicles combined with rooftop solar photovoltiac panels. Households with such a back-up power supply can survive an emergency grid failure indefinitely. They gain the means to more closely monitor household electricity consumption and the choice of whether to drive or cut utility bills -- in other words, they can choose to drive less, a sacriledge in Car Nuts Los Angeles. The less we drive, the more we walk, use transit and bicycle. El Eh just might have to do a lot of depaving. Take that Gemeral Motors dealers!
Do they burn coal IN LA? I doubt it.
They must have coal fired plants somewhere over the mountains because the LA basin would trap just about everything.
I admire the plan but I'm skeptical of 20% renewable by 2010 and 40% by 2020. The technology isn't there yet. But much will change in the next 11 years. Unfortunately during transition it will burden the poorest in SC more than the rest.
Excuse me? The technology isn't there yet? Isn't where? What technology? Jet packs and table-top fusion reactors? Where have you been for the last 30 years--asleep under a tree? Or paying too much attention to defeatists, delayers and ignorant nay-sayers like Sedge Limburger or whatever his name is?
The technology is here, now, and cheaper than any of the alternatives even not considering the externalities. Solar, wind, and especially conservation, as well as local or smaller contributors like cogeneration, geothermal, annual cycle energy systems... We use twice as much energy per person as Europeans, four times as much as the Japanese, and they know they can cut back considerably themselves, without sacrifing, or "struggling"--whatever that means.
It's getting to the point now where we have to ask the same question about people against safe clean energy that we ask about trickle-down anti-evolutionist punishment-is-the-answer-to-every-problem reactionaries: Are they lying, stupid or crazy? Or all of the above?
We CAN do it; we MUST do it; let's stop listening to the lying ignorant right wing nuts and get on with it.
Thanks for the pep talk. After a rant like that I can go sleep for another 30 years.
But seriously, I'm for removing the coal but there is no way you can go to 20% renewable by 2010 with the current setup and not pay a massive price not to mention the infrastructure will take more than a year to build. This is not defeatist talk but a reasonable observation which you slam and insult me for. That is not what I call a discussion amongst equals but just plain bullying from one side which rarely gets the results you want. So, can we talk reasonably about this or are you one of those "with us or against us" thinkers that only thinks in absolutes?
Dolphin,
I'm perfectly happy to have calm intelligent discussions with people who are paying attention. Perhaps I misunderstood your comment that the technology isn't there yet. (As I don't know what you mean by "current setup" or "massive price") Maybe I lumped you with people who still believe (or at least say--thus the question) that solar and wind energy are not technologically possible. 33 years ago I started teaching about them, visiting houses (in the mountains of Pennsylvania) heated and powered almost entirely by them, and was faced with exactly the same assertion, by people who hadn't seen what I'd seen, hadn't read what I'd read and had no interest in learning the truth. Many had a vested financial interest in me being wrong, others were naive enough to believe them. After half a lifetime of the repetition of nonsense, one gets tired. Hope yields to sarcasm and insults are the result.
In World War II this country went from producing something like 6000 warplanes a year to producing a total of 100,000 in 3 years---while also making hundreds of ships, 90,000 tanks, artillery, millions of small arms, uniforms, armored vehicles, trucks and jeeps, etc.---tens of millions of new items within a few months after starting. What could possibly make you think LA couldn't build a few hundred windmills and solarize (passive and active, plant windbreak and shade trees, etc) ten or twenty thousand buildings in a year and a half, given the vast increase in our industrial capacity since 1940, the dire necessity of doing it, and above all the decentralized nature of the product. (I'm not talking about big thermal solar plants in the desert or dams or especially nukes (which simply take money, time, energy and thought from wiser, cheaper, better alternatives)). I'm talking about people and families investing in their own economic and ecologic future as well as the country's and the world's.
More than the moral equivalent of war:
Crash programs ARE inherently inefficient. We have delayed far too long. But what we SHOULD have done doesn't matter now except as a lesson about who to listen to and who not to listen to. MAYBE 20% in LA can't be done in a year. But to say it can't from the outset guarantees it won't be, while if we believe it can be, and make it the top priority for the country, and put a WWII-level effort into it, even in the unlikely event we don't reach the goal we will have established a direction, built on the already rapidly-expanding wind and solar industries, provided better jobs than almost any other in the energy field and helped the economy. We will especially help the poor, who will benefit the most of anyone from the right kind of program. We will have prepared for exponential growth thereafter and will be able to rapidly make the next jump to 2020 and beyond til we are 99% powered by renewables and have a more just, equal society besides.
Are you a city planner, engineer or other expert in the field? On what do you base your assertion that it can't be done? Is it more than personal prejudice or unfounded assumption? Do you have studies that support your view? (All the ones I know say it can be done. See for example, Climateprogress.org or Rocky Mountain Institute.)
Very good, No, I am not an expert. Big fan of Science magazine.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;298/5595/981?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMA...
Again, I'm not saying don't try, but I still feel you need to be realistic about what you can and can not do at this current time.
"Again, I'm not saying don't try, but I still feel you need to be realistic about what you can and can not do at this current time."
If you even bothered to read J4's posts and learn from them, you'd also realize that your so-called "realistic" assumptions are just dead wrong. Quit your guzzler talk and quit kissing up to Big Coal !
Actually I did read J4's post and I felt he made a rather good argument. Just because I do not agree with the entire post does not make me a "guzzler" or kissing up to anyone. I find your hasty remark disappointing.
Yeah. We'd rather give money to banks and corporations instead.
ow! I guess California's the place you oughta be, Uncle Jed. With Schwarzenegger and Villaraigosa taking the initiative in converting to alternative energy sources. Still, with the state bankrupt, you have to wonder how successful they'll be in asking the people to cough up more money for the transition.
Switch to a GOP fired power station?