More power plays
Sierra Pacific Resources, LS Power Associates and Sithe Global Power have invested millions of dollars and years of legwork in their plans to build coal-fired power plants north of the Las Vegas Valley. They’re prepared to spend billions of dollars over the next seven years on construction because this region desperately needs to increase its supply of power.
Tens of thousands of people continue to move here every year, but the amount of electricity being generated to maintain the valley’s climate-controlled quality of life isn’t keeping up with demand. Nevada Power bills have doubled over the past 14 years, with double-digit rates of growth on the way. The costs are busting household budgets from Boulder Highway to Summerlin Parkway.
The only way to stabilize the rates residential and business consumers pay for power is to create more of it.
But the overall benefit to consumers and the Southern Nevada economy is eroded if generating additional electricity costs more per megawatt than current supplies. The threat of future brownouts and blackouts aside, would you be willing to pay significantly more each month to Nevada Power for the same amount of electricity — and see your monthly bill grow even faster?
Such a scenario is supported wholeheartedly by environmentalists. During a Friday meeting of the Nevada Environmental Commission, Western Resource Advocates, representing a coalition of green gangs, demanded that the regulatory body stop the construction of all the power plants. They reason that because coal-fired power plants produce carbon dioxide, they’ll exacerbate global warming. They claim the only kinds of power suitable for development are so-called “renewable” resources, such as wind, solar and geothermal.
However, these forms of “green energy” aren’t yet cost-efficient. Companies can’t hope to cover the expense of running transmission lines across this vast state to sell the scant amount of power that would be generated sporadically by geothermal stations, collections of solar panels and windmills. So environmentalists want consumers forced into making up the difference.
Charles Benjamin, director of Western Resource Advocates, submitted a petition to the commission on behalf of anti-growth groups such as the Sierra Club and the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, purportedly supported and signed by 12,000 Nevadans.
The message: We don’t want proven, reliable, affordable electricity — we want the expensive stuff, and we want everyone else (especially those who disagree with us) to pay for it!
In response, the commission threw the greens a bone. Although the panel properly rejected the request to kill the power plants outright, it voted 7-0 to have the state Division of Environmental Protection require the companies to capture carbon dioxide emissions when the technology becomes commercially available.
“It is our desire to add this technology once it is economically feasible,” said Sierra Pacific Resources Vice President Tony Sanchez. “If it costs $10 billion, does that mean it is ‘commercially available?’ “
On a related note, the Public Utilities Commission will soon hold workshops and hearings on a proposed “green tariff,” which would let utilities ask their customers whether they’d like to pay an additional charge — perhaps $5 per month — to subsidize renewable energy projects. It will indeed be interesting to see how many of the 12,000 Nevadans who signed onto the Western Resource Advocates petition voluntarily tax themselves for green power. Regulators should make the “green tariff” more representative of what green power actually costs: let’s make it $100 to start.
We bet it would be about as well-received as the $3 Presidential Election Campaign Fund option on tax returns. Or maybe the fund that allowed Southern Nevadans to send their 2005 state tax rebates to the Clark County School District.
That went over well, didn’t it?
