Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Breitbart – Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has thrown caution to the winds, by announcing plans to cancel a vital multi-billion dollar dollar plan to rebuild three large gas plants.
Los Angeles ditches plan to invest billions in fossil fuels, Mayor Eric Garcetti says
By SAMMY ROTH
FEB 11, 2019 | 5:35 PMLos Angeles is abandoning a plan to spend billions of dollars rebuilding three natural gas power plants along the coast, Mayor Eric Garcetti said Monday, in a move to get the city closer to its goal of 100% renewable energy and improve air quality in highly polluted communities.
The mayor’s decision marks an abrupt change of course for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, where top staffers have argued in recent months that the gas plants are critical to keeping the lights on in the city. Environmental groups have urged DWP to replace the aging facilities with cleaner alternatives, saying the gas-fired plants need to go because they contribute to climate change and local air pollution.
Los Angeles has steadily moved away from coal for electricity, divesting from the Navajo plant in Arizona three years ago and announcing plans to stop buying power from Utah’s Intermountain plant by 2025. But with coal, the most polluting fossil fuel, now nearly removed from the city’s energy mix, it’s time to start planning for a future with zero planet-warming energy sources, Garcetti said Monday — and that means no natural gas.
“It’s the right thing to do for our health. It’s the right thing to do for our Earth. It’s the right thing to do for our economy,” Garcetti said. “And now is the time to start the beginning of the end of natural gas.”
“This is the Green New Deal,” he added, referring to the sweeping climate change policies championed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y) and endorsed by several contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination. “Not in concept, not in the future, but now.”
…
Read more: https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-garcetti-los-angeles-gas-plants-20190211-story.html
Who needs power system engineers? I mean they’re all pessimists, always telling leading climate visionaries like Mayor Eric Garcetti what they can’t do, instead of embracing our inevitable green destiny, and getting on with the job of saving the world, by building the clean energy system their mayor has demanded.
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We have all seen political grandstanding for perceived points. This takes things to a whole new level. They will not be able to keep the power on, of course. And they have no plan except “We hope it will not come to that”. That’s it.
Many of us want to laugh, point and make fun of the stupidity.
Consider This:
California is systematically and deliberately imploding their economy. Remember that a collapse is a process, not an event. It will not be too many years before California bottoms out to Venezuela status. Both economically and socially the state will be a third world hell hole.
Eventually California will need to be bailed out. By then, basic infrastructure like power, water, sanitation, and transportation will have been degraded to such an extent as to be useless.
The rebuilding will be enormously difficult and take decades, and the rest of the US will have to pay for it all. Even still, it remains to be seen whether such a rebuilding could be accomplished at all. After all, it takes a culture of one sort to build great things, and a culture of an entirely different sort to rip it all down. The current norms and voting habits of the California population as it is do not inspire confidence.
The mayor is deliberately destroying the electric power system of a major metropolitan area.
?????????
….planned obsolescence
‘A manufactured crisis’: California governor plans troop withdrawal from southern border
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) plans to issue an order Monday pulling more than 300 National Guard troops from the state’s southern border.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/02/11/california-governor-plans-pull-national-guard-troops-states-southern-border/?utm_term=.4849414ccbc6
I remember reading about Detroit having to tear down abandoned houses and rip up streets in abandoned neighborhoods because they didn’t have the money to put out fires, or even patrol the streets anymore.
Eventually California will need to be bailed out.
Also, people in hell need ice water. Doesn’t mean they’re going to get it.
And CA’s not even the worst off of the big, blue states teetering on bankruptcy. I could see the red states making a deal, something like the bailed-out states losing their statehood (and Electoral College votes) for ten or twenty years in exchange for red state cash.
” red state cash ??? ”
..
LOL!!!
..
https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/jan/26/blog-posting/red-state-socialism-graphic-says-gop-leaning-state/
As far as he’s concerned, a billion spent on Welfare checks is the same as a billion spent on Military payroll. He’s PROUD of his own ignorance, and that pretty much sums up Leftism in a nutshell.
As for politifact, they admit right there in the article that the years picked were done so to skew the graph as far as it could go. But that’s fine with them.
‘Red State Socialism’ is having a job.
‘Blue State Socialism’ is BEING a job.
~¿~
Well done.
Politifact needs a good fact check on everything they put out.
Bingo. Lumping all “federal spending” into one pot is fishy, as is lumping all federal taxes. Where is Social Security in these figures?
Any time you see the details completely hidden, get skeptical. Genuine analysis includes the details.
Keith isn’t interested in making sense. He’s got a lifestyle to protect.
Obviously, being paid to do a job is no different from being paid to do nothing at all.
Yep. The blue states ship Uncle Sam money and Uncle Sam ships it to the red states. I don’t see the problem. But that’s really not the main reason why the big blue states are close to bankruptcy. Rather, it’s because they lard-up their corrupt labor unions with sweet pension and retiree health care plans. In exchange for local pol’s getting their votes of course.
It’s all going to come crashing down soon enough. In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion that Dem’s were expecting Hilldog to bail them out using federal taxpayer bucks. Not only did that drunken, corrupt, war mongering shrew get shut down, but Trump took away the high dollar SALT deductions which is really going to hurt:
Cuomo: State facing $2.3 billion shortfall
Suck to be them.
California also
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/02/california_gov_newsom_misses_budget_by_2_billion_in_january.html
Most of that cash is in the form of either military bases, that the blue states don’t want, or retirement money being sent to retirees who moved as soon as they didn’t need to work anymore.
Idiots don’t get bailouts when the time comes
Corruption is rampant throughout the metropolitan areas of California. This does not surprise me. The mayor probably has a bunch to gain– illegitimately– by doing this.
Maybe this is a scheme by Garcetti, to get the poor and the immigrants to go back home. Whereever that might be their mayors are likely saner than Garcetti.
Notice how they say “invest” instead of “subsidize”, or “tax productive parts of the economy and hand the money to our cronies”.
The decision not to rebuild the three gas-fired plants in Los Angeles will be just as consequential for the long term reliability of a grid serving a major metropolitan area as are the decisions to close Diablo Canyon north of San Francisco in 2025 and Indian Point north of New York City in 2021.
Starting about a decade from now, as the grid reliability crisis becomes more acute, an ever-expanding array of LNG-fired peaker plants will be quickly installed in locations served by LNG rail transport which are close enough to limit power transmission losses to the core of the city, but also far enough away from high density population centers to limit potential damage from LNG rail accidents.
However, before this scenario happens, a series of major blackout events must occur in Los Angeles, in San Francisco, and in New York City — at which point some excuse will be found as to why it has become necessary to quickly install these LNG-fired peakers as a ‘temporary’ grid stabilizing measure.
It is questionable whether LNG can be transported by rail. It was prohibited, and was tried experimentally a few years ago in Alaska. I do not know what the outcome was, and these rule changes always move at a snail pace.
https://www.sightline.org/2017/03/07/liquefied-natural-gas-coming-to-a-rail-line-near-you/
Note to all Californians: When you leave the state, wherever you end up, please, please, please stop voting for leftist idiots.
For some reason, the image of fleas moving away from a dead body as it cools, looking for a new host, comes to mind.
Great idea but don’t hold your breath. It’s why South East Florida is a liberal enclave.
Who cares? if the wind stops blowing for a week or two, or its overcast a few days, no one will freeze to death if LA doesn’t have power for a week.
I thought going back to the stone age was the whole point.
They will not freeze, but So Cal has 20M+ million folks living in what is basically a desert. Thirst and sanitation will be problems pretty quickly in the event of a large scale power outage.
If the LA grid goes down, water transfer pumps don’t work, and the AC doesn’t work and the refineries and gas/diesel pump stations don’t work and the refrigerated warehouses and grocery stores empty …there’s gonna be a whole lot of killing and dying going on.
Katharine Hayhoe is on the loose again… And another CBC proselyte, amateur astronomer Nicole Mortillaro could not miss it:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/canadian-climate-cities-2080-1.5014695
With compliant propagandist media like these, who needs communication?
Clearly the Trudeau re-election bid includes a full CBC climate change assault on Canadians in order to sell the carbon schemes his sugar daddies have designed. Justin or Macron: same master puppeteer.
I think this is a mistake. Is anyone really frightened of Vancouver getting the same climate as Seattle has now? Or Ottawa getting Chicago climate (well, maybe in that case, but hardly because it is too warm)
Then I guess we can disconnect – immediately – the two peaker stations here around Ventura. They only feed LA, and they only do it during peak power draw on hot days when AC systems are running strong. They are gas turbine peakers… They do nothing for the Ventura County residents, they are just to support LA. So turn them off and see what happens!
They are already shutting down the last NG plants we have in Ventura, and tearing down all of their transmission lines, so they can’t be rebuilt. I find it interesting that have plans for a new NG plant north of Tony Santa Barbara. Steyer and Musk attended the,local “community meetings” which were packed with Enviros so that no dissent could be allowed.
CA does sound insane. I blame the lack of a real middle class. I don’t count govt workers as true middle class people.
I have to believe that a lot of this is just to “defy” Trump. Remember when CA passed that stem cell bond issue thingee ( ? 3 billion) to show George Bush who wouldn’t let the lame walk again? Not much seems to have come out of it. CA was going to be the stem cell capital of the USA, as I recall.
I hope they fast track these changes so we call all see how they work.
Another VERY GOOD reason to leave California ……….. !!!!!!
Rats, fleas, typhus, brownouts, needle parks, homeless, gridlocked, comet-chasing, fire brush, mud slide, glitterati, follywood, plastic, fantastic, reeling, rocking, total collapsing apocalyptic nightmare…
I love LA
To all who supply Electric Power to California, especially to the large Metroplexes – Remember what happened in the NE when a simple Transformer Failure caused the largest Blackout in American History! Please install California Cutouts which will act nearly instantaneously to shed California Load in the event of a sudden demand from these locales when the wind stops or the sun doesn’t shine. Otherwise, the sudden surge of electrical demand WILL burn out your own power grids! Let California go Black! Save your own customers FIRST! The ensuing riots will take care of the problem, one way or the other – either by removing the Idiots in Charge, or by burning down sufficient Electrical Consumption Infrastructure so as to alleviate the excess Load condition.
It sounds like the preamble to the AOC’s document has the details of how the New Deal; this massive economic undertaking will be orchestrated by a select committee of 15 members of Congress, appointed by the Speaker.
Could this be true?
Just excellent news . . . this announcement will cause a huge surge in demand for household emergency power generators sized for full-home normal use—likely the 20-30 Kw size range—fueled by natural gas.
I’ve been on the lookout for a good investment opportunity!
But wait a minute . . . you don’t think California will next outlaw supplying natural gas to residences, do you???
Let them do it. Let them wear it. And don’t provide them with backup electricity from fossil fuels.
It’s amusing to think of what a colossal reaction actions like this are setting up. the pranksters on Olympus perhaps have this in mind.( Their absurd CAGW thesis was a test of mortals’ foolishness and the retributrion they / we deserve as a result.)
Why don’t they try this scheme on a smaller town first, as a pilot project? Perhaps there’s a twon in Texas that might qualify already.
Something to keep California residents from thinking too much about the abandoning of the high speed, low speed train?
Does California have the infrastructure to import enough electricity from neighboring States to make up for the loss of the natural gas plants? Is this a continuation of a policy that focuses on renewables and ignores the fine print stating how much power they get from their neighbors?
The train is an albatross that will hang around the neck of the Green New Deal. Complete failure almost from day 1. 10 (?) years later and nothing to show for it? Imagine that on a nationwide scale.
The other massive problem, just as in Illinois, are the public sector pensions. Time and again California has seen tax increases that were supposed to dedicated to education or infrastructure only to see the funds trying to make the minimum deposits on the fund.
So why add to the insanity with this declaration? Can’t wrap my head around this one. We aren’t talking theory or models with power generation. How hard is it for someone in the know to explain the basics of what a modern grid requires? Do they not ask? Is there so much fraud and graft that nobody wants to kill the golden goose?
Glad I am not in California, this is not going to be a soft landing.
Let us also not forget that the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant in San Luis Obispo county is also to be shut down sometime in the 2020’s. It provides 2,160 MW of electricity to 1.7 million homes according to the L.A. Times:
https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-diablo-canyon-nuclear-20160621-snap-story.html.
California seems to be bound and determined to find out the hard way what a foolish and thoughtless thing it is to believe solar panels can successfully replace all of the electricity from these power plants they are shutting down and not replacing. When the bill to replace all of those expiring solar panels comes due in the years and decade ahead, it should be fun to watch what happens. The foreign panel manufacturers, particularly in China, should to wringing their hands in anticipation.
And then of course, there is all the toxic waste that the panels produce when they expire. Green energy?? Yea, right.
We’ve already seen what solar has done to Germany. Lots of solar generation wasted, because it wasn’t needed at the time it was generated. When it was needed, it couldn’t be produced, because it was very early morning or middle of the night when the solar plant couldn’t work. Finally (and I know this because I talked to some folks in Germany when I visited there in 2014 and have read articles, especially about the poor folks who have had their electricity cut off because they could not afford to pay for it, that have given me the information from which I could figure it out), the average German pays about four times for his/her electricity than I do here in Texas. Pretty sad.
This isn’t about California going “Green” but more about California’s continued virtue signaling to the Progressive narrative. It won’t happen because it can’t. When those in charge of providing the electricity are told what to do they will answer correctly and once again deliver the bad news. No politician wants to be responsible for causing a power outage. The brown outs decades ago were nothing compared to what reliance on wind/solar would do.
Great call Mr. Mayor! Thank you for saving the planet! Now, about those cars…
With all the insanity and economic havoc the Left is creating over the CAGW scam, I’m certain that when (not if) CAGW is officially disconfirmed, the worldwide blowback against the Left for wasting $10’s of trillions on this scam and the psychological damage done to two generations of children while this hoax was being perpetrated will be profound and historic.
AOC’s hilarious Green New Deal was the high-water mark of the CAGW scam: no air travel in 10 years, no meat in 10 years, every building retrofitted, no gasoline-powered cars in 10 years, welfare for the lazy, guaranteed housing for everyone, just print money to pay for everything, etc. etc. etc…
The Left has finally exposed themselves for the delusional fools that they are.
“It’s the right thing to do for our health. It’s the right thing to do for our Earth. It’s the right thing to do for our economy,”
“It’s the right thing to do” is what politicians say to justify doing the absolutely wrong thing. Mayor Garcettin wins the trifecta!