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.”
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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.
Yes, lots of furious comments, and they are quite right as far as they go. But there are two interesting things about this, which are indicative of the general trend in Green thinking.
1) The proposal doesn’t tackle the main source of LA pollution: the automobile and freeway system. The real problem in LA is not electricity generation. Its the fact that its design is spread out urban sprawl with the car and the freeway as the only really functioning transport system. The sprawl means everyone has to travel to do almost anything. The reliance on the car and freeways for that travel leads to the pollution.
If you really wanted to lower LA emissions and air pollution, the place to start would be the car, which would involve restructuring the entire living and working and playing environment so that transportation needs could be met by non-auto travel. Whether mass transit, bikes, walking, whatever. So that would mean a whole different layout, moving people and businesses.
Are they doing or thinking about any of that? No, change out some generating capacity. It will do almost nothing, because this is a minor source of the problem.
This is typical, focussing on a minor cause or instance of the alleged problem. But there is also:
2) Doing something expensive which will have no effect on the alleged problem.
One of the reasons cited is to do something about global warming by reducing emissions. But its surely obvious that nothing LA does will have the slightest effect on global emission levels. This is also characteristic of the Green movement – advocating unilateral or local action when the source of the problem is not local and where local action is too small to have any effect on it.
Tuvalu cannot lower sea level rises by lowering its own emissions. LA cannot have any effect on climate by lowering its emissions. Even were it to pick some actions which would actually lower its own emissions.
So, when thinking about this, the thing to focus on and understand is the two typical aspects of Green policy proposals and recommendations:
(1) To refuse to focus on the largest component of the local problem. Instead pick some relatively minor source of emissions and try to minimize that. A bit like looking for one’s keys under the streetlamp because its well lit there.
(2) To propose taking unilateral local action to reduce emissions in order to contribute to reducing global emissions, when that local action, because of the fact that the local emissions are trivial globally, can have no effect on the global picture.
Now its been pointed out, ask why Green thinking and policy almost always contains these two features. Now, that is a really interesting question!
Los Angeles is the second densest metropolitan area in the County.
Interesting table. Fact remains however:
(1) The biggest source of emissions, far and away, is the auto and freeway system associated, and to do anything material about it, you’d have to change living and working patterns dramatically, and for all of their eagerness to lower emissions, there isn’t a hint of doing that.
(2) Even if you did it, and got LA emissions down to zero, you would have made no measurable reduction to global emissions.
So, again, what exactly is the rationale for doing this? Why do the Greens always focus on doing things which address a trivially small part of the supposed local problem, and which, even if they work as planned, have no effect on the global problem.
You have it with the whole wind generation proposals. Electricity generation is not the big problem, erecting wind turbines doesn’t reduce local emissions anyway, and even if it did lower local emissions, the reductions are too small to affect global emissions measurably.
Why does the Green movement always advocate things with these obvious defects? That is the real question.
Commits related to this plan reflect a cognitive dissonance that arises when the power plan obviously can not support current levels of energy consumption in housing and personal mobility. But look around. Look at skid row and the energy options people have there. The third world is already moving in. If there were a supply of tin roof panels and mud bricks human ingenuity would build a real slum, built to a human powered mobility scale and density. Look at Dakka Bangladesh. The density there and the energy use. That could be the future. Not much AC there. How do they manage basic water, sewage and food distribution? Not with a lot of money or power but they are getting by so far. Look at the world trend towards urbanization and imagine people squatting on California open spaces then building up shelters. Plenty of room for more. Easier to harvest their votes when they living in such close quarters. The future will not wait and votes with its feet.
Garcetti’s plan is so bad it’s good. The previous wasteful green-dream of completely rebuilding perfectly good gas-fired plants because they supposedly warm the ocean too much gets nixed, saving billions of dollars, then when the current not just wasteful but impossible green-dream fails to materialize the only alternative to constant brown and blackouts will be to keep the perfectly fine older-tech gas plants in operation beyond their eco-required decommissioning date. It’s great way to get around the idiotic upgrade-or-decommission requirements of the previous green dream, and it is INEVITABLE. This WILL happen.
There is another alternative. Thousands and perhaps millions of businesses and individuals will purchase their own private gas or diesel generators. Needless to say, the pollution that will result during blackouts and brownouts will likely exceed 1970s smog levels. It does suggest a potential investment play though.
Maybe it’s a plan to increase house prices by forcing out poor people who will not able to afford exorbitant electricity rates, thereby gentrifying the city.
Good for current property owners.
Unfortunately Washington state House of Representatives just introduced a bill to specifically regulate natural gas powerplants and greenhouse gas emissions. With newly elected democrats in majority, it may pass and screw our state up here even more.
We are entering the collapse phase.
The Romans tried what we would call socialism in their collapse phase. It didn’t work. In fact it made things worse.
The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph Tainter – pdf. The good stuff starts in Chapter 4.
https://wtf.tw/ref/tainter.pdf
https://youtu.be/GzuviYRse3E – about 3 minutes
Sound like a good time to be in the generator selling business in LA , I wonder how many Garcetti has got ?
You might think that plotting a course that will predictably sabotage a basic need would be risky, but in the end they’ll blame “obstructionist Republicans” for not spending enough money.
If I were a local Republican politician with no chance of being elected today anyway, I’d run a campaign “Steve O in 2028! I’ll end the brownouts!
Even the EU recognizes the need for natural gas by just approving the pipeline from Russia.
And the voters in LA deserve exactly what will happen to them
What was that movie a while back ? “Escape From L.A.” Something like that….
Isn’t Los Angeles the place where Hollywood the Industry has its home? Making movies, generating entertainment media, requires electricity. Lots of electricity. Is this mayor going to shut off Disneyland and other such places?
The more I see of this, the more I think they’re not crazy, but something much worse.
Solution. California secedes and rejoins Mexico. Under that government I am sure Hollywood folks would love their new way of life. I will readily sign the petition as an Oregonian to push this through.
Note to Garcetti: Rioting during blackouts is not good for public health either. The blood will be on your hands.
I wonder how many green notables will endorse this LA gas-free scheme, and how many will criticize it. If they keep mum, as I’m sure will happen, they should be pressed by our side and the MSM to take a stand on it. This is an opportunity for our side to go on the offensive and get warmists on the record as saying that 100% renewables and no natural gas is OK. Or to say that it isn’t OK. Forcing them into either position will be a Win for skepticism.
So…if they are NOT replacing the Natural gas-power plants, then where IS the energy coming from? “Batteries and clean technology” is kind of vague. I mean, last I checked batteries do not generate electricity, they merely stockpile it and at a big cost.
So are they expecting home solar to provide enough cushion? Even at night? That would mean lots of batteries in homes as well. Does this Mayor have investments in a battery factory?
Or are they planning to build more transmission lines to bring in power from more distant places? I bet the home owners near those transmission lines are thrilled. If they bring in power from distantly located fossil fuel power plants, then they have just INCREASED overall pollution, not decreased it. (They would decrease the local pollution – and not counting CO2 as pollution here)
Or are they planning on building more solar and wind power plants? Those are so wonderful cheap and cost effective. So raise the price of electricity by doubling it? And where are they going to get all these wonderful batteries from. If they build more solar, they need to build over twice as much to cover transmission loss, storage loss, and peaks.
Or are they seeing the writing on the wall and expecting enough industry to leave that they will have plenty of surplus power available?
Given the economic nature of power companies in California, I sure would not want to own any stock in them.
I have to say that I have long enjoyed the movie, “Shakespear in Love” (1998). I never thought I’d have cause to compare fictional lines from that movie to current events. Well, that day has come.
Philip Henslowe: Mr. Fennyman, allow me to explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.
Hugh Fennyman: So what do we do?
Philip Henslowe: Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well.
Hugh Fennyman: How?
Philip Henslowe: I don’t know. It’s a mystery.
Henslowe repeats those lines throughout the movie. Whenever crisis looms, he optimistically responds that it will turn out well, and when asked how?, his answer is “I don’t know. It’s a mystery.”
That seems to be the attitude of the liberal left today. Not just in California, New York, the USA, but world wide. Germany to Venezuela and beyond. No rational thought. No analysis. Not even a cursory adherence to the Biblical advice to count the cost before undertaking to build a house. These people deliberately reject accounting, their bank balance, etc. before proceeding full speed ahead. They have no plan to succeed, just the belief that if they want it, it will happen.
This is a cold and harsh statement, but sometimes you just have to allow Darwinian principles to govern your responses. If their stupidity leads to their demise, then they will no longer waste valuable oxygen. And ironically, they will achieve one leftist goal, a reduction in human population.
Robert of Texas February 13, 2019 at 9:23 am asks where the power sill come from. It will come from the same place that it comes from whenever Southern California can’t generate enough electricity for its own needs. The source will be the coal-fired generators on Native American reservations in the 4 corners area (where the boundaries of Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico meet).
Re Eric Garcetti: he will have moved on to greener political pastures before the consequences of his actions are understood, perhaps to the House of Representatives or, in his fevered mind, running for President Kamala’s senate seat.
“The source will be the coal-fired generators on Native American reservations in the 4 corners area….” Yes, as it is now. While California boasts of being the renewable energy leader it hides the inconvenient fact that it sources electricity from coal fired stations in other states. “But they will be converted to gas fired” but not in LA. Another article in the LA Times tried to put the impending disaster of black outs in better perspective by saying “the cost of batteries is coming down”….. like grid scale batteries are even available at any price. That’s the tripe they are feeding the people.
“markl February 13, 2019 at 2:06 pm
Another article in the LA Times tried to put the impending disaster of black outs in better perspective by saying “the cost of batteries is coming down”….. like grid scale batteries are even available at any price.”
South Australia is the crash test dummy for that. Elon Musk’s AU$100m battery that will supply a few minutes power in a blackout.
Actually, in its biggest use to date, on January 24, 2019 (Australia time), amongst a widespread power interruption/blackout, the Tesla “mega battery” at the SA Hornsdale wind farm electric power facility supplied about 33 MW of power to the grid for about 3 hours total before reaching its design depth-of-discharge state and being taken off-line.
It was a pittance compared to the facility’s nameplated capacity of 315 MW and to what was needed during this emergency.
The problem arose from heavy HVAC electrical demand due to days of extreme heat in South Australia coupled with a decline of wind speeds across the area. A classic case of what can happen due to wind power not being reliable or dispatchable.
If Los Angeles wants to run a renewables experiment, we should let them.
They have ocean winds, and sun all the time. Maybe they can get rid of the smog.
California ran a Bullet Train Experiment for us, and found out it was too expensive, so thanks for that.
Well, the California HSR train has not yet run (and hopefully never will), but I get your point. To date $4 BILLION has been spent for all sorts of things, mostly paper studies, buying rights-of-way from private land owners, and constructing a few concrete piers for overpasses, but essentially not a single mile of HSR track has been laid.
What a dickhead! Sadly London has a Mayor with matching capabilities! Lefty politicians always want to ruin any progress that has been made.
Now would be a good time to sell any property you have in LA and gtfo.
This news item from 2011 is very pertinent:
https://www.reuters.com/article/utilities-ladwp-haynes/los-angeles-to-repower-haynes-natgas-power-plant-idUSN1E7960LS20111007
So presumably closure means they will be able to integrate less wind and solar… not to mention a very short service life for plant that might have been expected to last 40 years.
When I read stories like this from California (or Oregon, or Washington state, or British Columbia), I ask myself whether there might be something in the water on the west coast of North America that makes people go insane.