The goal should be to produce the most amount of power and to minimize the cost. If we want our businesses to compete in a world market then we should supply them with reliable low cost power.
One big problem in California is their desire to "have it all" at the same time - cheap power, clean air, high growth, and keep those dirty, ugly power plants away from me. This has resulted in an entitlement mentality with no real awareness or debate on the necessity of trade-offs. Businesses, not government or scientists or engineers, are nuch more likely to produce something at the least cost because they have the incentive to do so. Government sure doesn't, and scientists and engineers, well, I worked for Bell Labs and in its heyday they were cranking out great discoveries because they weren't constrained by market forces AND WERE SUBSIDIZED by the telephone monopoly. I agree that because power is an essential there needs to be a way to ensure its availability, but I would like to know more about how Anaheim is managing to keep the lights on. Long-term contracts? Owning its own power plants? Subsidies? Plus, the power may be available, but I doubt if they have been immune to the rise in natgas and power prices - have they been able to pass on their costs to consumers? If so, the consumers have probably reduced demand - an natural market response. That't the kind of "planning" PG&E and SoCal Ed should have been doing but weren't, due to that screwy "deregulation" bill. And why they thought the price of power would stay the same as in 1996 I will never know.
The rest of the country is experiencing big increases in electricity and natgas bills too, you know, but CA is the only state experiencing an energy crunch and blackouts because of their own stupid mistakes. Do you really think that the only reason power generators haven't been building plants in CA is because they "..employ economists with long term projections for the price of power and then build just enough...wouldn't want to overbuild and drive the price of power down."??? You don't think the overzealous environmentalists and the NIMBY and BANANA attitudes had anything to do with it? How would your "scientists and engineers" deal with them anyway? That would be confrontation I'd love to see. |
