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Pastimes : The California Energy Crisis - Information & Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bearcatbob who wrote (206)	4/6/2001 10:34:22 PM
From: Patricia Trinchero	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1715

If building no powerplants led to this disaster why did they sell off the plants they already had? Makes no sense to sell off the ones you have if you need more to begin with. My point is the problem is being spun as a result of building no additional plants which is partisan rhetoric. All the plants that are in Ca aren't even being used for Ca energy. The problem here is being used to justify the need for more drilling when the truth is it is all about money.......nothing more. Privatize the profit and socialize the expense. I would advocate the use of imminent domain over the power generating plants. Even conservative Dr. Bill Whattenberg stated he thought the idea is beginning to have merit. We could then begin to privatize slowly while we build additional nuclear plants. Then we could provide power to everyone in a reasonably priced, cleanly produced manner while we told the energy barons to take their energy and shove it. Ca and the northwest worked together for years to help each other out when we needed energy. It was only when private industry bought the power generating plants that greed got a stranglehold on the energy. We already pay the highest gasoline prices in the nation when the refineries are sitting right next to bay up in the Sacramento River Delta. We know too well what a "free" market is.Gasoline here is around 1.80 to 2.00 a gallon and that's with competition!!! LOL

To: Bearcatbob who wrote (206)	4/7/2001 3:17:25 AM
From: Geof Hollingsworth	Respond to of 1715

Hey Bob, I don't think the failure to build plants is the only problem, but it is certainly one of them. Prior to deregulation, a sensible approach (ie one put together by legislators with IQs able to approach triple digits, which clearly excludes all of ours) would have been to insure that an efficient power distribution system was in place first. In particular, meters which measure time-of-day usage, display time-of-day pricing, and which could enable remote disconnect/reconnect should have been installed throughout the distribution network. This could have been done for far less than the $20+billion stranded-cost subsidy paid to the Utilities, which they have used to buy power plants in Columbia. Had this been done first, the utilities would be able to change the pricing on a minute-by-minute basis, if need be, and enough of us would see that and decide to turn out a few lights and/or run the dishwasher later so that the additional power plants might not be needed.