Radicals, energy policy don't mix

By Joe Desmond
Sunday, March 2, 2008

Ventura County Star 

Re: your Feb. 27 article, "LNG harmful energy choice, group says":

There is no question that California must increase its use of renewable energy, improve energy efficiency and promote conservation. However, the radical position put forth by the authors of the report "Collision Course: How Imported Liquefied Natural Gas Will Undermine Clean Energy in California" that, from this point forward, California must reject all new fossil-fuel projects in favor of energy efficiency and renewables, is simply unworkable and irresponsible.

In the short term, such a policy would choke the economy, eliminate jobs, dramatically increase consumer costs and result in another energy crisis. Their basic premise, that this is a choice between renewable energy and natural gas, is fundamentally flawed.

Liquefied natural gas is simply natural gas supercooled to a liquid, enabling it to be shipped economically over long distances. It is the same gas we use every day to heat our homes, cook and run our businesses. In this respect, an LNG terminal is the functional equivalent of a pipeline.

The irony that is lost on the report's proponent — Ratepayers for Affordable Clean Energy (RACE) — is that it issued this document on the very day the Legislature was holding hearings on the lack of utility progress in achieving renewable-energy goals.

These hearings come on the heels of other recent state agency reports highlighting the challenges the state faces in achieving greater use of renewables and pointing to problems that must be addressed, such as locations and transmission.

California's energy policy is designed to meet its clean-energy goals by balancing reliability, affordability and environmental responsibility. RACE's fixation on greenhouse-gas emissions ignores the reality that all energy infrastructure projects — including renewables such as wind, solar, biomass and wave power — have real environmental impacts.

Throughout the report, RACE confuses the cost of gas with the amount of money it takes to produce it, and price. Natural gas is not a regulated commodity; the amount at which gas is sold is based on supply and demand.

The report offers up little in the way of evidence to support its claims. Instead, it references "studies" that have been widely criticized within the energy industry.

What's needed is not a battle of the experts, but agreement on a methodology for accounting for emissions.

The report also relies heavily on innuendo and conspiracy theories. While RACE highlights my public service to the governor, it conveniently fails to mention my current work with Stanford University's Precourt Institute for Energy Efficiency, my board position on an energy efficiency company, the software company I founded that provides advanced demand side management technology for the SmartGrid, and the guidance I provide to "clean-tech" startups in the solar, advanced lighting and energy-storage fields.

The zero-sum game ideology reflected by RACE shows a complete disregard for the economic consequences to consumers. It also violates the basic principles of responsible energy planning and risk management. Californians would be wise to reject its radical agenda.

— Joe Desmond is a senior vice president for NorthernStar Natural Gas, the Houston, Texas, based company that is proposing Clearwater Port, an application to transform Platform Grace 12.6 miles off the coast of Oxnard into a liquefied natural gas receiving and regasification facility. Desmond previously served as chairman of the California Energy Commission in the administration of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and consults for numerous companies and organizations on energy issues.

Instead of fossil fuels, invest dollars in clean-energy supplies

By Rory Cox and Robert Freehling
Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Ventura County Star 

Re: Joe Desmond's March 2 commentary, "Radicals, energy policy don't mix."

Pacific Environment has just published a new report called "Collision Course" that makes a case for what is really common sense: California cannot reduce greenhouse gases while at the same time increasing its commitment to consuming fossil fuels.

Importing liquefied natural gas from overseas would be a huge commitment, tying us to long-term fossil-fuel purchase contracts amounting to many billions of dollars. A better choice is to invest these same dollars in clean energy, and state law already commits us to do this.

The main problem is that many people think that needing energy means that this need must be met with fossil fuels. But there are other options.

State law requires California's utilities to use 20 percent renewable energy by 2010 and to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions 25 percent by 2020. It is state policy that by 2020, one-third of our electricity should come from renewable sources. These are wise policy decisions supported by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Desmond, who works for Northern Star natural gas, recently critiqued us in these pages for being "fixated" on greenhouse-gas emissions. We plead guilty.

The relentless rise in global temperature has already resulted in serious problems that are a mere foreshadowing of things to come: unprecedented wildfires in Southern California, killer heat waves in France, diminishing cropland in Sudan that has led to civil war, the rising price of food due to crop failures and melting polar ice caps. Most scientists agree that this is the result of greenhouse-gas emissions.

We acknowledge, with Desmond, that renewable technologies have environmental impacts. But none even remotely compare to the damage to the climate brought on by burning fossil fuels.

That is why we support the California Energy Action Plan — co-published by his old agency, the California Energy Commission — that states efficiency and conservation are the best options to meet future energy needs. Without a doubt, the cleanest kilowatt is the one you don't use. Of course, that means using less natural gas.

The Energy Action Plan says that the next best option after efficiency is renewables and distributed generation (or smaller generating facilities located closer to customers.) Desmond mentions that utilities are having problems meeting their renewable mandate.

However, if utilities and energy planners would follow the Energy Action Plan and invest in distributed generation, the problem of "locations and transmissions" for far off renewable energy that Desmond mentions would be reduced.

Desmond writes about LNG as if it were just more of the same natural gas that California is already using. But there are major differences. Domestic natural gas is now piped to us from gas fields in the U.S. and Canada.

LNG is shipped in supertankers that likely will come from politically challenging regions; about 80 percent of the world's available natural gas is in the Middle East (particularly Iran and Qatar) and the former Soviet Union. LNG dependence comes with all the same hazards as foreign-oil dependence, including price shocks, possible supply disruptions and expensive wars.

There is simply no good reason to expose California rate payers, as well as our troops, to this vulnerability. The LNG process also adds 15 to 25 percent extra greenhouse-gas emissions over that of domestic natural gas.

A clean, efficient and locally oriented energy supply has many benefits. A number of studies have demonstrated that it will provide more jobs and investment at home while protecting the environment and improving our security.

This may sound radical. But there's a growing consensus that says it's just common sense.

— Rory Cox is California program director at Pacific Environment and Robert Freehling is research director at Local Power. Both groups are in the coalition Ratepayers for Affordable Clean Energy. "Collision Course" can be downloaded at http://www.RaceForCleanEnergy.org.

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