After hours of testimony from opponents, the California Energy Commission approved two power projects representing over 800 MW of new generation. On unanimous votes May 18, the board approved licensing the 624 MW Oakley Generating Station and the 200 MW Mariposa Energy Project. “When these facilities come online,” commission chair Bob Weisenmiller said, “they’ll provide reliable power for homes and businesses all around the East Bay.” The Oakley and Mariposa facilities would be located in eastern Contra Costa County and northeastern Alameda County, respectively. The approval came after almost four hours of public testimony questioning the projects’ specifications. “The Oakley project is just going to give California more unneeded fossil fuel generation,” said Ed Mainland, Sierra Club energy/climate committee co-chair. The process of awarding the license to Oakley was “blatantly political,” said Paul Seger of the Green Party of California. He noted it was originally rejected by the California Public Utilities Commission last year, but later approved after the online date was pushed back. The Oakley project is a natural gas combined-cycle plant that would sit east of Pacific Gas & Electric’s Antioch terminal on a 22-acre site in the Contra Costa County city of Oakley. It is proposed by a wholly-owned subsidiary of Danville-based Radback Energy. The applicant has a power purchase agreement with PG&E for power availability by June 1, 2016. Then the plant is to be owned by PG&E and put into the utility’s rate base. Mariposa is a simple-cycle project slated for a portion of a 158-acre parcel south of a PG&E substation and compressor station. It is a project of a Diamond Generating subsidiary. Construction is expected to begin this year, with commercial operations launching in mid-2012.
