| Independently Powered Energy News

When I’m on the road, I try to avoid fast food. First, I fear heartburn. I dread too a cholesterol spike that might provoke my doctor to follow through on his threat to put me on lifetime medication. As dueling TV commercials seek to persuade Californians how to vote on Proposition 7, I’m struck by their similarity to the competing ads for McDonald’s and Burger King. Behind the ads for both products--Proposition 7 and fast food--stand sizable corporations. On the yes side for Proposition 7 is for profit Phoenix University founder Peter Sperling, who’s cashed in by selling high-priced education leading to career-oriented degrees and credentials. Sperling’s Proposition 7--like his university, which offers a narrow array of degree programs--is a bit like a salad at Burger King rather than a feast at a renewable energy salad bar. Despite the fast food company’s “have it your way” promise, there’s no choice among green energy policy options, just some pre-packed greens and tomatoes with a few chicken slices and a sprinkle of cheese thrown on top. Like the fast food salad, Proposition 7 sounds healthy, with its promise of 50 percent renewable energy by 2025. Yet it’s fundamentally pre-packed and unappetizing. On the other side, the No on 7 campaign reminds me of Mickey D’s. The utility bankrolled campaign has respected environmental group leaders acting just as clown-like as the characters “lovin’ it” in the fast food giant’s commercials. Like McDonald’s and Burger King, both sides of the Proposition 7 campaign treat the voters like juveniles, talking in sound bites that sidestep questions rather than answer them directly. Proposition 7 shows the state’s initiative process at it worst, just like fast food represents the worst of American cooking. That hasn’t stopped former public power manager S. David Freeman from stepping into the Proposition 7 fray. In his ten gallon hat, he’s backing the measure, though he admits if it’s passed the Legislature probably would have to fix it. Natural Resources Defense Council energy program co-director Ralph Cavanagh counters that the measure’s requirement that any changes be approved by two-thirds of lawmakers makes any fixes unlikely. Voters should just say no to Proposition 7. Not because they don’t want clean energy, but because Proposition 7 is likely to delay renewable power projects while courts and the Legislature sort out the measure’s well intended but poorly drafted provisions. Its 50 percent renewable power goal--up from the existing 20 percent target--is laudable, but its list of excuses utilities could use for not meeting the goal would undercut its effectiveness. Its penalty provisions provide a stick, but it offers no incentives or funds to meet what all agree is a stretch goal. Finally, rather than enlisting local governments and communities as allies in achieving a green energy future, it cuts them out by imposing a top down siting process for large scale renewable energy projects. These and other factors make it unlikely to succeed. That’s too bad because polls show that Americans, particularly Californians, want a transition to clean energy. If Proposition 7 can’t do it, the question is how can we pick up the pace? Lawmakers need to answer that question to stimulate renewable energy--and its promise of green jobs and economic rejuvenation--in a state and nation suffering from clogged economic arteries after a long time on a fast food diet. If I were at the salad bar, instead of in the voter booth--which Proposition 7 has turned into the equivalent of a fast food restaurant--here are the ingredients I would put into a revised Proposition 7 to jump start renewable energy and tap its economic promise starting small and ending large: 1. Just as America needs more health care professionals to teach the relationship between health and diet, California needs more inspectors and auditors to examine energy use in existing buildings and to outline energy efficiency menus to their owners and occupants. This will take an increase in financing, because just like many can’t afford health insurance or eating healthy food, many building owners cannot or will not pay for such inspections. The state should mandate utilities to systematically audit every building in the state and perform regular checkups. The University of Phoenix could help train the needed auditors. 2. Next, Californians are going to need help financing energy efficiency improvements and rooftop solar once they get the menu of measures from energy auditors. AB 811 provides a financing mechanism for many, but it will take action by hundreds of local governments to enact the law’s property tax bill financing in their communities to accomplish anything. That’s why environmentalists need to get out of Sacramento and get into city halls to advance the cause of energy efficiency. 3. California should reprogram existing money to bolster energy efficiency and distributed generation. Start with the $3.2 billion reserved to build new rail lines and truck lanes to speed goods from the ports to retailers. The current financial melt down--like the end of the Cold War before it--portends a massive restructuring of economies at home and abroad. This means the state’s ports--like defense industries in the 1980s-- likely have peaked and are set to decline, though never go away. Traffic at the Port of Long Beach is down 8 percent in the last year. California leaders need to wake up and smell the coffee rather than continue in a sleepy stupor to push plans to enlarge port capacity just because they have the money to do so. 4. Target energy efficiency subsidies on the poor and disqualify the wealthy. Giving poor people zero energy homes effectively increases their income and stimulates economic activity because they are more likely to spend their savings locally to meet their needs. Energy efficiency subsidies for movie stars are more likely to wind up in the hands of Vichy spa proprietors and Italian Alps ski lodge keepers. 5. Create a master state plan to churn economic activity by replacing many fossil fueled power plants with new renewable power and needed transmission lines, rather than just relying on renewable power to meet growth in electricity demand. Big, publicly financed and owned wind, solar, and geothermal energy projects, coupled with biomass, can help keep the state’s construction industry from crumpling amid economic downturn. It would be a modern-day version of FDR’s Tennessee Valley Authority. Once the projects are built, as advocated in last week’s Juice column, state utilities should be required to purchase their power under a feed-in tariff schedule sufficient to fund their operation and pay off the bonds needed to finance the new renewable energy infrastructure (See last week’s Juice column). 6. Institute a carbon tax to finance new housing and public transportation in urban areas to transform California into a compact, energy efficient, low carbon society. Steering transportation project money to communities that can mitigate greenhouse gas emissions in their general plans is a good start, but not alone sufficient to remold land-use toward energy efficiency in the long-run. More money and a quicker pace will be needed to hem in the energy inefficient sprawl that is boosting the overall cost of the power grid and undermining efforts to reduce dependence on foreign energy imports and cut greenhouse gas emissions. An additional state tax, in the form of a new carbon levy with rebates for low income households, could be split between this goal and closing the state budget deficit. The rebuilding expenditures would jump start economic activity and reverse declining revenues to Sacramento and city halls as they make “smart growth” a reality. These are my conclusions after interviewing numerous people and reading widely on Proposition 7 and the state of the economy. I know you will ask the question of whether we can afford the price tag with the economic downturn. David Freeman thinks so. A growing number of economists also see public investment in clean energy as a way to buoy the falling economy. “It’s all the more reason to do it,” said Freeman, who once headed the TVA. “If there’s $700 billion to bail out Wall Street, we can find enough money to have a solar revolution.” Now there’s a bite of salad worthy of a TV commercial.

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