By Bruce Wolfe, HANC Vice President
Ever think you’d hear those words again in California, no less, here in San Francisco? Well, they’re back! And, they’re back with none other than the SF Public Utilities Commission. Why, after all the hard work over the past decade of so many organizations including HANC, who fought so hard against PG&E and other investor-owned utilities (IOU)? The “Why?” is never clear as the reasons are like a plastic bag floating in the wind, but the question was put on the Commission’s table to consider...and without much public notice...AND...PG&E was giving the energy away for free to the tune of $1.4 million! But, there’s that word again, “Why?”
As 48hills Editor Tim Redmond put it, “The resolution sounds totally innocent: It states that it would: Confirm and clarify existing Commission policy that CleanPowerSF will not procure specified sources of nuclear energy as part of its energy portfolio to serve its retail customers.” You can’t trust the basic descriptions anymore. You must read the whole thing through and through now. Again, Tim Redmond, “But when you click through and actually read the language of the resolution and the staff analysis, it’s a bit more complicated. Staff is suggesting that CPSF (Clean Power SF) could go ahead and take the nuclear power from PG&E – and then resell it to someone else, bringing in as much as $1.4 million a year in revenue”. https://48hills.org/2020/06/sfpuc-could-be-accepting-pges-nuclear-energy/
Some background: There has been debate since the inception of nuclear power that it is a “green” energy source and environmentally sound because proponents say it doesn’t produce greenhouse gases. They’re kinda right when compared to carbon-based production but you have to dig deeper. The carbon footprint nuclear energy production leaves is as great and vast as coal and oil due to the mining of uranium, water cooling and the effects on ocean life and, of course, the waste (plutonium) it produces and the problem of how to get rid of it. Oh, yeah, right, we can’t. So, we have to store it and protect it because bombs can be made out of it. (Personal note: I kind of know this all too well as my late uncle helped found and headed up the nuclear energy division at General Electric. We’ve had this debate ever since he put a Nuclear Energy 101 book in my youthful hands and then Three-Mile Island happened. I thank him for my earliest entry into community activism next to the Vietnam War, school busing, civil rights movement, etc. You guess my age.)
Moreover, because SF like other counties around the state now have Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) programs they write their own portfolios on what energy and where purchased. This also includes mandates against the purchase and use of certain types of power including nuclear. So, suffice to ask, again, “Why?”
We all know the trouble they are in. When CCA got instituted and all PG&E customers became SF’s customers there went all the sales of nuclear energy. Sure, nuclear energy is cheap but we just went through more than four decades pushing it back with the recent closing of the San Onofre plant in southern CA. And, PG&E’s Diablo Canyon plant sits on top of a major fault line. Ok, let’s try, "What for, SFPUC?"
It seems that since PG&E can’t sell much nuclear-generated energy, so now they could give it away to CCAs with the caveat they could resell it elsewhere. What?! Laundering electrons?
SF Clean Energy Advocates (http://sfcleanenergy.org/) and CA Clean Energy Coalition (http://calenergychoice.org) which include HANC, 350BayArea/350SF, Our City, Sierra Club among others stepped into gear quickly to get as many residents as possible to defeat this move. It quickly got pulled from the SFPUC agenda so that the community in Community Choice Aggregation could chime in. After all, that is the whole purpose of a CCA: to put the choice back in the People’s hands. Still, the resolution was to move forward once everyone understood the move.
Soon enough, all the major environmental organizations and community groups stepped up to notify the public of what was about to take place. The Community was activated. The call for public comment to 'oppose' was on. The SFPUC meeting came. The public came in droves, virtually, and spoke and so did the commissioners. As reported by the Sunflower Alliance, “Many San Franciscans recently joined in a widespread public outcry when they learned about a loophole in Clean Power SF’s policy of rejecting nuclear energy. Because of that outcry, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission unanimously voted to close that loophole July 14, putting a complete ban on all use, purchase, or exchange of nuclear energy by CleanPowerSF, San Francisco’s community choice energy program.”
https://www.sunflower-alliance.org/san-francisco-says-no-to-dealing-in-nuclear-energy/
No Nukes! Once and for all.