Re: GP: Salon.com - Green power in the red

[Paul Craig <ppcraig@ucdavis.edu>]

My own alternative supplier just notified me that they're going out of the CA
business. I'm being switched back to PG&E.  I never could quite figure out how
they could make a profit -- and I guess they couldn't.

The high rates we're now seeing offer a fantastic opportunity to implement
efficiency, peak load pricing, etc.  The incentives are huge at the supply end.
End users remain insulated, but this can't last for long.

The present electricty  environment in CA -- chaotic though it surely is --  is
the best thing for efficiency and renewables since the OAPEC embargos of the
1970s.   Will the opportunity be accepted? Or abandoned?   Time will tell.

Craig Hibberd wrote:

> The following excerpts are from a recent Salon.com piece on green
> power.  See the entire article at:
>
> http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/01/18/green_power/index.html
>
> ------------------------
>
> Green power in the red - Electricity deregulation is bankrupting
> California's fledgling eco-friendly energy industry.
>
> Jan. 18, 2001 | In April, Ray Levinson persuaded the U.S. Postal Service
> to make the largest federal purchase of eco-friendly power in U.S.
> history. After two years of effort, Levinson, an environmental
> compliance manager for the USPS, led 1,100 California post offices away
> from power generated by coal and natural gas and to Go-Green, a "green"
> power company.
>
> In September, Go-Green founder Rick Kohl told Levinson that he was
> having trouble getting enough credit to buy green power from power
> wholesalers. The wholesalers (Calpine, Enron and others) had jacked up
> their prices from 6 cents per kilowatt-hour to about $1.50. Kohl told
> Levinson that some of the post offices would be forced to return to PG&E
> and other so-called brown power companies. Then, in December, Go-Green
> went out of business, abandoning not just the post offices but also MCI
> WorldCom and 2,500 residential customers who had also decided to go
> green.
>
> The death of small green companies combined with a rush to build would
> undermine "one of the primary hopes associated with electricity
> restructuring, the idea that people could choose to reduce the
> environmental impact of the electricity they consume," says Bill Golove,
> a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories researcher who focuses on
> electricity restructuring.
>
> ____________________________________________________________________________
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____________________________________________________________________________
This discussion group is sponsored in part by:
* Center for Renewable Energy and Sustainable Technology, http://www.crest.org
* Global Environmental Options, http://www.geonetwork.org
Archives and related documents can be found at at: http://www.green-power.com