Overview of GPN: Alternatives
There are already plenty of power lines and transmission corridors to/from the Imperial Valley. In fact, LADWP has signed an agreement to share transmission capacity with Southern California Edison (SCE) from the Salton Sea to the Devers substation in Desert Hot Springs. This could easily be extended to include the segment from Devers to Los Angeles, if egos were set aside and political will were asserted. Los Angeles currently has sufficient transmission to meet its energy needs. If LADWP wants to develop a new geothermal energy source, it can maximize its local power generation to free up carrying capacity, it can add more lines to existing corridors, or it can use new technology, such as higher conductivity lines, to transmit geothermal energy along existing corridors. A new transmission corridor is simply not needed.
Los Angeles has enormous untapped local solar potential and significant wind, biomass, and hydro generation potential within its boundaries. LADWP is doing the bare minimum required by state law to encourage private ownership of these generation options, and even less to create new programs of municipal ownership-it is beyond time for the Los Angeles City Council to step up and make these options more appealing to ratepayers, like so many other communities have done. Los Angeles needs to institute policies, incentives and procedures that utilize existing structures and transmission to meet its "renewable" portfolio goals into the foreseeable future. There is nothing "renewable" about bulldozing, blasting and permanently destroying hundreds of thousands of acres of wilderness.
Conservation efforts are virtually non-existent within Los Angeles. Without conservation, where will this greed and destruction ever stop? Once the entire planet is covered with power plants and power lines? No. It must stop here and now. That is the definition of "sustainable" after all. Los Angeles needs to engage credible consulting firms to plan and implement an enormous conservation program for electrical power, using technology, zoning, building codes, incentives, penalties and other authority. The greenest power, after all, is that which never needs to be produced.
Los Angeles, and the LADWP in particular, has a long history of arrogantly destroying peoples' lives and the planet in an attempt to shortcut around good resource management and environmental policies. We cannot stand by while they continue their long legacy of mercenary "outsourcing" of their waste, water, power and other non-sustainable needs at the cost of other communities and habitats. No amount of subsequent "mitigation" will bring back what they are so eager to destroy today. There are dozens of effective strategies that MUST be used before one square foot of new ground is broken in the interest of "being green." If Los Angeles truly wants to "unpave paradise," it must look no farther than its own boundaries to do so.
Los Angeles has enormous untapped local solar potential and significant wind, biomass, and hydro generation potential within its boundaries. LADWP is doing the bare minimum required by state law to encourage private ownership of these generation options, and even less to create new programs of municipal ownership-it is beyond time for the Los Angeles City Council to step up and make these options more appealing to ratepayers, like so many other communities have done. Los Angeles needs to institute policies, incentives and procedures that utilize existing structures and transmission to meet its "renewable" portfolio goals into the foreseeable future. There is nothing "renewable" about bulldozing, blasting and permanently destroying hundreds of thousands of acres of wilderness.
Conservation efforts are virtually non-existent within Los Angeles. Without conservation, where will this greed and destruction ever stop? Once the entire planet is covered with power plants and power lines? No. It must stop here and now. That is the definition of "sustainable" after all. Los Angeles needs to engage credible consulting firms to plan and implement an enormous conservation program for electrical power, using technology, zoning, building codes, incentives, penalties and other authority. The greenest power, after all, is that which never needs to be produced.
Los Angeles, and the LADWP in particular, has a long history of arrogantly destroying peoples' lives and the planet in an attempt to shortcut around good resource management and environmental policies. We cannot stand by while they continue their long legacy of mercenary "outsourcing" of their waste, water, power and other non-sustainable needs at the cost of other communities and habitats. No amount of subsequent "mitigation" will bring back what they are so eager to destroy today. There are dozens of effective strategies that MUST be used before one square foot of new ground is broken in the interest of "being green." If Los Angeles truly wants to "unpave paradise," it must look no farther than its own boundaries to do so.
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