But on niche websites devoted to energy production and energy markets, the picture of how California is responding to its mandates is more muddled. A recent free report from SNL, the McGraw-Hill financial publication that typically charges for the proprietary information it provides to shareholders and potential investors, puts California’s progress in a different light:

Carbon laws are choking demand for coal-fired power in California, but the state still imports a large amount of coal-based power and is one of the nation’s top industrial users of coal, providing a needed market for Western producers facing dimming prospects elsewhere.

 

California’s carbon law AB32, which requires the state’s greenhouse gas emissions to return to 1990 levels by 2020, sets in-state plant performance standards that are too stringent for conventional coal units. But California is still importing coal-based power from neighboring states until current power purchase and plant ownership contracts expire.

 

In 2014, less than 5 percent of California’s total energy demand was served by coal and petroleum coke-fired plants, nearly all of it from plants outside the state, according to an Oct. 12 report from the California Energy Commission. By 2026, California will end virtually all its reliance on coal.

 

But at times, as much as 50 percent of Southern California’s electricity still comes from coal-fired plants, Steve Homer, director of project management for the Southern California Public Power Authority, or SCPPA, told SNL Energy.

 

The three main out-of-state coal plants serving California — the Intermountain Power Project in Utah, the San Juan plant in New Mexico and the Navajo plant in Arizona — together received 10.1 million tons of coal in the first seven months of 2015, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data. …

 

California is also one of the country’s biggest industrial users of coal, although consumption for that sector is relatively small. In 2013, the latest year for state-level EIA data on industrial coal consumption, California was the eighth-biggest industrial coal user, burning 1.4 million tons.

How states game energy reports

The report is another interesting example of how states play games with energy exports and imports to make themselves look greener than they are. In 2010, Orange County lawmaker turned Austin policy wonk Chuck DeVore laid out how California and British Columbia benefit from this maneuvering:

California has become America’s largest electricity importer. With 37 million people producing about 13 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product, California imports about 23 percent of its electricity.  …

Complicating matters are a trio of California energy policy laws passed in 2006: AB32, SB1368 and SB107. AB32 mandates a 30 percent reduction in California’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 … . SB1368 outlaws the renewal of coal-fired electricity contracts — imported coal energy powered about 16 percent of California’s grid in 2008. While SB107 accelerated the requirement that California derive 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources [in 2010], renewable being defined as small hydro, geothermal, wind, solar and biomass (we missed the target, meaning utilities, read ratepayers, get dinged).

Enter government-owned BC Hydro and its Powerex subsidiary. With abundant hydro power potential, British Columbia is seeking to become the Saudi Arabia of “green” energy.  … [But] in fact, BC Hydro has imported more energy than it has exported in 10 out of 11 years.

What’s going on here? British Columbia sells its clean hydropower to neighboring governments which need to meet renewable energy mandates. But then it doesn’t have enough power for its growing economy, so it imports power from coal and gas-fired power plants in Washington state and Alberta.

A California compromise — or a loophole?

A 2014 Los Angeles Times story raised similar questions about the gaming of the intention of the state’s landmark climate change laws. Its key conclusion:

California regulators say they have taken steps to prevent utility company executives from outwitting them and insist state rules will lead to real reductions in carbon dioxide, the main gas scientists blame for global warming. But officials concede their efforts have run up against the limits of California’s ability to control what takes place outside its borders, a point the utilities also emphasize. …

Originally, California’s climate-change policies included a provision that would have demanded utility executives swear under penalty of perjury that the actions they took to reduce emissions would not result in a spike in greenhouse gases someplace else.

 

But federal officials warned Gov. Jerry Brown that too aggressive an effort to control emissions across state lines would risk disrupting the complex interstate electricity system.

 

In the end, the California Air Resources Board — which oversees the state’s 2006 climate-change law — allowed utilities a dozen “safe harbor” conditions under which electricity companies would be permitted to shift emissions to nearby states.

 

Critics called the conditions loopholes. …

 

The exemptions are so broad, the board’s own advisory committee cautioned, that all the reductions in greenhouse gas emissions made by electricity companies could end up existing only on paper.

California’s pioneering climate-change law has a long reach, but that doesn’t mean all its mandates will help stave off global warming.

To meet the requirement that it cut carbon emissions, for example, Southern California Edison recently sold its stake in one of the West’s largest coal-fired power plants, located hundreds of miles out of state.

But the Four Corners Generating Station in New Mexico still burns coal — only the power that Edison once delivered to California now goes to a different utility’s customers in Arizona.

Similar swaps are taking place at coal plants throughout the West, and they underscore the limitations California faces as it tries to confront climate change in the absence of a coherent federal plan.

Unilateral CA action never made sense for many reasons

This quandary was predicted by AB 32’s critics. California’s attempting to conquer climate change with unilateral action made little sense for one big reason — by itself it wouldn’t work, and only blindered greens would believe AB 32 would insipre the rest of the world to copy the Golden State. But there were also many other reasons to expect it would cause headaches. Such as …

Originally, California’s climate-change policies included a provision that would have demanded utility executives swear under penalty of perjury that the actions they took to reduce emissions would not result in a spike in greenhouse gases someplace else.

But federal officials warned Gov. Jerry Brown that too aggressive an effort to control emissions across state lines would risk disrupting the complex interstate electricity system.

In the end, the California Air Resources Board — which oversees the state’s 2006 climate-change law — allowed utilities a dozen “safe harbor” conditions under which electricity companies would be permitted to shift emissions to nearby states.

Critics called the conditions loopholes.

The board “was struggling with what it could do in enforcement,” said James Bushnell, a UC Davis expert in energy economics. “It was a tough issue.”

The exemptions are so broad, the board’s own advisory committee cautioned, that all the reductions in greenhouse gas emissions made by electricity companies could end up existing only on paper.

“If you use enough of those safe harbors, you can shuffle your way out of all your obligations,” said Severin Borenstein, a UC Berkeley economist who advised the board.

How California indirectly burns lots of coal

There are a lot of other AB 32-driven scams out there. Chuck DeVore has written for years about a similar assault on AB 32’s goals that state officials never talk about because they’d rather just pat themselves on the back because of the law’s symbolism and alleged glories.

California has become America’s largest electricity importer. With 37 million people producing about 13 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product, California imports about 23 percent of its electricity. This situation is compounded by the state’s environmental laws which, if a power plant can be built at all, typically consume seven years for permitting and construction vs. three years in competing Texas.

Complicating matters are a trio of California energy policy laws passed in 2006: AB 32, SB 1368, and SB 107. AB 32 mandates a 30 percent reduction in California’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 (BC Premier Campbell was particularly enthusiastic about this law). SB 1368 outlaws the renewal of coal-fired electricity contracts—imported coal energy powered about 16 percent of California’s grid in 2008. While SB 107 accelerated the requirement that California derive 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources this year, renewable being defined as small hydro, geothermal, wind, solar, and biomass (we missed the target, meaning utilities, read ratepayers, get dinged). 

Enter government-owned BC Hydro and its Powerex subsidiary. With abundant hydro power potential, British Columbia is seeking to become the Saudi Arabia of “green” energy. California environmentalists don’t see the irony in British Columbia damming rivers to provide power to California, while in California, environmentalists fight to demolish dams as unsightly threats to salmon. 

The irony gets even deeper, though. British Columbia, perhaps due to Premier Campbell’s business-friendly tax and regulatory policies, is growing. That, combined with a severe drought (yes, when California gets a good water year, British Columbia often sees a drought) means that BC Hydro will be importing $220 million more electricity than it did last year. You read it correctly, hydro energy colossus British Columbia will be importing almost a quarter billion dollars more electricity this year than last. In fact, BC Hydro has imported more energy than it has exported in 10 out of 11 years. And, from where does this energy come? Washington State and Alberta Canada. And, what is the source of this electricity? Brace yourself. Coal and gas-fired plants.

DeVore: ‘Clean green’ and ‘dirty coal’ can’t be separated

That’s from Chuck’s 2010 article for Brietbart. It’s at least as juicy as the LAT’s weekend piece because it involves so much power.

I’ll give the state-assemblyman-turned-Texas-policy-wonk the last word:

Electrons in a grid, like dollars in an account, are fungible, meaning that “clean green” electrons cannot be separated from “dirty coal” electrons and both are mixed in with electrons from nuclear power plants. So, when the Premier of British Columbia comes to California to urge us to continue to make our state even more dependent on his province for electricity as we strive to make the planet better we shouldn’t fool ourselves. The fact is, BC Hydro is buying “dirty” power and then, in an act I’ll dub “electron laundering” is repackaging it for the silly, naïve, environmental-minded Californians as pristine green hydro power—with a nice mark up, of course (Canadians have to pay for their national healthcare after all). 

This is a harbinger of trouble for California’s ambitious plan to broadly limit its reliance on fossil fuels. In two years, the state will initiate an “Energy Imbalance Market,” which entails buying cheap hydropower during the sunset hours of each day from the Columbia and Colorado River hydropower systems. This will be necessary because of the conversion of much California’s power grid from reliable conventional power to solar power that only generates electricity during daylight hours.

CA will depend on reliable supply of hydropower

If this same dam failure event occurs in the future, it could result in an energy-pricing crisis in California. Bonneville Power Administration officials withheld any comment as to the effect the emerging Wanapum Dam situation has on current power generation so as not to cause any panic in energy markets. However, the dam is continuing to generate power.

The Wanapum Dam is located in central Washington along the north branch of the Columbia River, about 100 miles east of Seattle. It is owned and operated by the Grant County Public Utility District. The dam’s hydroelectric turbines produce 1,000 megawatts of electricity, enough to power about 350,000 homes.

The mile-long Wanapum Dam, built in 1959, has 10 reinforced concrete spillway gates each of which are 65-feet wide, 126-feet tall and 92-feet deep. If the dam ends up breached by failure of the cracked base of the spillway gate, flooding would mainly affect rural areas and would also interrupt power generation.

Grant County utility officials thus far have dumped water to lower the level by 20 feet in the reservoir behind the dam to assure that inspectors were safe when inspecting the dam. The water level is planned to be lowered an additional 14 feet on Monday, March 3.

PG&E relies on power from damaged dam

If the spillway failure results in a breach of the dam, the downstream flooding would damage farms, orchards, boat marinas and recreational fishing. The Washington State Department of Ecology shows that Wanapum Dam also supplies water for municipal and industrial uses, for agricultural irrigation and instream uses.

The major regional risk is that Wanapum Dam’s hydropower facilities are so large that the Grant County utility would have to start buying power to meet any contractual obligations.  Pacific Gas and Electric buys power from the Grant Count utility’s Wanapum Dam.

After 10 years of contentious biological opinions in federal courts, in 2008 a prominent fish spillway was added to the dam. The increased spillages resulted in less power generation and running the dam for fish flows instead of power flows, flood flows or growing crops.

In 2011, the Grant County utility had to repair failed water stops that overwhelmed the power plant’s drainage system, resulting in a near-catastrophic failure of a turbine.

Energy Imbalancing Market addresses limits of solar power 

An emerging problem with California’s new green power grid is the need to ramp up enough conventional power each day because of two events:

1) When solar power is sunsetting (going dark);

2) When the mostly nighttime wind power turbines aren’t spinning enough yet to take over.

This is called the “Duckchart Problem,” as seen in the nearby chart.

The ramping up of conventional gas-fired power during the sunset hours to replace solar power is expected to sharply raise electricity rates.  To lessen this three-hour pricing crisis each day, California is setting up what could be termed an “Energy Imbalance Market” to buy cheap hydropower mainly from federal dams along the Columbia and Colorado Rivers. The Bonneville Power Administration’s electric grid reaches from the Columbia River to the Oregon border and into California.

An evaluation of California’s proposed Energy Imbalance Market by Argonne National Laboratories addressed the risks of relying on federal hydropower due to environmental lawsuits to protect fish.

Another problem is that ramping hydroelectric power turbines up and down to back up stop-and-go wind and solar power puts a strain on the hydropower plants and wears out equipment faster. Hydropower and wind power have ended up to be a “terrible fit.” About half of the wind power generated in the Pacific Northwest is purchased by California.

The Argonne report, however, did not foresee risks of dam failure.

The developing dam failure at Wanapum Dam on the Columbia River not only shows the future vulnerability of California’s green power grid. It may also show that such vulnerability stems from the nature of the green power grid.

By Wayne Lusvardi

Those who want to settle the water wars over the Sacramento Delta by first restoring “trust” rather than implementing the adopted law of the Bay-Delta Conservation Plan should take the advice of comedian W.C. Fields: “You can’t trust water. Even a straight stick turns crooked in it.”

University of Pacific law professor Gregory S. Weber just wrote an article,“The Big Divide Over Water: Mistrust is Top Obstacle to Repairing the Delta.” He contended that the main problem impeding the proposed Sacramento Bay Delta Conservation Plan is “gut level mistrust among the stakeholders.”

However, this is an odd statement from a law professor because the social function of the law is to not rely on trust. If the historical water wars in California have proven anything, it is that law has been a better vehicle, although sometimes flawed, than trust to settle water disputes.

Secondly, Weber calls Northern Californians “stakeholders” even though they may have not established any legal rights over water in the State Water Project.  A “stakeholder” is typically defined as someone who has deposited money depending on the outcome of an unsettled matter. Northern Californians are no more stakeholders in California’s socialized water system than Central Valley farmers or Southern California cities, and vice versa.

Law mandates co-equal goals

As currently put into law, the Bay Delta Plan calls for co-equal goals: 1) repair the Delta ecosystem mainly for fish and 2) improve water supply reliability.  That’s the law, not some nebulous trust.  However, different “stakeholders” likely will fund each of those two goals.

What the “Water Reliability” half of the Delta Plan would do is build tunnels to take water through and under the Delta “lake-bed” to Central Valley farmers and Southern California cities. The purpose of the tunnels would be to backfill some of the water lost to Southern California due to the State of Arizona deciding to finally take their full allocation of Colorado River water, rather than letting it flow to California.  The only replacement water source is the Delta.

The Water Reliability half of the Delta Plan would be 100 percent funded by the state and federal governments, Central Valley farmers, and Southern California water districts.  Northern Californians are not “stakeholders” in this part of the Delta Plan because they haven’t ponied up any funds for it. But Weber erroneously says they are “stakeholders” in the tunnels.

The “Repair the Delta Eco-system” half of the Delta Plan involves re-routing flows of fresh cold water over the top of the tunnels. This would rehabilitate the Delta eco-system for freshwater fish.  A tentative $9 billion general obligation bond to be put to the voters in 2014 likely would fund this second half of the Delta Plan. Thus, all water ratepayers in the State Water Project are potential “stakeholders” in the Eco-system Restoration part of the Delta plan.

Consensus failed

Weber is correct that, for over a decade, California sought a misguided “consensus” on a solution to the Delta under the Cal-Fed Bay Delta Program. But that plan, based on “trust” of the parties, failed miserably.  A mix of fraud, force, and consent of the governed — not consensus or trust — have held California’s historic water social contract together.  The elements of this contract entail Northern California giving up water to Central Valley farmers and Southern California cities in exchange for Delta flood protection, cheap hydropower and thermal power, and some potable water for themselves.

Incredibly, Weber now wants to unwind the adopted Delta Plan law first to establish “trust” by offering to serve as “mediator.”  Trust — or consensus — never  has worked to resolve the Delta water wars. Undoing the Delta Plan law now would be improbable.  Nonetheless, Weber suggests that Delta Plan should be reversed with a ballot initiative. This would just re-ignite the water wars, resulting in a greater deterioration of trust.

Better feared than loved if that is only choice that works

I agree that both Northern and Southern Californians will have to trust that co-equal goals of the Bay Delta Plan don’t “cut the baby in half.”  But for decades, California water policy makers tried “trust” and “love” and it didn’t work.

To paraphrase Machiavelli, it would be ideal if the Delta Plan could be both loved (trusted) and feared, but if a choice must be made, then fear is best.  But because circumstances have forced a choice, it is better to be feared even though this breeds mistrust with the outcome by both sides.  It will be up to the Delta Stewardship Council to navigate a course based on the rule of law that avoids hatred on the one hand and mistrust and contempt on the other.