We hear a lot of talk about clean energy and electric cars and reducing our dependence on foreign oil but what are they not telling us?
The fact is, we get 50 percent of our energy to produce electricity from coal and coal is the single biggest contributor to C02 emissions in the world today.
I don”t think I need to tell you that we shouldn”t get too excited about PG&E”s plan to hook us all up with wireless SmartMeters as a way to save energy. There”s a back story that deserves front page and it”s not about energy conservation.
In February of 2009 Congress passed its “clean-energy package” included in The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act with a $4.5 billion provision for direct investment in smart grid development and calling for the installation of 40 million SmartMeters nationwide.
California accounts for approximately 25 percent of the total national deployment and nearly half of all the money allocated for the program.
It”s staggering when you see the dollars being spent on California”s SmartMeter deployment and PG&E”s share of California”s smart grid market is about 42 percent of all the SmartMeters planned statewide. So considering California”s investment in the largest smart grid deployment in the country, what can we expect to receive in return for our investment? According to someone who should know, not very much.
Here”s what Subodh Nayar, chief operations officer of Powerline Telco (a high-roller in the smart grid arena) was quoted as saying in a 2009 interview: “Empowering consumers with actionable intelligence about their power will not be the outcome of the deployment of SmartMeters.
“Rather, it will be exactly what the utilities intend for it to be: a cost-effective way to implement real-time pricing, demand side management and distribution system monitoring. Utility companies seek to maximize the profits from a business model that requires them to generate, transport and deliver a consistent quality of power regardless of demand in exchange for a guaranteed rate of return.”
He continued, “Electricity generated on the power grid isn”t stored, so the grid is engineered and operated to meet peak levels of demand which might only exist for a few hours per month.
“Without control over demand, responding to demand spikes will cause the quality of power supplied to fluctuate outside accepted norms. That can only change if demand can be controlled so utilities want to protect their return on investment (ROI) by not reducing the total amount of electricity sold.
“Metering was never intended to reduce overall consumption.
“While it”s debated whether time-of-use pricing could have an effect on demand, it may actually increase total carbon emissions because the cheapest electricity today is mostly from coal. By using more electricity when it”s cheapest, we”ll burn more coal.”
According to figures released in March by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, about half of all power generated in the United States comes from coal-fired plants. The Union of Concerned Scientists cited coal as the number one cause of air pollution in the United States.
A typical coal plant in an average year generates 3,700,000 tons of carbon dioxide, the primary human cause of global warming, as much carbon dioxide as cutting down 161 million trees, 10,000 tons of sulfur dioxide, which causes acid rain that damages forests and lakes, over 10,000 tons of nitrogen oxide, which forms as much ozone causing photochemical smog as the exhaust from half a million cars, 720 tons of carbon monoxide, 225 pounds of arsenic which causes cancer in one out of 100 people who drink water containing 50 parts per billion and 170 pounds of mercury, where just one 70th of a teaspoon deposited on a 25-acre lake can make the fish unsafe to eat.
This isn”t a very green picture unless you”re talking about the cash PG&E will pocket including the revenue recovery costs they asked for to finance their customer opt-out program.
And what do we get for all that? A mesh of millions of wireless EMF-producing SmartMeters and a landscape of data collection units gathering mountains of minutia that can be sold to the highest bidder.
If I were a business other than a utility company, I”d be green. Green with envy.
Howard Glasser
Kelseyville
