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San Francisco Chronicle Tuesday, June 26, 2001
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Supply Crisis or Not, Few Demand Barge's Dirty Power David
Baker As the threat of summer blackouts looms, a mobile power plant that could help save the Bay Area from blackouts sits at a dock in Oregon -- unused and unwanted. State regulators and environmental groups scuttled plans to bring the PG&E-owned floating plant -- four turbines stuck on a barge -- through the Golden Gate last summer. Its 30-year-old equipment would foul the air and the jet fuel it burns could leak into the bay, environmentalists said. Now the Rio Da Luz, capable of powering a city the size of Berkeley, is moored in Portland, PG&E spokesman Greg Pruett said yesterday. Its owner, PG&E National Energy Group, has not used the rig since buying it from Texas-based El Paso Energy last June. But as Californians seem willing to give even nuclear power another chance, the barge has drawn little interest -- to the amazement of some California officials in their daily search for voltage. "California has this really deficient generating capacity, and yet we have this 95-megawatt generator sitting on the Willamette River, untouched," said Brian Theaker with the California Independent System Operator, which manages the state's power grid. Still, few want to bring the barge back. Environmental groups, skeptical that an energy shortage exists, say they would battle any proposal to bring back the barge. Most politicians, mindful of the anger aimed last year at the barge (the name means "River of Light" in Portuguese), want nothing to do with it now, even if it could stave off a blackout or two. "There's been no support even for putting something like this on land, much less in the water," said Liz Fenton, chief of staff for state Sen. Liz Figueroa, D-Fremont. Even PG&E National Energy Group, a wholesale energy provider and subsidiary of PG&E Corp., shows little appetite for revisiting the issue. "We don't even see it as an option," said Pruett. "We got a pretty clear indication last year that it wasn't wanted." PG&E officials haven't decided what to do with it, he said yesterday. For one month last year, PG&E executives had high hopes for the barge. When they bought it from El Paso Energy, they planned to send it to Florida, where another power plant was out of commission. But then California's energy crunch hit. Power blackouts rolled through the Bay Area and its high-tech economy, with some companies estimating million- dollar losses for each hour the lights stayed off. PG&E executives decided the barge -- capable of powering 95,000 homes -- was just the kind of blackout insurance the region needed. From its berth in Freeport, Texas, the Rio Da Luz headed for California, by way of the Panama Canal. The barge came under attack before it left American waters. Environmentalists and politicians expressed skepticism, then outright hostility, at the air pollution it would generate. Built in the 1970s, the plant's turbines had never been upgraded to meet modern pollution standards. PG&E tried to assure opponents that it wanted to run the plant only during emergencies. The state's grid managers insisted that the old turbines would actually run cleaner than some of the Bay Area's existing full-time generators, which aren't exactly new. But the company gave up trying in late July after realizing it couldn't secure the needed permits to run the barge until fall, when the demand for electricity eases. The barge hadn't even reached California's coast when PG&E pulled the plug. It wasn't the only unusual energy proposal to run afoul of environmental concerns. "What has been going on since this crisis hit is various entrepreneurs have come up with various schemes," said Lucia Libretti, spokeswoman for the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. "We had a guy who came to us and wanted us to just wave a magic wand and let him bring a turbine in on a flatbed truck. He was serious." Still, one year and many blackouts later, some people think the floating power plant deserves another chance. Assemblyman Tony Strickland, who represents the Southern California coastal cities of Oxnard and Port Hueneme, said it is worth studying as a short-term solution, considering the severity of the power shortage. "We ought to treat this like a crisis, because that's what it is," said Strickland, R-Thousand Oaks. "If this (plant) gets more megawatts on the grid, we should look at it." But many state politicians are happy to let the matter rest, preferring to focus on efforts to build permanent power plants across the state. Fifteen new plants should be operating by 2004. Any push to pull the barge out of retirement in the Northwest also would require the necessary government permits, meaning it wouldn't come on line until well after summer's heat recedes. Environmentalists promise another fight should anyone try to resurrect the Rio Da Luz. Some now view last year's barge battle as the opening salvo in a larger war over what they consider the government's reckless drive to build generators at any environmental cost. "We're potentially seeing a whole new generation of fossil fuel power plants being railroaded down the public's throat," said Bradley Angel, executive director of the Greenaction environmental group, which organized an armada of protesters last year. "If you want more energy, fine. Do it renewable. Do it clean." E-mail David R. Baker at dbaker@sfchronicle.com.
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