Oppose "California Renewable Energy and Clean Alternative Fuels Initiative" - greenwash

San Diego Gas and Electric, the Cal and LA Chambers of Commerce, and the like formed a greenwash front group ("Californians For Clean and Renewable Energy" - or CalCARE) that's pushing a 5 Billion bond initiative - and we get to pay for it. Woo-hoo! SDG&E and their corporate daddy Sempra hope to trick all us lucky Californians into paying 5 Billion bucks to help SD Gas and Electric get what they want: a destuctive project called the "Sunrise PowerLink". But we've already paid bigtime to SD Gas and Electric and to their daddy Sempra: during the "Energy Crisis" Sempra, SDG&E, and other energy megacorps engineered in the "deregulation" scam. Even the Sierra Club opposes this giveaway - and this time, they're right. Oppose the initiative - and ask your friends to help. California's friends won't let California's friends endorse a 5 Billion giveaway (and habitat destruction) for Sempra.

The local paper in San Diego County (North County Times) opposes the Powerlink giveaway:

Opinion: Powerlink Won't Light a Light Bulb

4/5/2008 - North County Times
By Peder Norby

Ratepayers (that's us) are being asked to support and fund a $1.5 billion dollar transmission line to import energy.

One fact is indisputable, and easy for all to understand. The $1.5 billion Powerlink project will not generate, nor save, enough electricity to illuminate one standard 60-watt bulb. Not one.

The proponents led and funded by SDG&E seek to use our complacency as ratepayers, coupled with a marketing campaign crafted by professional spin-meisters filled with puffery and pollution fear, in order to build this transmission line.

It is in my estimation nothing short of a "billion-dollar boondoggle."

We should all be outraged by this utility-funded public relations effort and potential "gross" waste and exportation of our money and valuable jobs.

The goal of using more sustainable energy is admirable and one I support and invested my own money in, but constructing a $1.5 billion transmission line to import energy, a small portion of it green energy, from hundreds of miles away for our local consumption, violates the very tenet of sustainability, which is to "produce what you use locally."

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The Utility Consumers' Action Network opposes the Powerlink project:

San Diego Gas & Electric's <a href="url">http://www.pqconcernedcitizens.org/newsarchivesdetail.asp?ID=276>Sunrise Powerlink project is unlikely to deliver on its promise of providing a substantial amount of "green" electricity, the head of a consumer advocacy group suggested during a public hearing Monday.

The utility's chief operating officer, Michael Niggli, acknowledged it's possible the line could deliver more fossil-fuel-generated electricity than green power. But Niggli said such a scenario is unlikely, given the state's move toward clean, so-called renewable energy.

Niggli's comment came as he was being questioned by Michael Shames, executive director and attorney for the Utility Consumers' Action Network. Shames was allowed to question Niggli on behalf of ratepayers.

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San Diego locals also oppose the Powerlink project giveaway (from an August, 2007 article):

The power line's $447 million annual savings was cut to $142 million a year after erroneous calculations were uncovered. A solar energy project whose fate was once tied to the line has failed to demonstrate that it works on a commercial scale. SDG&E has equivocated about how much renewable energy can be found in Imperial County, where the line will begin. The company has waffled about whether the line is necessary to spark renewable energy development in Imperial County.

And the Division of Ratepayer Advocates, a state watchdog, has said SDG&E won't need the power line to keep the lights on until at least 2014.

The slipups have snagged the major energy infrastructure proposal, delaying a decision on a power line that SDG&E casts as an investment in a green energy future, but that opponents call an unnecessary and environmentally damaging expense.

Environmentalists and ratepayer advocates fighting the line say their case was strengthened during the public process that unfolded this summer. They maintain the line is a boondoggle that would crisscross California's largest state park and produce little benefit, beyond profits for Sempra Energy, SDG&E's parent. They say they were boosted when regulatory hearings before the California Public Utilities Commission were delayed in late July.

Dian Grueneich, the California Public Utilities commissioner who ordered the delay, wrote in her ruling that the power line -- by SDG&E's own admission -- was not needed to meet the company's 2010 renewable energy goals. That undermines one of SDG&E's key arguments for building the line. Grueneich wrote that SDG&E's testimony during summer hearings had prompted the need for more environmental analysis.

"SDG&E's case was crumbling," said Michael Shames, executive director of the Utility Consumers' Action Network, a ratepayer advocate and Sunrise opponent. "They've done the best they can to shore it up. But their case is hurting big time."

For local business leaders, politicians and the operator of the state's electricity grid, all who have endorsed the project, the Sunrise Powerlink still holds the promise embodied in its sweet-sounding name.

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So the locals don't want it, and it won't generate any power anyway. Why should everyone in California ante up 5 Billion for the greenwash corporate initiative Sempra and SDG&E just 'cause two greedy companies want us to pay for their lines? We already paid for their "deregulation" scam - why should we pay for another one?

If Sempra and SDG&E think the line is such a great idea, they can pay to build the damn thing - if it ever passes environmental review. And even the Gropinator's PUC may not let that happen.

If even the Gropinator's appointees oppose this, you know it sucks.