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Van Jones Promotes Smart Grid, but is it Really Smart?

Mark Sardella — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 05:51:47 +0000

If ever you need to push a progressive agenda, you’d do well to have Van Jones on your side. The first time I saw him, at a conference in Oakland speaking about his work with incarcerated youth, he transfixed an audience of six-hundred for forty-five minutes of laughter and tears and applause. The Yale-educated civil rights attorney is a heavyweight orator: Who else gets a round of applause after their congressional testimony?

So naturally I was excited when Jones joined President Obama’s green-team, but he’s going to have his hands full with the big utilities and their so-called “Smart Grid” program. You see, anytime I’m told something is smart, I just have to check, and in this case, my worst fears were realized. So when Jones told Congress that building the “Smart Grid” would create benefits on the level that building our interstate highway-system did, I cringed. When he said that consumers would save money due to improved energy efficiency, I sighed. Here’s the problem:

(read the full article)

Smart Grids: How Smart?

Mark Sardella — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 08:26:45 +0000

President Obama’s stimulus package, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, appropriates nearly $24 billion to modernize our country’s electric power grid, including an $11 billion outlay to make it “smart”. Those appropriations are stirring the hopes of renewable energy advocates, who foresee expanded opportunities for solar and wind technologies as well as a big, new role for plug-in electric and hybrid-electric vehicles.

And there are reasons to be hopeful. Decentralizing our electric system by adding a lot of small generators would help achieve the Smart Grid project’s primary objectives of improving the reliability, security and efficiency of our electric power system. Renewables also create a lot of jobs per unit of energy, and with unemployment above 8 percent for the first time in 26 years, that could provide welcome relief. And job creation is a bipartisan issue – you'd be hard pressed to find a politician in Washington willing to argue against entrepreneurship.

But what exactly is the vision for a smart grid? The characteristics were officially spelled out in Title 13 of former President Bush's Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, which envisions using digital communications and control technology to enable the variety of devices connected to the grid to talk with one another. The idea is that by communicating, loads and sources on the grid could alter their behavior in beneficial ways. For example, if you plug in your car when you get home from work but don’t need it fully charged until morning, the start of the charging cycle might automatically be delayed until other loads turn off, perhaps after you go to bed. Smart appliances like air conditioners and refrigerators could limit the amount of cooling they do when the grid is approaching overload, and smart cars might offer up some of the energy in their batteries to help power those loads.

But will the project dubbed “Smart Grid” be smart for consumers, or just for utilities? The name certainly implies a “no-brainer”, suggesting a win-win so obvious that we needn’t concern ourselves with the details. That’s usually a good clue that a closer look is warranted. Remember the Patriot Act?

The first hint of a problem, beyond all the dubious language about data mining and cyber-threats, is a curious passage requiring states to consider allowing utilities to bill consumers for the value of any equipment rendered obsolete by the program. Compensate utilities for their obsolete technology? Imagine typewriter makers agreeing to build computers but insisting that we have to keep paying for typewriters too. And what if the new grid is so smart that it renders the old one useless? Must we keep making payments on the dumb grid even as we begin paying for the smart one?

Another disturbing provision – this one in the stimulus bill – requires states seeking stimulus funding to provide assurances that they will work to implement rules ensuring that utilities won’t make less money as energy use declines. These rules, termed “revenue decoupling” rules because they decouple utility revenues from the volume of energy sold, are being touted as a way to encourage utilities to help their customers conserve. The obvious problem (although not so obvious that anyone is talking about it) is that under revenue decoupling, a single customer can still save money by cutting electricity use, but an entire community cannot. Once the revenue of a utility is guaranteed regardless of usage, it doesn’t matter how much energy the community conserves – all together they are still obligated to pay the same amount to the utility. Revenue decoupling rules are, in reality, little more than thinly veiled attempts to guarantee the revenues of an industry that is hurtling headlong towards obsolescence.

With rules that force consumers to continue paying for obsolete assets and for energy they no longer consume, we ensure that the lions share of benefits from modernizing our power grid will go to utilities, rather than consumers. But there is another way to go about it, and other countries are already well down the path.

Denmark had wind but didn’t have the economic power to develop it, so instead they created a policy that enabled inventors and entrepreneurs to access renewable energy markets even before their inventions were market-ready. Within a few years, companies in Denmark were designing and building some of the most advanced turbines in the wind industry, and the tiny country of just over 5 million citizens today controls 38 percent of the world market for wind turbines.

What was Denmark’s secret? They simply opened up their power grid to every renewable electricity producer seeking a market, guaranteeing their right to interconnect and promising to buy every renewable kilowatt-hour produced at a premium price called a “feed-in tariff”. The flood of renewables that followed eventually necessitated upgrades to their grid, but those upgrades were driven by a mandate to accommodate new players, rather than to protect incumbent ones. Forty-six countries now have a feed-in tariff law, validating its reputation as the world’s most successful tool for advancing renewable energy.

The Smart Grid project might succeed in modernizing the power grid, but unless we change its focus it will fail to provide consumers with cheaper, cleaner, and more reliable power. You can’t simply throw billions of dollars at the builders of the dumb grid and expect them to build a smart one. We tried that with investment banking, pouring trillions into the very companies that created our financial crisis rather than taking a hard look at fresh policy approaches.

With the power grid, there’s no room for mistakes. Modernizing our electric power infrastructure using policies that create entrepreneurial opportunities for small businesses is where the smart money will go.

FDA Fails to Warn Consumers about Levaquin

Mark Sardella — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 00:26:46 +0000

I have a sinus infection that has already survived two courses of antibiotics -- first Azithromycin, and then Augmentin. So my doctor prescribed 21 days of Levaquin and put me on Prednisone as well. It turns out that's a dangerous combination, but my doctor never said a thing about it. It turns out he's not required to, and except to a limited degree, neither is the pharmacist.

When tendon problems started to surface for people taking fluoroquinolone antibiotics -- including Levaquin -- Public Citizen compelled the FDA to require the drug maker to add a "black box" warning on the package. For all the hoopla this bold move generated in the press, you'd think the FDA had solved the problem. Think again.

I wrote to the FDA and asked how I was able to get my hands on a bottle of Levaquin that doesn't have a warning encircled by their highly touted “black box”. In fact, the pill bottle has no warning on it at all. The response, from a very nice fellow named BD, informed me that the FDA's ruling required the black-box warning be given to the pharmacist, but not to the consumer. My warning was buried withing the information sheet provided by the pharmacist -- a page of 6-point type without any highlight on the risk of tendon damage. Many lesser threats, such as dizziness and sunburn, are clearly highlighted. But the one about tendon rupture is buried under mountains of medical mumbo jumbo.

Why did the FDA, tasked with protecting consumers, mandate a highlighted warning about Levaquin's risks but fail to mandate that it be given to consumers? That failure gives merit to the pending class action lawsuit, which specifically alleges that if victims had been properly warned, they could have stopped taking the drug in time to avoid injury.

With dangerous drugs, the FDA needs to ensure that consumers are adequately warned, by their doctors as well as their pharmacists.

Local Energy Markets

Mark Sardella — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 03:46:20 +0000

This commentary aired October 1, 2008 on KUNM.

I'll post the audio as soon as it's available.

One of the greatest myths of our time is that renewable energy isn’t quite ready to compete with so-called “conventional” sources of energy. More research is needed, we are told, because renewables are still too expensive. So onward we march, powering our homes with coal and filling our gas tanks with imported go-juice, all the while shipping bagfuls of cash out of our communities to pay for it.

There is a lot of evidence that this myth about renewable energy is false. Many countries smaller than ours are installing renewables faster than we are, creating jobs and increasing their self-reliance while lessening their environmental footprint. So, why does the myth still play so well in the United States?

One reason is that the oil, gas, coal, and nuclear companies here are actively engaged in energy policymaking, and they repeatedly tell the myth to lawmakers at all levels of government. Using carefully crafted messages backed by well-funded research, they tell the same story again and again: We wish we could...we look forward to the day when we can...but right now, we just can’t.

The key to telling a lie is delivering it alongside the truth. And it is, in fact, true that we haven’t figured out how to turn bloated, investor-owned monopolies and their overpaid executives into agents of community sustainability. If that were the plan, renewable energy would never be ready.

There is, on the other hand, a way to roll out renewables right now that would stabilize energy prices, create good jobs, retain energy-dollars in the local community, and provide secure and sustainable energy for the long term. It isn’t being proposed by either of the major party candidates for president, who instead keep insisting that renewables aren’t enough, and that we need to develop nuclear power as well as some strange substance they are calling “clean coal”.

No, it turns out that renewables can serve all of our needs, and the transition can happen quickly if we would just provide one thing that’s missing: a market. If we set up a market whereby independent energy suppliers could trade with independent energy consumers, we’d be all done.

Now, there have already been many attempts to create local markets for energy, but nearly all of them have been shut down by incumbent energy suppliers. I know this one guy who was trying to sell high-efficiency cogeneration systems, until one day he discovered that the utility was offering cut-rate electricity to his prospective customers in exchange for an agreement that they don’t buy one of his systems. He sued the utility, but as soon as the utility realized they were going to lose the case, they settled out of court. Did the utility retreat in shame, and amend their practices? Hardly! Instead, they drafted a law making what they were doing legal, and persuaded their state legislature to enact the law. Now, whenever a customer even thinks about putting in a clean, efficient, on-site system to generate their own power, utilities can offer something called a “load-retention rate” to entice them not to do it. That’s just one of their tricks – the list is long.

If lawmakers and regulators are unwilling to keep incumbent energy suppliers from obstructing the market for local, independent renewable energy, we’ll need to create this new market ourselves. All we need to do is organize all the energy consumers who already want to buy clean, locally generated power and heat, and form alliances with the local, independent energy producers. The only hard part will be fighting against an enormous, entrenched opposition of dirty energy suppliers, but in reality, we have all the power we need to pull this off.

Because next year, as we set out to spend another two-trillion dollars meeting our energy needs, we can simply decide to give it to independent energy companies right here in our community.

Bailout, Sellout...What's the Diff?

Mark Sardella — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 17:36:52 +0000

Today feels like the day the last vestiges of democracy will die, as our government appears poised to demonstrate fully that they support Wall Street over and above their constituents. I am fed up. Here's what my Senator and Congressman received from me today...hope your letters were stern as well.

Dear Congressman Udall and Senator Bingaman:

Are you voting against this bailout bill today? I stayed up last night reading the bill, or the “Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008” as congress is calling it, and I’m not happy about it.

First, the bill doesn’t place any limits on, or add any regulatory oversight over, the type of speculation that caused the crisis. That’s quite a departure from the days of FDR, who enacted the Truth in Securities Act and the Glass-Steagall Act to reign in speculation following the banking crisis of his day. Your first responsibility is to end the practices that have put Americans in harm’s way, but that’s not what’s going on in this bill. In fact, this bill would do more to perpetuate the bad behavior.

Second, the bill discusses, but doesn’t require, direct aid to the homeowners that were hurt by the speculative practices. We are not stupid – talking about helping someone is very different from actually doing it.

Finally, while the rhetoric in front of the cameras about limiting executive compensation has been firm, the language in the bill is not. The bill calls for the financial institutions to meet “appropriate standards” for compensation, but these are institutions that have already demonstrated that they don’t know what appropriate standards would be. The bill adds a few paragraphs on what the standards should include, but the language is so loose it appears to be idle posturing. Again, we are not stupid. Add some specifics, for heaven’s sake! Here’s an example: “No one at any financial institution shall be compensated at more than five times the rate of the firm’s lowest paid worker, and all employees shall receive the same terms for severance at the conclusion of their employment.” Fair enough?

My overall impression is that Wall Street is running the show here. You must stand with your constituents and oppose this bill. I’ve been talking with a lot of them, and I haven’t found any that want this bailout. Saying that you have to vote for it won’t cut it this time. You represent us, and we need you now. Please don’t sell us out by going along with this charade.

Sincerely, Mark Sardella

Drilling Offshore in the Age of Hurricanes

Mark Sardella — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 04:48:49 +0000

This commentary aired September 2, 2008 on KUNM.

Listen to Commentary

There’s nothing quite like a hurricane bearing down on the world’s largest collection of oil and gas rigs to remind you just how bad an idea it is to drill offshore. Now, I know Hurricane Gustav was no Katrina or Rita, the pair that delivered the one-two punch to the Gulf in 2005, opening up 600 separate oil spills and dumping 750,000 gallons of crude oil into a fragile, coastal waterway. What’s that? You didn’t hear Katrina and Rita left behind one of the worst environmental disasters of all time? Well, a lot of news outlets reported that not a drop of oil was spilled, and Presidential candidate John McCain recently repeated this myth when he cited those two hurricanes as evidence that it’s now “safe” to drill offshore.

Even Barack Obama, in his acceptance speech last week, said that we need to do more drilling offshore. At least he called it a “stop-gap measure”, and boy, is it ever. We are already drilling fifty thousand new oil and gas wells a year in the United States, and the amount of oil and gas we produce STILL declines every year. We can’t possibly put holes in the ground fast enough to increase our domestic production of oil and gas. Every new well we drill simply offsets declining production from the other wells. Ten years ago we were offsetting those declines with about 15,000 new wells a year. Now it’s 50,000, and ten years from now, if you follow the trend, we’ll need 150,000 new wells a year. It’s like running on a treadmill...you can’t possibly win.

Perhaps the greatest reason of all for not expanding our drilling efforts in the United States is that scientists have discovered a clear link between the rate at which we un-earth carbon-based fuels and the rate at which our climate is destabilizing. Here again, there’s been a lot of confusion about this. From all the reports, you’d think climate change was caused by not having enough air in your tires, or using the wrong kind of light bulbs. But it’s not. Climate change doesn’t care how efficiently we use energy, or what we decide to do with it. The only thing that matters is how fast you dig up the buried carbon resources and release them into the atmosphere.

With this in mind, how can we say we are serious about addressing our climate problem while we push for more drilling? Instead of lamenting the fact that our domestic oil and gas reserves are depleting, shouldn’t we celebrate it? Are we finally getting a look at the end of oil, when we stop unearthing the carbon that is destabilizing our planet? I’m ecstatic!

Now, I’m fully aware of all the dire predictions about how our country would come apart if we stop buying energy from the oil, gas, coal, and nuclear companies. But seriously, if we took the two-trillion dollars we will give them this year and instead built a public infrastructure to harness and distribute renewable energy, would everyone have enough?

Isn’t it possible that the assertion that nothing else is feasible, that we have to keep handing two-trillion dollars a year to the companies that make dirty energy based on non-renewable, planet-killing fuels, is false?

To fix our climate, we need to start leaving carbon-based fuels in the ground. I say we set them aside, declaring them “protected wilderness areas”. The legislation for doing that is already in place – we do it all the time. You just say, “This area must be left untouched so that our children can have a decent future,” and your all done.

Now, if you still feel like you need more reasons to not drill offshore, check out the National Hurricane Center website. There are three reasons right on the home page, and their names are Hanna, Ike, and Josephine, and they’re headed for our shores.

Telling the Truth About Oil, Wind, and Water

Mark Sardella — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 01:04:03 +0000

With the news these days dominated by Michael Phelps winning Olympic gold medals, John Edwards confessing to marital affairs, and Paris Hilton deciding to run for president, I barely even want to know the details of Russia’s recent invasion of Georgia – its neighbor to the south. Russia isn’t even a super-power anymore, and from what I hear, they’re just acting out some leftover anger from the Cold War days. It’s not like Georgia has any oil, does it?

Well, it turns out that underneath the story we’ve been hearing about Russia’s invasion of Georgia, there’s another story. It’s a story about a couple of oil-thirsty countries – the United States and Great Britain, and their plan to loosen Russia’s grip on the rich oil reserves beneath the Caspian Sea. President Clinton, working with Bechtel, British Petroleum, the World Bank, and others, created a plan to build an oil pipeline connecting the Caspian Sea to the Eastern Mediterranean. The idea was that the 1,100-mile pipeline across Georgia would bypass Russia. Well, Russia wasn’t too happy about that, so we gave Georgia hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid, and promised that we would back them if they ever got into trouble. So, here we are, two years after the pipeline began operating, trying to convince Russia not to bomb it into oblivion.

Somehow, with petroleum, we always seem to tell a story that’s not quite the real story. Like when we set out looking for weapons of mass destruction, and came back with a bunch of no-bid oil development contracts. Or when we claimed that the rise in oil prices was just “speculation”, and never mind the fact that after 100 years of pumping, the world’s oil wells are getting kind of tired.

Our habit of not telling the real story isn’t limited to petroleum – it’s rampant throughout the energy industry. Like when T. Boone Pickens, the legendary oil barren, tells us about his plan for wind power but neglects to mention that the transmission corridors for his power lines are really intended for water pipelines. See, he’s got another plan (one that doesn’t have a website), in which he drains the Ogallala Aquifer and pipes all that water to Dallas and other cities in Texas. I can’t really blame him for not talking about it…nobody would ever approve condemning land and seizing it through eminent domain so that a billionaire can create a monopoly on drinking water!

Typically, when someone repeats a pattern of not telling the real story, it’s a sign of addiction. But even as we admit that we have an addiction, we aren’t being completely honest. We’re not addicted to oil, we’re addicted to all the things that oil lets us do—like, live way out in the suburbs and drive into town whenever we need anything. With oil, we don’t even need to talk to one another. The main thing that petroleum gave us was freedom from the responsibilities of community. In a community, we all agree to provide for one another’s needs. You grow vegetables, I’ll harvest firewood, you weave fabric…oh, to hell with all that…we’ll just get it all from Trader Joe’s.

So here’s my proposal: instead of telling stories about all the great new energy technologies we’re getting, let’s talk about how we are going to implement them in ways that rebuild community, and recreate local self-reliance. If we don’t approach it that way, we run the risk of ending up just as dependent on the same big-moneyed, outside interests that dominate us now – only, it’ll all be powered by solar and wind. Big deal!

The real opportunity of the new energy paradigm is that building it can bring us back together as a community. But for that to happen, we need to build it with local resources, and employ locally owned, independent energy businesses. Then we can proudly tell the real story of how it all happened, instead of making up stories about Paris Hilton running for president.

This commentary aired on KUNM on August 18, 2008. To listen, click here.

By Protecting Utilities, We Make Communities Vulnerable

Mark Sardella — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 02:25:31 +0000

“Revenue Decoupling” programs are the latest in a long series of egregious schemes designed to prop up an electric-utility industry that is long overdue for a restructuring. Such programs are the brainchildren of respectable sounding organizations like the Edison Electric Institute and the Electric Power Research Institute, whose memberships are made up of our nation’s most powerful electric utility companies. Both organizations are now chaired by the same man – Jeff Sterba, who is also the head of PNM, New Mexico’s largest investor-owned utility.

New Mexico passed a utility revenue decoupling bill earlier this year, under logic that went something like this: Electric utility companies earn their revenues from the sale of energy, but as consumers become more efficient, sales decline. Therefore, helping consumers become more energy efficient is counter to the utility’s interest. To fix that, we simply decouple the revenues of the utility from the amount of energy purchased by their customers.

Once this decoupling is in effect, the utility can then set up energy efficiency programs to help their customers use less energy. The cost for the utility-run efficiency programs are paid by customers, through surcharges on their utility bills, and the utility is also entitled to collect money to pay for lost revenues resulting from selling less energy.

Does that make sense? The logic was good enough to receive the endorsement of the Obama campaign: His energy platform specifically endorses revenue decoupling, and promises grants and assistance to states that implement them.

But, here’s another perspective: The real name for such programs should be “Revenue Guarantees”. As residents of a community begin to suffer from higher energy costs, the most powerful tools they have are to reduce energy use, or switch to a different energy source. Either option should reduce the flow of energy dollars leaving the community to pay the electric company.

But with a revenue decoupling law, the savings enjoyed by one resident are simply billed by the utility to the other residents, pitting one community member against another and ensuring that the community, as a whole, continues handing over large sums of money to the utility. As utility prices rise, the sums of money get larger, no matter what the residents do to reduce their use.

We must hope that revenue guarantee laws like the one passed this year in New Mexico will be the over-reach that wakes us up to the perverse power of monopoly electric utilities. Our revenue guarantee law was, in fact, cited by Santa Fe County Commissioner Paul Campos as one of the reasons for his initiative to create a public power entity in Santa Fe. And, public ownership of power lines is probably the best of our remaining options for curbing the abuse of our political system by electric utilities.

As our country spirals deeper into economic hardship, the potential to create jobs, renewable energy, and other benefits from taking the electric grid public, and operating it in the public interest, are simply too big to ignore.

The video newscast that includes this commentary is posted here.

Good Energy Policy Begins With Asking Good Questions

Mark Sardella — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 21:39:02 +0000

The Cities for Climate Protection Campaign, The 2030 Challenge, Build Green Santa Fe, The Apollo Alliance, Green Cities, Mayor’s Climate Protection Agreement, The Green Gauntlet, and Smart Growth America – all of these programs have great sounding names and, perhaps, they give us hope about the direction our country is headed in tackling our energy and climate problems.

Why then, with so many programs already underway, does Local Energy News continue to report discouraging news, and highlight the lack of progress toward our goals? I do it because I believe that the only thing more damaging than great sounding programs that don’t really address our problems is the widespread belief that we are actually dealing with our problems, when we aren’t.

The folly of false hope is that it allows us to continue down false paths, reducing our chances of getting to the right path soon enough to make a difference. I don’t see many of the programs that have been put forward as being “good enough for now” or “a great start”, I see them instead as attempts to placate the public while the powers that be continue with their business as usual.

We don’t need to be energy experts to differentiate between programs that sound green, and those that truly are. All we need to do is ask different questions. For example:

Did the decision to allow private ownership of critical infrastructures, such as the electric power grid, leave us vulnerable to investor-owned monopolies and their profit motives?

Do new energy policies we are considering promote local self-reliance, or do they reward interests outside our communities and put control of our water and food in someone else’s hands?

Do our policies reward a particular energy technology, which we may or may not know enough about, rather than simply rewarding projects that meet the goals of our community?

Let’s not settle for saying that we want to “increase renewables” or “reduce carbon”. Let’s try setting broader goals, like “diversity of supply”, increased local ownership, use of local fuels and labor, and retention of energy dollars in the local community.

If you want to build a housing complex for seniors living on a fixed income, as Santa Fe just did, we shouldn’t allow the developer to install electric heat—the most expensive kind of heat—after giving the electric company the right to raise rates whenever it wants to. It takes no special knowledge of energy issues to know that you can’t protect the seniors in your community under such conditions.

It’s getting pretty late in the game to claim that we still don’t understand the energy game. Let’s ditch the whole conversation about “renewables” and “carbon” and start talking about local, independent businesses providing energy from fuels that we harvest locally.

That, more than any great sounding program, will get us where we need to go.

The video newscast containing this story is posted here.

Nationalize the Grid, and Empower Local Companies to Build Solar

Mark Sardella — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 21:11:05 +0000

Ten years ago, in 1998, New Mexico’s largest investor-owned utility, PNM, solicited bids to build a 5 megawatt solar electric power plant. Had the project gone forward, it would have been the world’s largest operating solar-electric power plant. But the project was stopped when 28 small solar companies in New Mexico, including my own, filed an objection.

As members of New Mexico’s Solar Energy Industries Association, each of us had mixed feelings about stopping a project that would surely bring attention to our state’s solar industry. But the more we learned about the project, the clearer it became that we needed to intervene.

The $50 million dollar price tag for the project was to be paid by ratepayers – financed over 20-years. But the cost of solar equipment at that time was falling every year, so we showed that by building smaller plants each year, we would end up with three times the installed solar capacity. Taking out a 20-year loan on equipment that falls in price every year makes no sense, but the project marched on anyway.

PNM was moving into the solar business – our business – with no risk, we argued, because they were allowed to bill all of their costs to ratepayers. This, while we were building solar power systems that needed PNM’s permission before they could be interconnected – permission that could be denied at any time, including after a system was built and ready to operate. Again, our objections were cast aside.

We filed a freedom of information request for the bids that had been submitted on the project, and found that the contract for the power plant had been awarded to the company that had received the lowest score on technology. It turned out that that company already had a contract with one of the members of the evaluation committee, but even this conflict of interest was not enough to stop the project.

So what finally put an end to PNM’s quest to build the world’s largest solar power plant?

We asked one, final, simple question about the project: What was PNM planning to do with the solar energy produced by the plant? It turned out that after collecting money from ratepayers to cover 100 percent of the costs for the plant, PNM was going to sell the solar energy to back to us. That did it – the project was mortally wounded when news of the double-billing hit the streets.

Now, ten years later, investor-owned utilities are contemplating another solar power plant – this one about 20-times the size of the last one. It’s too early to tell whether the same mischief will take place, but we can say with certainty that this project is based on the same, poor premise of putting investor-owned utilities in control of renewable energy.

This, while Denmark and other countries nationalize their power grids, modernize them to eliminate central control so that they can accept more renewable energy, and then promulgate feed-in tariffs to encourage small, independent companies to build renewable energy.

We can, and we must, do the same in the United States.

A video newscast containing this story is posted here.