Would it be illegal for CAISO to conspire with Southern California Edison to purposely defraud the voters of California and lock us in to a future dependent on nuclear power? Our Attorney General says "No."
About three weeks after the tragic nuclear accidents in Japan the California Nuclear Initiative (CNI) was formed to offer the voters a chance to end our state's reliance on nuclear energy. With Fukushima on every channel and on all of our minds, our initiative had tremendous momentum. Sadly, that momentum was quickly lost because a month after CNI filed our initiative, the Legislative Analyst's Office published the initiative’s fiscal analysis. (Ballot). A portion of the LAO analysis, which must by law be prominently placed above the signature section on our petition, stated that closing our nuclear power plants would cost the state billions of dollars annually for the foreseeable future. That dire assessment deterred our friends in the anti-nuclear movement from supporting our petition drive.
The LAO based its damning conclusion on the assertion that there was no correctly located backup generation for the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS), and thus rolling blackouts would occur in the heavily populated Los Angeles Basin if SONGS were to be shut. However, the Huntington Beach 3&4 gas-fired power generators did supply correctly located backup generation for SONGS (having just weeks before received approval to operate until 2020) at the time the LAO started and finished its analysis. So why did the LAO predict blackouts costing billions on the supposed lack of backup power for SONGS?
It appears the California Independent System Operators may have purposefully misled the LAO, as well as misleading the Energy Commission, the PUC, the press and the public. Documents uncovered by CNI through Public Records requests support this claim.
On the same day the LAO received the CNI initiative for analysis, Edison Mission Energy (EME), an affiliate of Southern California Edison (SCE) – the major owner of SONGS – filed with the Energy Commission to both buy and retire Huntington Beach (Amend_Change_in_Ownership). Why would Edison want to buy and then retire the only backup generation for its own nuclear plant just after the worst nuclear accident in history?
Edison told the Energy Commission and the PUC that they wanted to open a new Walnut Creek plant and needed to trade air quality credits to do so. Though this is a perfectly legitimate reason to retire Huntington Beach, it is what the Commissions were not told about the transaction that deserves closer inspection. What they were not told was that Huntington Beach was the only correctly located backup generation for SONGS, and that Walnut Creek was not. They were not told that without the Huntington Beach plant, closing SONGS would result in rolling blackouts in the LA Basin costing the state billions of dollars annually. The Commissions were not told that retiring Huntington Beach would, in essence, lock California into a future dependent on nuclear energy. In other words, CAISO was telling the LAO there was no backup for SONGS, while simultaneously helping to retire the only backup that did exist, and not telling any of these agencies that the plant being retired was the only backup for SONGS.
Had these state agencies been told the truth - had the press, the public and the anti-nuclear community been made aware that the retirement of the only backup generation for SONGS was on the table less than a month after Fukushima, the meetings would have been packed with protesters. Instead, this retirement slipped through as a fairly routine matter, with no public participation, and without one dissention.
In fact, the Energy Commission specifically asked for CAISO's review in the proceedings. The spokesman for CAISO replied that they supported the change of ownership and that "... we've gone through our locational capacity, reliability analysis, we've looked 15 years after the project is expected to be in operation, and it looks like we can reliably operate in that area with the exchange of Huntington Beach 3, 4, with the new Walnut Creek facility. Clearly, it puts some more reliance on the remaining Huntington Beach 1,2, units, be we can still reliably operate with existing facilities that are in the area." (Energy CA - Business Meeting Transcript - see page 15).
In proceedings before the PUC, CAISO again testified that the retirement would cause no grid instability and that assurance was cited in the PUC's approval. In their findings it is stated that "The California Independent System Operator (CAISO) examined the grid reliability implications of retiring HB Units 3 and 4 and designating Walnut Creek as the replacement. After conducting power flow simulations, the CAISO concluded that the transaction would not create any reliability concerns. The simulations indicate that even under certain double transmission outage conditions near Huntington Beach, the CAISO could dispatch other generation or utilize existing voluntary load dropping programs… Further, the CAISO indicates that replacement of HB Units 3 and 4 with the Walnut Creek facility will not create any reliability concerns and that the CAISO will incorporate the replacement scenario into the transmission planning process. Therefore, it is reasonable for the Commission to conclude that HB Units 3 and 4 are no longer needed for reliability once Walnut Creek is operational." (emphasis added) (See Comment Resolutionl). There was no mention in these retirement proceedings that Huntington Beach was correctly located to provide backup power for SONGS, whereas the proposed replacement, Walnut Creek is not.
Two points bear repeating to put the reason offered by Edison for retiring Huntington Beach in proper perspective: First, at the time the LAO started its analysis for our initiative there was no action filed before the Energy Commission or PUC to change ownership or retire Huntington Beach. Those actions were filed only when CNI filed our initiative to close the nuclear power plants. Second, and most importantly, at the time the LAO finished its analysis, neither the Energy Commission nor the PUC had approved the retirement. Thus, at the time the LAO finished its analysis, Huntington Beach, with correctly placed backup generation for SONGS, was operational, not retired and approved to operate until as late as 2020. In other words, when the LAO finished their fiscal analysis there was no basis for claiming blackouts costing billions would occur.
So yes, Edison wanted to open the Walnut Creek plant and needed to trade air quality credits to do so. On the face of it, this could be viewed as a legitimate reason for retiring Huntington Beach. However, if it had been made clear in the proceedings to do so, just weeks after Fukushima, that we were retiring the only backup generation for SONGS, then the hearings would have been packed with anti-nuclear activists and the retirement would never have been allowed. Had the relation of SONGS and Huntington Beach been made clear to the public at the time, it would not seem like there was a conspiracy to derail the CNI initiative.
This air of conspiracy was exacerbated by the fact that our state’s environmental laws were also completely sidestepped in these proceedings. Because no connection was recognized between the retirement of Huntington Beach and the continued operation of SONGS, no associated environmental impacts were considered. (Energy - Huntington Beach Compliance - Notice of Decision) It was assumed the simple sale of the plant could have no impact on the environment (Hunting Beach - Petition_to_Amend_Change_in_Ownership - see page 2) "Changing the owning entity of Units 3 and 4 is a minor administrative change.") This meant that the continued accumulation of nuclear waste, the continued potential of nuclear accidents, the continued threat to our coastline and agriculture, all the lessons from Japan were not even considered. And perhaps most importantly, more environmentally sensitive alternatives to the retirement were not evaluated. Where there other plants, for example, that could have been purchased and retired for the desired air credits without locking the state into dependence on nuclear power? Consideration of any of these environmental issues would have created controversy and packed the proceedings with environmental activists.
Furthermore, no one outside of CAISO and Edison would have ever known that the only backup for SONGS had been retired immediately after Fukushima if SONGS had not suddenly and unexpectedly been taken off-line just two months after the Huntington Beach retirement. Then, when it became evident that SONGS might be off-line for some time, the question of backup generation came to the forefront.
Immediately after SONGS was taken off-line, the very agencies that retired Huntington Beach with CAISO's assurance that the act would cause no grid instability, jumped into action. The Energy Commission, the PUC, and CAISO in an unprecedented effort that also included state and local air and water quality Boards, all coordinated by the Governor's Office and then approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, proceeded to un-retire the Huntington Beach plants. Why did this all take place? Because without Huntington Beach, completely counter to CAISO's previous assurances, there would be grid instability in the LA Basin.
Is it possible that all this took place as a matter of course and no conspiracy was involved? Certainly. It is possible that Edison didn’t know they were buying and retiring the only backup for their own nuclear power plant weeks after Fukushima. It is possible that CAISO didn’t know this either, or that retiring Huntington Beach could cause grid instability. It is possible that locking California into a nuclear dependent future was simply incidental to gaining air credits to open an unrelated power plant that coincidentally does not provide backup for SONGS. It is possible that neither the Energy Commission nor the PUC would have been interested to know these things anyway, or, that they did know and just didn’t consider it relevant enough to include in their proceedings. Possibly, the LAO wouldn’t have cared that there was, indeed, backup generation for SONGS at the moment they were publishing a fiscal analysis that claimed otherwise. Yes, all these things are possible. Unfortunately, given the complexity of the state’s electric grid, and of the chain of command within CAISO, and the three separate agencies overseeing our state’s energy needs, communication is bound to break down at many levels.
Still, when CNI discovered what had transpired behind the scenes as our initiative went through the LAO process, we decided it would be prudent to ask the Attorney General Initiative Department whether these acts would constitute a crime against the voters of the state had they been intentional. The answer was no. Apprised of all the facts detailed above, the AG Initiative Department representative replied "I have vetted your concerns internally, and we can perceive no basis for criminal charges to be filed. As you probably know given your involvement in these issues, the Attorney General does not regulate the CAISO or electric utilities." It was also added that "… you might consider bringing your concerns to the attention of their regulators..." In essence, even if all these allegations of a conspiracy to mislead these state agencies and the voters are true, they do not constitute a crime. There is apparently nothing illegal about purposely affecting the election process in this way.
One thing is clear, however. Conspiracy or miscommunication, the effect on the CNI initiative was the same. We were unfairly denied ballot access and the voters were denied a choice. Whether the facts were withheld from these state agencies and the voters purposefully or not, and legally or not, had the CNI initiative received a realistic, honest assessment of the fiscal effects of closing the state's nuclear power plants when the initiative was first filed, there was ample support and inspiration within the anti-nuclear community at the time to have placed the issue on last November's ballot. Instead, with the second anniversary of Fukushima upon us, CNI has regrouped and we have re-filed and are aiming for the ballot in November 2014. And yes, we have a new fiscal analysis in which the LAO, now fully apprised of the facts, agrees that closing our state’s nuclear power plants will not cost us billions annually.
For further information on our initiative go to californianuclearinitiative.com, or contact the initiative proponent, Ben Davis Jr. at (916) 833- 7894, bendavis54@gmail.com.
