Power...at what price?
Have you heard about the energy crisis in California? Has it hit you? It’s hit me. My electric bill not only skyrocketed, but my energy provider dropped me. I live in California and have had to deal with this. I haven’t actually had a black out, and it looks like they figured a few things out and the black out threat has gone away, for now.
What’s made me the most frustrated, is that my chosen electricity provider decided to cancel all their California customers. This de-regulation was good for at least one thing, I thought, I could choose who to buy my energy from. I was thrilled! Finally I could use my purchasing power to say what I believe in – renewable energy for the future. I decided to sign up with Green Mountain Energy with their 100% wind energy option. I was happy. No longer was I burning fossil fuels to light my home. No longer was I supporting the nuclear industry with their dangerous power plants. I was supporting a clean Earth and living off wind power.
Now I have been dropped back into the sludge of coal, oil, massive dam projects, and yes nuclear energy. Maybe the general public doesn’t realize this, but the United States still runs nuclear power plants. The anti-nuke movement has prevented many plants from being built, but has not yet succeeded in shutting all of them down yet. In fact the anti-nuke movement has been a huge success. In California alone, there was a plan to have over 100 power plants, one every ten miles along the coast of California by the year 2000. Today there are only 2 in operation, and 4 others that are not in operation. I call that a success. Let’s not go backwards by starting them up again.
What happened in California to cause this huge crisis? Well the deregulation laws weren’t written as well as they should have. The top energy providers sold off their generating plants, (although the corporate company still retained control). Then, most of the generating plants were shut down for repairs or some other reason, and the actual amount of energy available was substantially reduced. The Law of Supply and Demand states, that with low supply and high demand, prices go up – and that is what happened, the prices went up. The prices went up too high. The corporate company, Edison International, has profited from this, Southern California Edison is facing bankruptcy. The money is still in the Edison family, but we don’t hear too much about that.
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