Joshua Arce has an interesting opinion piece in the Examiner in which he argues that San Francisco doens’t need the new Peaker plants at all.
The argument, in essence, is that Mirant could keep running its least-polluting turbine for a few more years, and by then the city will have renewable alternatives.
I like the idea — except for one key point. If there’s a choice between a city-owned plant that pollutes a little bit and a privately owned plant that pollutes a little bit, and the levels of pollution are roughly equal, I’ll take the city-owned plant any time. If we own it, we can control it; we can shut it down whenever we want. If it’s privately owned, any effort to mandate a shutdown on any particular date will be a legal and political hassle.
So sure, let’s add as little fossil-fuel generation to the southeast as possible — but if we’re going to have one turbine running, let’s have it be the one the city owns.