Gavin Newsom is a mayor who hates to make the tough decisions, and the proposal for three new power plants in Southeast San Francisco is his worst nightmare.
Newsom’s own Public Utilities Commission is pushing the plan, and he’s backed it in the past. Environmentalists are making a stink about it, and that’s caused the mayor-who-wuold-be-green some headaches.
But the major reason he suddenly decided to ask for a delay in the power-plant vote may have nothing to do with environmental issues at all.
Seven lobbyists for Pacific Gas and Electric, led by Travis Kiyota, visited the mayor May 5th and told him that the giant utility would spend whatever it takes to stop the peakers, a reliable City Hall source tells me. Attending the meeting were Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier and PUC commissioner Dick Sklar, the source said.
According to this source’s account, PG&E offered to pay for more power cables into the city, for an expensive demand-management program … for just about anything that would prevent San Francisco from owning its own power plants.
I couldn’t reach either Sklar or Alioto-Pier this afternoon. But Nathan Ballard, the mayor’s press secretary, confirmed that the meeting took place:
On Monday, May 5, PG&E participated in a meeting to provide substantive
expertise in the areas of energy efficiency, demand response and power
generation and transmission. Along with staff from the Mayor’s Office,
Board of Supervisors, San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, Department
of Environment, the Office of Economic and Workforce Development, CA Public
Utilities Commission (CAPUC), and the National Resources Defense Council
(NRDC), we were able to engage some of the most creative and knowledgeable
experts in the room together as we work to identify alternatives to the
current action plan.
Ballard also said that retrofitting the Mirant plant — leaving the big privately owned polluter in place — was “one of the options on the table.”
As far as I can tell, there were no public-power advocates in the meeting.
So PG&E is still driving energy policy in the Mayor’s Office. How nice.