By Ari Burack
June 25, 2008
San Francisco supervisors Tuesday approved a resolution urging the city to further explore energy transmission options from outside the city in order to close an aging, heavily polluting power plant in the city’s southeastern Potrero district.
For years city officials have been seeking a way to close the plant, owned by Mirant Corp., which residents blame for environmental degradation and higher incidences of health problems. The city was able to close a similar power plant in the neighboring Bayview district in 2006.
The resolution calls on the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and the City Attorney to submit a “transmission-only” proposal to the California Independent System Operator, the regulatory agency that oversees the state’s electrical grid.
Cal-ISO has maintained the only way to close the Mirant plant and maintain the reliability of the grid would be to upgrade the plant with cleaner-burning combustion turbines known as “peakers,” designed to be able to run only during hours of peak energy need.
However, some supervisors argued a recent letter from Cal-ISO President Yakout Mansour to Mayor Gavin Newsom, who is seeking to instead retrofit the Mirant plant, appeared to allow for the possibility of a transmission-only alternative, including the planned Trans-Bay Cable, expected to deliver 400 megawatts of electricity to the city from Pittsburg.
Supervisors have also scheduled a July 15 vote to revisit the combustion turbine proposal, estimated to cost between $250 and $270 million, while Newsom has pledged to submit new legislation on his retrofit plan.
A requirement that would have set minimum environmental and economic criteria for any potential in-city power generation project to replace the plant was stricken from today’s resolution.
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