Molly Ivins May 26AUSTIN — Yewts dereg! The dark horse in the backfield of horrible ideas is moving up slowly. Be the first on your block to bandy the phrase "utilities deregulation" about darkly, as though it were the equivalent of "nuclear winter." Impress your friends and neighbors by knowing how to stave off another bailout the size of the S&Ls'. The good news is that although the usual suspects — to wit, Congress and huge corporate special interests — are up to various nefarious schemes, we have an opportunity here to Do the Right Thing. Our friends in the consumer and environmental movements are on their toes, and believe it or not, the blessed Republicans have given us the perfect political vocabulary with which to discuss uts dereg. You all know the moving rhetoric of budget-balancing employed by the GOP: We must not leave our children and our grandchildren in debt, it is our responsibility, we must stop using the credit card and leaving future generations to pay. Amen, brother. So it is with utilities deregulation. If it is done properly, we will not leave our children and grandchildren a hideous legacy of pollution and ever-dwindling fossil fuel resources. Instead, we can leave them the most advanced renewable energy technology in the world — clean, cheap, nonpolluting energy that renews itself endlessly without doing any damage to the environment. Let's win this one for posterity. First, a few facts about "renewables," as they are known in the jargon of the electricity trade. In the last decade, advances in wind and other renewable energy technologies have been remarkable. According to energy consultant Nancy Rader, in recent bidding solicitations by California utilities, new geothermal and wind energy projects came in at an average price of 5.1 cents per kilowatt hour, compared to an average fossil fuel price of 3.8 cents, getting close to a 1-penny difference.
According to Rader, in the case of wind energy, capital costs have gone down by 70 percent and maintenance and operations costs have declined by 80 percent, dipping the cost of wind energy under 5 cents per kilowatt hour in some areas of the country. The Electric Power Research Institute (the big guys in uts research) say wind power could become the cheapest source of electricity within a decade. The problem is that the current push for uts dereg is being driven by the huge industrial consumers of electricity, like Dow and General Motors. Obviously, what they want is a market driven solely by short-term pricing considerations. Cheaper rates is their only goal — not that anyone else would mind them either. But some of the proposed dereg schemes will lead to a nightmare scenario in which those telemarketing people call you in the middle of your dinner trying to sell you on a new electricity supply company. There are two problems with market mysticism as it applies to the uts industry. One is that only huge players need apply, just like in telecommunications. And, of course, the giants will merge with one another after deregulation, leaving us with zero competition. The other problem is that the market does not recognize the long-term public good provided by renewables. What is the worth of avoiding sudden surges in energy prices and oil shortages? How much can renewables do for our export market? What is the true market value of dramatically reducing pollution, of decreasing our dependence on foreign oil, of leaving some fossil fuel for the future, and of leaving the climate of the Earth as we found it? *** Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. COPYRIGHT 1996 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
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