Comment to California Energy Commission: Seattle City Light is not YOUR battery
My city run utility offers a “Green Up” program, which allows me to try to reduce the emissions caused by my electricity use by investing in clean energy infrastructure. Unfortunately the benefits and performance of those investments is not known to consumers like me.
This is because Seattle City Light participates in the CAISO energy market, but we do not participate in your carbon market. California Air Resources Board prohibits CAISO from “laundering” clean energy for dirty energy under the cap-and-trade system, but shutting down Diablo Canyon Power Plant will have the same effect as that dirty and prohibited trade. Every time California reduces your supply of stable non-emitting energy, like that from DCPP, the demand on energy exporting utilities (both clean and dirty, public and private) like Seattle City Light, PacifiCorp, and Puget Sound Energy fluctuate in the direction of dirtier energy when demand is highest. However, when demand is low you do not have the resources to store your own energy and instead ask my utility to buy it from you. Our dying salmon runs and water use restrictions will not so easily make way for California’s “not in my back yard” energy preferences.
Removing DCPP from California’s energy grid means that during high demand times your imports of dirty energy go up, and during low demand times your exports of clean energy will go down. All the while my public energy infrastructure and my “Green Up” investment will be serving the neoliberal carbon markets rather than our climate progress.
