Getting screwed by electric deregulation!
April 21st, 2007
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“Instead of competition producing lower rates, the choices are between high or higher prices.”
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that deregulation of the electric market is a bad thing, we even had a report to that effect written eons ago here in Minnesota, in part by none other than NRG’s Steve Corneli!
And just for yucks, let’s not forget his great stranded ASSETS argument when NSP was demanding deregulation and payment for “stranded costs” which were nonexistent:
Anyway, the utter rip-off of “deregulation” has become impossible to ignore and today appeared in detail in the STrib:
Power bills soar as electric deregulation fails to live up to its promises
By Ryan Keith, Associated Press
BENTON, Ill. — This wasn’t supposed to happen with deregulation. Electric bills were supposed to go down. Instead, Ellie Dorchincez can almost see the dollars evaporating every time she turns on the lights or opens the freezer at her small Farm Fresh grocery store.
Her electric bill, which used to be about $800 a month, has jumped to $1,800. She’s shut down a large freezer of frozen treats and now closes the store an hour early to cut costs but fears she still may have to raise prices and lay off some workers.
“I’m just trying to figure any way that I can right now to keep my business afloat,” Dorchincez said. “My life is at stake here.”
The cause of her distress is a common problem: the failure of deregulation to deliver its promise of lower electricity prices. In many states, it’s had the opposite effect with sharply higher rates — 72 percent in Maryland, up to 50 percent in Illinois.
Not one of the 16 states — plus the District of Columbia — that have pushed forward with deregulation since the late 1990s can call it a success. In fact, consumers in those states fared worse than residents in states that stuck with a policy of regulating their power industries.
An Associated Press analysis of federal data shows consumers in the 17 deregulated areas paid an average of 30 percent more for power in 2006 than their counterparts in regulated states. That’s up from a 22 percent gap in 1990.
The idea was to move from a monopoly situation to robust competition for electric customers, with backers promising potentially lower rates in state after state.
“We are good at taking money out of people’s pockets, but seldom can somebody rise on the floor and say we are going to save people billions over a specific course of time,” Illinois state Sen. William Mahar, a lead proponent of electric deregulation, said when his chamber passed a deregulation bill in 1997.
But competition, especially for residential and small business customers, rarely emerged.
Utilities say markets are still adjusting to many years of artificially low rates that drove potential competitors away. They point to states like Illinois, where rate caps just recently were lifted and where there already is talk of reinstating them.
Consumer groups, however, say deregulation has had a chance to prove itself. In Texas, for example, competition did develop after rate caps ended — but the energy prices remained higher.
The AP analysis was based on the average electric rate that residential consumers paid each year from 1990 to 2006, according to numbers provided by the U.S. Department of Energy. Numerical and percentage changes in utility rates of both deregulated and regulated states were compared.
The analysis found more than a widening price discrepancy. Consumers in deregulated states also have suffered from bigger price swings, as rate caps in place when deregulation began in the late 1990s were lifted in the last couple of years.
Now those states’ lawmakers are scrambling to figure out how to provide short-term relief for consumers while coming up with a long-term approach to get lower and more stabilized prices. Ideas range from continued rate freezes — vehemently fought by utilities — to re-regulation of the industry.
“We said back then it was a raw deal for consumers. We now know it was a raw deal for consumers,” said Johanna Neumann of Maryland Public Interest Research Group.
But an industry official argues that such comparisons don’t adequately show the peaks and valleys in rates during that time, and among individual states. And utility executives say that over the last decade, rates in deregulated and regulated states have generally increased at similar levels, thanks largely to sharp spikes in fuel costs — not deregulation.
John Shelk, president of the Electrical Power Supply Association trade group based in Washington, D.C., says all states have seen large rate increases in the last decade, largely because of the increased price of natural gas and building power plants. The average U.S. price for natural gas used by the electric power sector tripled from $2.76 per million Btus in 1997 to $8.21 per thousand cubic feet in 2005, a peak year for natural gas prices, according to federal energy statistics. Prices dropped slightly in 2006 but are projected to rise again over the next two years.
Utility officials say natural gas prices, environmental regulations, property taxes, the cost of building nuclear plants and other expenses in states that deregulated had already driven prices higher than in other states.
But years after many states deregulated, the rate gap between those states and regulated states had widened even more, experts and consumers advocates say, because consumers in deregulated states were left paying market prices — even though in many cases no competitive market existed.
“Now they’re trying to come to grips with the reality that the market isn’t working as well as they thought it would,” Ken Rose, a senior fellow with the Institute of Public Utilities at Michigan State University, says of decision-makers in deregulated states.
Shelk says consumers in states like Illinois are seeing “sticker shock” because their rates were artificially low for years, and that forced a large increase to get back to market prices when rate caps were lifted.
“It’s kind of like pulling the Band-Aid off,” Shelk said. “I think you can fault the design that said you can roll these rates back and freeze them.”
He predicts that the rate gap between deregulated and regulated states will shrink in the next few years when regulated states in the Southeast that rely heavily on coal-fueled power see prices soar under heavier environmental restrictions.
“It’s so easy to focus only on the here and now … and draw the wrong conclusions, which is ‘Oh, gee, we’re going to be better off regulating,’ because we’re not,” Shelk said.
Shelk also contends that deregulation has been successful in states like Texas because, despite price jumps there, the competition has kept rates lower than they would have been under monopoly conditions, and still has produced a more predictable market for utilities and customers.
Exelon executive vice president Betsy Moler said rates in all states, regardless of their regulatory structure, have soared about 34 percent since 1996, mirroring fuel cost increases. That should overshadow critics’ blame of deregulation, she argues.
“It’s really not about deregulation,” Moler said. “It’s all about the cost of fuel.”
Yet the last decade saw extended rate freezes in many states, and more recent data shows a returning gap between regulated and deregulated states once those freezes end.
Illinois’ deregulation plan froze rates for 10 years. The freeze ended in January and rates immediately soared 30 percent to 50 percent for millions of people. Some have seen their bills double and even triple.
In Carterville in southern Illinois, Dorothy Petersen is looking for a second job to supplement her $1,000-a-month income after seeing her electric bill more than double, to $450. A single mother with four kids — all with health or development problems — Petersen is heating only the kids’ rooms and turning off lights.
“If it was just me, it wouldn’t matter. There’s things I could do,” Petersen said. “But I have these kids.”
Maryland faced a 72 percent rate increase last summer, until lawmakers stepped in and cut the initial jump to 15 percent to 25 percent. Now consumers must pay the remainder this summer, and advocates fear problems for the most vulnerable citizens — seniors, low-income households, working families.
Texas residents like recent retiree Bill Sebenoler of Arlington have more utility choices under deregulation, but that hasn’t kept prices down. Sebenoler said his bill reached nearly $500 in September 2006, up 82 percent from a year earlier.
“It’s irritating as hell, and that money would go somewhere else,” Sebenoler said. “Something ain’t working right.”
Consumers in Delaware, Rhode Island and Connecticut have seen rate spikes in recent years, putting their rates among the nation’s highest. That led to more than 25,000 electricity shutoffs in Rhode Island last year, a new state record, said Henry Shelton of the George Wiley Center advocacy group.
In Montana, Ed Eaton says he and other consumers have seen a 40 percent increase since rate caps were lifted in 2001. Eaton said he’s cut expenses by eating more canned tuna for meals.
“I probably could have turned this into a weight loss program and benefited,” said Eaton, a former state employee.
Deregulation was sold to state decision-makers as a boon for everyone. The thinking was that by separating electricity generators from distributors and letting the market determine prices, competition would thrive and customers would benefit from better choices and lower rates.
Experts and advocates acknowledge that some consumers have seen those benefits.
In some states, large industrial and business users have seen increased competition, giving them the ability to switch to other utilities. Residential users in states such as Texas also have a few more options.
But besides a small group of commercial users, consumers in deregulated states have seen a disappointing result.
Instead of competition producing lower rates, the choices are between high or higher prices. In some states such as Illinois, residents have no choice but to get their power from one or two mega-utilities, who are passing on soaring costs for the power they’re buying.
ComEd, for example, has about 3.3 million residential customers in and around Chicago, while Ameren covers 1.2 million customers in central and southern Illinois. Combined, they control about 98 percent of Illinois’ investor-owned market, according to the Illinois Commerce Commission.
“In terms of price, you can’t see the customers benefiting,” said Rose, the Michigan utility expert.
Utilities say they’re not to blame for consumers’ higher costs.
Since they no longer produce their own power, the utilities in Illinois, for example, say they’ve simply passed on their higher purchasing costs to consumers, resulting in the higher rates. While some of the generation companies have ownership ties to the retail utilities like ComEd and Ameren, Illinois regulators note they have strict rules to ensure affiliates do not trade information or conspire on pricing.
The utilities also note that they warned consumers last year about the pending increases and offered assistance through some financial aid and a phase-in plan.
“I think we’ve done all the things we know how to do as a utility to soften the transition into the new rates,” ComEd CEO Frank Clark said in February.
The poster child of deregulation failure is California, which saw a combination of skyrocketing rates and service problems before scrapping the experiment. Some other states such as Virginia tried deregulation but rejected it after it didn’t provide lower rates.
States that did embrace deregulation now are trying to figure out what to do next.
In Illinois, lawmakers are debating rolling back rates to 2006 levels and freezing them for up to three years. They’re also negotiating with the utilities for millions of dollars in rate rebates for consumers hit hardest by the increases.
Re-regulating the market is a popular idea. State-owned utilities are another possibility.
Utilities and their advocates are urging caution for states considering dumping deregulation. They say competition couldn’t thrive under rate caps but should now that many of those caps have been lifted and the market is determining rates.
The utilities also warn that any further rate rollbacks and caps could create financial disaster, sending them quickly into bankruptcy if they’re forced to buy power at higher costs than they can recoup from customers.
Even so, consumers like Dorchincez are looking for relief now.
In addition to the problems at her grocery store, Dorchincez got hit at home, where her bill jumped from $230 to $700. She’s looking to cut back wherever she can — turning down the store’s thermostat, shutting off other freezers and soda machines, turning off lights in the parking lot.
Consumer advocates say states should be able to see the folly that deregulation created and should act soon to prevent more consumer suffering.
“It’s never going to work. There’s never going to be robust competition created,” said David Hughes of Citizen Power, an advocacy group covering Pennsylvania and Ohio. “It just doesn’t lend itself to the volatility of the marketplace.”
©. All rights reserved.
Mesaba – “one unfavorable ruling away from ruin”
April 18th, 2007
(Navy spin test facility)
The spin of this Mesaba ALJs recommendation of denial of the PPA is dizzying:
“The reaction (we received) is that we’ve introduced the most obnoxious kind of project you could ever imagine, rather than introducing the cleanest coal plant in the world,†[Micheletti] said.
Ummmm… this is a surprise? It IS the most obnoxious kind of project you could ever imagine!
From the Grand Rapids Herald Review:
Than Tibbetts
Herald-Review
Monday, April 16th, 2007 08:14:30 AMThe Mesaba Energy Project could be one unfavorable ruling away from ruin.
Two administrative law judges overseeing Excelsior Energy’s case for a 600-megawatt, coal-fired power plant north of Taconite ruled that the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission should not approve the company’s plans.
The commission, which has the final authority in the matter, is expected to hear the case early this summer.
Judges Steven Mihalchick and Bruce Johnson wrote in their decision that the project is not an “innovative energy project,†language crafted in a 2003 law meant to kick-start development of an integrated gasification combined-cycle, or IGCC, power plant in Minnesota.
The project’s proposed $2 billion price tag meant it would need plenty of public money as well a guaranteed buyer for the plant’s electricity. Mihalchick and Johnson also recommended that the commission scrap the proposed power purchase agreement between Excelsior and St. Paul-based Xcel Energy.
The judges’ ruling — which included stating that the project is not likely to be a least-cost resource — took both proponents and opponents of the project by surprise.
Excelsior CEO Tom Micheletti said it seemed like the judges ignored most of Excelsior’s testimony.
“It flies in the face of everything that’s being discussed about the need to do something about global warming,†he said. “Either they totally ignored our evidence or they just didn’t read it.â€
Excelsior officials have touted the power plant as an economic windfall for the area which would create more than 100 permanent, high-paying jobs.
Charlotte Neigh, co-chair of Citizens Against the Mesaba Project, said the ruling was vindication for CAMP members and the hard work they put in to defeating the proposed power plant.
“It demonstrates that some of the reasons that motivated CAMP were valid,†she said of the ruling. “They did an excellent job in that report…and I don’t see how the (public utilities) commissioners could vote any differently.â€
If the Mesaba Project has any hopes of getting built, the public utilities commission will have to side with Excelsior and grant a power purchase agreement, Micheletti said, or construction cannot begin.
Carol Overland, an attorney for Mesaba project’s opponents, said the judges made a very strong statement.
“I was really struck by the way they started out by directly saying it’s not an innovative energy project,†she said. “That carries so much weight.â€
Excelsior has about three weeks to file exceptions to the judges’ ruling.
Overland said the public utilities commission typically follows administrative law judges’ decisions except for politically charged issues or, in many cases, for Xcel Energy. With many area legislators backing the Mesaba Energy Project, the PUC’s hearing could be interesting, she said.
Peter McDermott, president of the Itasca Economic Development Corp., said the ruling is a disappointment, but still saw a window of possibility.
“I think (Excelsior has) seen stumbling blocks before and gotten around them,†he said. “Whether they can get around this, I don’t know.â€
Itasca County Board of Commissioners Chairman Catherine McLynn was at a meeting of the Western Mesaba Planning Board Thursday evening when the news was announced of the judges’ ruling. McLynn said there were representatives from both Excelsior Energy and CAMP at the meeting and all were taken aback by the announcement. But McLynn stated that all, including the county, understand that this decision does not stop the project.
McLynn explained that the board remains “on record as passed by resolution†to be in support of the project should it pass the environmental permitting process. She emphasized the fact that the final decision on whether the project moves forward is not a decision of the county. However, McLynn explained that the county has been active in supporting the construction of infrastructure needed for the Minnesota Steel mill project which would also service the Mesaba Project.
“We will continue to work with Excelsior on terms and agreements that are mutually acceptable,†said McLynn in an interview with the Herald-Review Friday morning.
“We are still in the middle of the fact-finding phase,†McLynn added. “The draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) will be released soon and we’re waiting for that piece of information.â€
Representative Loren Solberg (DFL-Grand Rapids) said he has always been in support of the states strong review system, “Companies have to respond to the review process.â€
Both Overland and Micheletti noted that the ruling could have far-reaching effects. Several IGCC power plants are in the works around the county, and Minnesota was seen as the first large-scale project to test the public’s palate for new coal plants.
Micheletti said Excelsior will continue to work to bring a power plant to Taconite, adding he hopes the public utilities commission has “more experience†with energy issues.
“The reaction (we received) is that we’ve introduced the most obnoxious kind of project you could ever imagine, rather than introducing the cleanest coal plant in the world,†he said.
And a note of congratulations from Stephanie with this original:
I’ll keep it with the line drawing of me falling out of my broken chair, and the very moving photo of her with her assassinated ducks laid out on a board…
Chisago — State cuts out the public
April 15th, 2007
It’s not just in Delaware. Things got wound up in the Chisago Transmission Line docket, starting Friday, the 6th. For background, check these dockets:
04-1176
06-1677
To do that, go to www.puc.state.mn.us and then to “eDockets” and then to “Search documents” and then search for the dockets.
Friday was the day when Commerce sent this convoluted and tortured responsive letter (not pleading) to the City of Lindstrom’s Motion to Extend Task Force:
Here’s their take — which is beyond… beyond… well, read it for yourself:
The Commerce position was a bit more than I could take — to think that, even where the PUC decision is silent on it, to think that the routing of the Chisago project is not a contested case is just nuts, so I fired off this quickie Petition to get this nailed down:
They’ve been doing a good job of trying to keep the public out, keeping local government out. It started right out the gate, when Xcel didn’t serve me with the Certificate of Need application, and then didn’t seve me with the Routing application either! They didn’t serve my former client, Concerned River Valley Citizens, etiher. Chisago City was not served with notice or the application or with notice of the Citizens Task Force. CRVC participated in the notice plan, and yet when it was time for Comments on Completeness, Commerce did not bother to serve any of us with those Comments, and when challenged, PUC staff Bret Ekness said they were only about “completeness” and that the Comment period shouldn’t be extended. Nevermind that they were arguing for a “non-contested” proceeding, which given Chisago history is NOT realistic. Then came the PUC hearing, at which time Jim Alders addressed whether it should be a contested case, saying that the company expected it would be a contested case and that Xcel did not have an issue with that.
But noooo, that’s not the end of it. Last Monday, the ALJ issued two Orders, one regarding the City of Lindstrom’s Motion to Extend Task Force:
But noooo, that’s not the end of it. Here’s the Minnesota version of gavelling the public, quashing participation:
By Wednesday of this week, the ALJÂ has ordered CRVC that:
3.   On or before 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 18, 2007, a representative of the Concerned River Valley Citizens shall file responsive papers addressing the following matters:
a.   Whether either Mr. Neuman or Ms. Johnson is licensed to practice law in Minnesota or any other jurisdiction;
b.   Whether, in the view of the association, representation of Concerned River Valley Citizens by a non-attorney would amount to the unauthorized practice of law, as those terms are used in Rule 1400.5800;
c.   Whether, in the view of the association, retaining the services of a licensed attorney to appear on behalf of Concerned River Valley Citizens would be unduly burdensome;
d.   Whether the Concerned River Valley Citizens, if granted intervention as a party, would seek access to confidential trade secret data; and,
e.   Whether a more limited role than intervention, under Rule 1400.7150, might meet the needs of Concerned River Valley Citizens
…. sigh… can you believe????
So we’re before the PUC on Thursday.
Gavels away — Delaware PSC hearing on IRP
April 14th, 2007
One of the hearings for the Delaware Integrated Resource Plan was Wednesday – they were Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and I figured I’d get to two out of three, but then Thursday the Mesaba decision came down at 5:18 p Eastern Time, necessitating an evening of email and phone calls, and then I got carried away with celebrating and forgot to post this, and so now that it’s down to a dull roar, oh well, better late than never, here it is!!
Written comments from the public will be accepted on or before Wednesday, May 2, 2007. Written comments should be submitted to the Commission at 861 Silver Lake Boulevard, Cannon Building, Suite100, Dover, Delaware 19904.
It just sorta rolled along, first to speak about the IRP was James Black of the Clean Air Council; then Lisa Pertzoff of Delaware League of Women Voters; then John Flaherty, lobbyist for Common Cause but speaking as an individual; Richard Fleming of Delaware Nature Society; Willard Kempton of the College of Marine and Earth Studies, University of Delaware, representing himself; Karen Igou, Green Party of Delaware (perhaps speaking as an individual); Elaine Titus who had an off-topic question about relationship between Delmarva and Atlantic City Electric; Andrew Waltz, an individual; Moi; Tom “NO-YES” who works for Sam Waltz but speaking as an individual; Caleb James, an individual.
Overall, the public is clamoring for wind generation. Like the Northfield phone survey a while back, a recent study demonstrated that over 80% of the people surveyed want wind, and they want it now. What concerned me about the IRP is that there’s general confusion or lack of understanding of what Integrated Resource Planning is. Most of the Commenters were saying “approve the Bluewater Wind proposal” but that’s the Request for Proposals (RFP) docket, not the Integrated Resource Planning (IRP) docket. That’s not going to happen in the IRP. What’s needed is Comments on IRP issues like how exactly will DP&L fulfil the SOS (SOL) load? What is the generation mix? Given the statute, how much weight on the different criteria listed in HB6 (that’s all below).
Here’s the Bluewater Wind proposal everyone is so hot to trot about!
I had a chat with Peter Mandelstam about Bluewater’s role in the IRP, because what would really jar Delaware’s thinking into where it NEEDS to be is to propose a wind/gas combo. With that, the awful coal plant owned by NRG could be shut down! What’s it going to take? A little uumph and cooperation from Connectiv?
Here’s the report in the News-Journal:
But a recurrent problem, rearing its ugly head on Wednesday night, is that public participation is being quashed, and those who have intervened are being forbidden to speak at the public hearings! How ludicrous! Here’s what the News-Journal wouldn’t report:
At the beginning of the hearing, there was some discussion about the PSC’s Hearing Examiner O’Brien’s decision that Intervenors could not comment at the public hearing opportunities, and apparently Firestone had put in his two cents worth at the unreasonableness of that decision. Later in at the hearing, when asked by Intervenor Alan Muller to cite the authority for banning intervenors from making comments at the Public Hearing on the Integrated Resource Plan, Hearing Examiner Ruth(less) Price said, gavelling as she angrily spoke:
“I’m not citing anything. You’ve heard me, and that’s it. Intervenors will have an extensive opportunity in an evidentiary hearing to be heard…”
Funny thing was, she didn’t cite any authority for quashing public participation! And Alan didn’t even have his gag on…
After the hearing ended, PSC Chair Arnetta McRae, who was in the audience at the time, flagged me town and wanted to know if I was up on Delaware law, if I had the background information (assuming I did not know, that I had no clue), about whichI was knowledgable enough to point out that they were opearating without rules!!! Oh well, as with Minnesota, who needs rules for utility regulation?!?!?
But it’s convoluted, the public does not understand IRP v. RFP. Deregulation was believed to have eliminated IRP, though I think that’s wishful thinking on the part of DPSC, the party line and not quite reality. HB6, which was an attempt by the Delaware legislature to mitigate the extreme cost increases of deregulation — remember how this was supposed to LOWER rates? Right, well, here’s an example of what it means to cower before that corporate lie! Politicians are feeling the heat from furious consumers, and so instituted HB6 to look at long term power contracts to stabilize rates. This only affects the Standard Offer Service customers (I think of them not as “SOS” but as the “SOL” ratepayers) who are the ones, the vast majority of ratepayers, who did not opt out of DP&L. But talk of the huge rate increases has died down, and in its place has come a massive movement for wind generation. This by far out paces al other concerns — Delaware residents want wind generation! And wind generation can best be accomplished through a thorough resource planning process. IRP is what sets the policy, IRP is what drives electric generation choices.
As to Integrated Resource Planning specifically, here’s what HB6 says:
(c)(1) DP&L is required to conduct Integrated Resource Planning. On December 1, 2006, and on the anniversary date of the first filing date of every other year thereafter (i.e., 2008, 2010 et seq.), DP&L shall file with the Commission, the Controller General, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget and the Energy Office an Integrated Resource Plan (“IRPâ€). In its IRP, DP&L shall systematically evaluate all available supply options during a ten (10)-year planning period in order to acquire sufficient, efficient and reliable resources over time to meet its customers’ needs at a minimal cost. The IRP shall set forth DP&L’s supply and demand forecast for the next ten (10)-year period, and shall set forth the resource mix with which DP&L proposes to meet its supply obligations for that ten-year period (i.e., Demand-Side Management Programs, long-term purchased power contracts, short-term purchased power contracts, self generation, procurement through wholesale market by RFP, spot market purchases, etc.).
1. As part of its IRP process, DP&L shall not rely exclusively on any particular resource or purchase procurement process. In its IRP, DP&L shall explore in detail all reasonable short- and long-term procurement or Demand-Side Management strategies, even if a particular strategy is ultimately not recommended by the Company. At least 30 percent of the resource mix of DP&L shall be purchases made through the regional wholesale market via a bid procurement or auction process held by DP&L. Such process shall be overseen by the Commission subject to the procurement process approved in PSC Docket #04-391 as may be modified by future Commission action.
2. In developing the IRP, DP&L may consider the economic and environmental value of:
(i) resources that utilize new or innovative baseload technologies (such as coal gasification);
(ii) resources that provide short- or long-term environmental benefits to the citizens of this State (such as renewable resources like wind and solar power);
(iii) facilities that have existing fuel and transmission infrastructure;
(iv) facilities that utilize existing brownfield or industrial sites;
(v) resources that promote fuel diversity;
(vi) resources or facilities that support or improve reliability; or
(vii) resources that encourage price stability.
The IRP must investigate all potential opportunities for a more diverse supply at the lowest reasonable cost.
3. The Commission shall have the authority to promulgate any rules and regulations it deems necessary to accomplish the development of IRPs by DP&L. Commencing in 2009, DP&L shall submit a report to the Commission, the Governor and the General Assembly detailing their progress in implementing their IRPs.
26 Del.C. § 1007(c)(1).
There’s a lot of room there for thorough inquiry and development of a truly Integrated Resource Plan. So open the process up and get to work!!!! Hear that, Delaware?
More on Mesaba ALJ denial recommendation
April 13th, 2007
The silence is deafening… the email is way too quiet, well, plus my phone reception sucks out here… but here’s a response I received after sending out notification of the ALJ Recommendation to PUC:
Please remove me from your email list you pyschotic freak - pull your head out of your ass and join the real world. You and the rest of the CAVE people do not deal in facts or in reality. If overaggressive physcotic freaks like you would use your energy for something productive we might actually find solutions to our problems rather than being constantly creating new ones.
From someone ostensibly named “Shalom.” Hmmmm…
And just in case you missed it, here’s the ALJs’ Recommendation of Denial:
One relevant thing that made me snort — consider Pawlenty’s rabid and unjustified support of Mesaba, knowing it was going down in flames — and he had this to say recently per Polinaut:
That was in the Brainard Dispatch too:
From the Duluth News Tribune, here’s another guy who will have to run for office again, yet here he is, pontificating on Mesaba’s demise:
And remember, Sen. Tom Saxhaug is the guy who tried to ram through the Mesaba personal property tax exemption without letting the local governments know he’d submitted the bill!!! The county got on him about it and it was QUICKLY amended to include the necessity of a Host Fee Agreement to assure local governments get their fair share instead of getting screwed. He showed just what constituents he was representing in that little maneuver, and he showed his utter disregard for the public interest.
Meanwhile, Tom Micheletti’s not having a very good day.
Also from the Duluth News Tribune, Micheletti’s comments:
On Thursday night, Micheletti said he is “shocked,†by the judges’ conclusions.
Micheletti said the conclusions don’t mean the project is dead, but he clearly isconcerned.
Here’s from the STrib:
By Mike Meyers, Star Tribune
The dream of a $2 billion coal-gasification plant on the Iron Range the was dealt a setback Thursday when two administrative law judges urged the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission to deny the plans of Excelsior Energy, a newcomer power company.
While not binding on regulators, the ruling is filled with warnings, from doubts that the plant will burn coal as cleanly as guaranteed to an opinion that Excelsior would not, as promised, likely deliver electricity at a lower cost than alternative energy suppliers.
After sifting through thousands of pages of testimony in a hotly contested case, judges Steve Mihalchick and Bruce Johnson wrote that the plan is “not in the public interest.”
The judges’ warnings to the utilities commission — which is expected to rule on the project later this year — include cautions about whether risks to Minnesota’s economy would be overshadowed by the benefits of the biggest investment in decades on the troubled Iron Range.
And, in a move that undermines a key argument for building the Excelsior plant, the judges found that the design to transform pulverized coal into gas is not particularly new or innovative.
To build the plant, Excelsior needs a customer. The Legislature four years ago directed Xcel Energy Inc. to buy power from the proposed 600-megawatt plant. But Xcel, in expert testimony, said the power isn’t needed in 2011 when Excelsior’s Mesaba plant is supposed to open.
Xcel argued that Excelsior’s power would cost more than alternatives and put Xcel at financial risk if everything didn’t go according to plan — two arguments the administrative law judges accepted in their findings.
The project would create 3,500 construction jobs from 2008 to 2011, according to Excelsior’s economic consultant, and employ 107 full-time workers to keep the plant running. The company said millions of dollars in benefits would flow to local communities, as well.
But the judges were skeptical. “There are economic development benefits to the state from the project, especially to the nearby area,” they wrote. “There are also negative economic development impacts from the increased costs that will be passed on to business and individual ratepayers and from the negative environmental consequences of the project.
“Overall, the economic development benefits weigh in favor of the project. But they do not justify an unreasonable price for its electric capacity and energy.”
Excelsior officials were unavailable for comment.
Xcel offered a cautious response:
“We have not had the opportunity to review the administrative law judges’ report in detail,” said Judy Poferl, Xcel director of regulatory administration. “We appreciate that the judges recognized the concerns raised by the parties to this proceeding. We will continue to participate in this case and look forward to resolution by the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission.”
The commission is expected to rule on the proposal this summer.
Mike Meyers • 612-673-1746 • meyers@startribune.com
