Did I hear that right???
I’m fighting with PSEG out in New Jersey, representing Stop the Lines on the Susquehanna Roseland transmission line. PSEG can be vile… but on this one point, PSEG’s Ralph Izzo is right. Now, if we can just get him to be consistent.
Transmission is not rocket science, and Izzo statements reflect that he understands what Midwest transmission is all about — $$$ and coal. He and PSEG have joined the many who are standing up to Midwest transmission plans. Now, is the Midwest paying attention? As PUC Chair Boyd said at the last Legislative Energy Commission meeting, they need a solid business plan. Guess what — they don’t have one, DUH!!!! There’s no market (Doesn’t Chair Boyd or anyone else in the room think there’s something a little too cozy about Boyd advocating for transmission with MISO???).
Today at a conference, PSEG’s Izzo let loose and let them have it:
Izzo also outlines his opposition to transmission superhighway proposal. “A subsidized national build out of transmission is economically unjustified and, since it will be utilized significantly to also transport energy from coal plants, environmentally self-defeating,” said Izzo. “While purporting to help move green energy, the new lines would more often be moving electricity from coal plants to new markets in the East.”
Here’s some propaganda from PSEG:
FULL TEXT OF IZZO’S SPEECH
The Role of Transmission in a Clean Energy Economy
In short:
A national transmission build-out would cause more expensive projects to be built, enable coal plants to run more often, and hurt local efforts to promote renewable generation. It also would create a new national bureaucracy and have a chilling effect on the development of new renewable projects while transmission routes are planned and built.
Now just who does this sound like?!?!?!?! Hilarious… dig this, though he’s not admitting the INTENTIONALITY of the transmission scam:
This physical reality results in an unintended consequence of building large superhighways of transmission lines that go far beyond delivering green power to the grid. It will provide access not just to renewable resources, but to all power plants in the surrounding region where the lines are built. For the Midwest Independent System Operator (MISO) market region, which currently generates more than 75 percent of its power from coal, coal plants also will gain new, additional access to eastern markets and higher prices. So, instead of Midwest renewable energy competing against Midwest coal-fueled electricity, both coal and green energy will travel along these new lines to more easterly markets and replace eastern renewables and eastern power generated with cleaner, but more expensive, natural gas, which is more prominent in the East. Greenhouse gas emission reduction targets will be more difficult to achieve, and it will put upward pressure on emission prices.
And this broad view so contradicts their Susquehanna-Roseland transmission plan, which is all about coal from Amos = it’s the NE part of “Line 1” in Project Mountaineer. PSEG, you can’t have it both ways! Let us hope that now that he’s spouting opposition to the Great Midwestern Transmission Scam he’ll see the scam of New Jersey transmission. At least we’ll now have this to use. THANK YOU, RALPH IZZO!