Pollution Rules and Energy Price Hikes

So Reliant Energy, which now owns five of our power plants in Southern California, can drop its price from $1,500 per megawatt-hour to $150 per megawatt-hour if the state relaxes some of its air-pollution rules (“Reliant Offers to Slash Prices if Rules Waived,” May 24). Would someone please tell me exactly what dramatic changes have been made in California’s air-pollution-control rules during the three years since deregulation that would cause a tenfold increase in energy prices?

After all, Southern California Edison managed to operate those same plants, turn a profit and keep us from rolling blackouts for so much less than Reliant claims it is costing. If we are to believe Reliant’s woeful predicament, then perhaps it’s time for Gov. Gray Davis to seize those power plants, since Reliant seems incapable of meeting our electricity needs.

Alice Chillington

Lomita

Arianna Huffington is right on regarding President Bush’s energy scare tactics (“All We Need Fear Is Bush’s Tale of Doom,” Commentary, May 23), but I suspect neither she nor President Bush grasps the true extent of the energy situation. Our leaders seem to believe that energy demand can continue to grow without bounds, like the growth of the human population, and that there will always be enough oil, gas and coal to supply that demand. Unfortunately, this planet’s resources are all too finite.

We should invest our dwindling resources toward developing an environmentally friendly source of energy for the long term. What we (and the rest of the world) need is nothing short of an all-out Manhattan Project for sustainable energy development. Without such a vision, coupled with a recognition of the imminent dangers of unbridled population growth, we are living in a fool’s paradise that will end more quickly than we think.

William O. Straub

Pasadena

Can we stop whining about sport-utility vehicles, the Clintons, environmentalists and hanging out our BVDs to dry? Let’s have low-cost loans throughout the Southwest for solar panels atop every home and business, financed over a 20-year period and fully tax-deductible. Get people off the freeways by giving a tax break to all employees who can and do work from home and all employers who allow it, and give a tax break for conserving home and business energy use, retroactive to 1999. Finally, call a summit of Western governors to solve the problem of energy costs and to find ways of encouraging new sources of energy--without the useless ideology of Washington do-nothings.

Jack Smith

Chula Vista

We are in the midst of an energy crisis. We are deluged daily regarding rolling blackouts and threatened with rate hikes and dire predictions for this summer and beyond. However, nightly the Stonehenge-esque pillars at LAX and adjacent signs are blazing in defiance of rational conservation. Until city and county officials take note of energy extravagance, it will be hard to convince the public that we are indeed in a critical situation.

Roz Bliss

Manhattan Beach

How is it that some people are still ignorant of the causes of California’s energy crisis? We hear a lot from reactionary conservatives who find it comforting to blame environmentalists. The fact is that no energy corporation has been denied an application to build a power-generating plant in California in the last five years. The problems are not with environmental laws or radical environmental groups but with the enterprising question of return on investment.

Prior to California’s energy crisis, power generators were not producing billions of dollars in profits. With years of increasing demand for energy, we have now hit the limits of our supply just as our own million-dollar studies predicted five years ago. With such thin margins between supply and demand, it is easy for power generators to manipulate the market and create price spikes. The free-market experiment has failed, and it’s time to pull the plug on corporate profits.

Tiger Cosmos

Palm Springs

I now understand why the Texas Twosome in the White House does not encourage energy conservation. We replaced six of our most-used lightbulbs with energy-savers two months ago. Since then, our electric bill is half what it was. Last week, we disconnected our garage refrigerator. I wonder what our bill will be next month. Could it be that conservation could really hurt the Texas economy?

Ila Harris

San Dimas

It’s not an energy undersupply. It’s a people oversupply.

Steve Engel

Pacific Palisades