Shadow of Terrorism Doesn’t Fall Equally on All Power Sources

David Freeman, who heads the state’s new public power authority, has a nightmarish vision of terrorists blowing a big hole through California’s electrical system. Perhaps smashing a key power line tower. A major generator. Worst of all, a nuclear plant.

“If somebody were able to get enough firepower, then you’d have radioactivity spewing all over the place,” Freeman says. “You’d have the equivalent of a bomb.”

California’s two privately owned nuclear power plants--San Onofre, south of San Clemente, and Diablo Canyon, near San Luis Obispo--are at the top of the state’s priority list for security. The highway patrol--land and air--is guarding the nuclear plants and electrical grid.

“Our whole system of electric power supply is hard to defend against attack,” Freeman says. “The worst is nuclear. Everybody talking about [building] nuclear plants ought to just shut up. It’s just out of the question.”

Freeman is preaching increased emphasis on renewable energy--wind, sun, steam, waste. Green power. He particularly has been on his soapbox since the terrorist attacks about the need to decentralize power generation and scatter much of it among smaller plants, in shopping centers, atop government buildings, on homeowners’ roofs.

“You don’t have to be an energy expert,” Freeman says, “to recognize that if you had a little fuel cell on your property or some solar panels, where you got your power delivered by the sun--and nobody can stop the sun, not even the terrorists--you’d have a more secure system. . . .

“Sept. 11 put the American people back in touch with their feelings and values. It’s time to reconsider what’s really important in our lives. And one of the things is our security.”

Freeman speaks with a Tennessee drawl, always wearing or within reach of his light gray Stetson. He’s an FDR disciple and lifelong advocate of public power, having run the Tennessee Valley Authority, the New York Power Authority and the L.A. Department of Water and Power.

Gov. Gray Davis plucked him from the DWP in January to be an energy advisor and, later, the first chairman of the California power authority.

Republican politicians criticize him because the DWP gouged private utilities and the state while selling surplus electricity during the energy crisis. Freeman is a convenient target. GOP pols can fire away at him and also hit Davis and public power. The bigger DWP boss was then-Mayor Richard Riordan, but Republicans are laying off him because he’s likely to be the party’s gubernatorial nominee.

Freeman also gets dinged by Republicans and some Democrats for his negotiation of long-term state contracts with power producers. Critics want the contracts--worth $43 billion--renegotiated because the market price of electricity has fallen.

“Too high a price for too much power for too long a time,” Senate leader John Burton (D-San Francisco) complained Friday in a letter to Davis.

But some of these protests are prodded by separate agendas, including turf wars.

Responds Freeman: “Last January, we were paying four times what we are now for electricity. Long-term contracts helped bring prices down. . . .

“The house was on fire and we were the fire department. We put out the fire. Now people are bellyaching about the water damage. But the house was saved.”

Some call Freeman an old fool. He is old--75. Indeed, sun and wind power are old ideas too. In today’s context, however, they seem visionary.

Currently, less than 13% of California’s electricity comes from renewable sources: geothermal (5%), small hydro (3%), biomass and waste (2%), wind (2%), solar (about 1%).

Both the power authority and the state Energy Commission offer financial incentives to encourage development and use of renewable energy. But it’s slow going.

“These technologies are on the 1-yard line,” Freeman says. “Some really aren’t commercial yet, but they could be pretty quickly if there was consumer and governmental interest. . . .

“There’s only one real source of life on this earth and that is the sun. We’re just kind of dumb to get the rays free of charge, but not figure out how to use them in large quantities. Soon as we do, Mother Earth will just breathe a whole lot easier. . . .

“It’s coming. The problem is, it’s up against the money interests--the oil industry, the auto industry, the nuclear industry. For many years, solar power was just thought of as a play toy for Robert Redford.”

Use more renewable energy and reduce dependence on Middle Eastern oil, Freeman exhorts. “It’s the oil money that has financed terrorism.”

Not all of Freeman’s visions are nightmarish. He also daydreams of photovoltaic panels on every homeowner’s roof.