Conversion to Clean Energy Is Urged at City Hearing

Los Angeles could convert one-fifth of its electricity supply to clean energy sources by 2017 without substantially raising customers’ utility bills, renewable power advocates argued Thursday at a City Hall hearing.

City officials agreed that the goal was attainable and worth pursuing. But some cautioned against hastily abandoning coal-burning power plants and other traditional sources of electricity, warning that the city would not want to experience the kind of power shortages and price spikes that had occurred elsewhere in the state during the 2001 energy crisis.

A state law requires investor-owned utilities such as Southern California Edison to invest in renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power, with the goal of making such power 20% of their overall energy portfolio by 2017. But municipal utilities such as the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power sought exclusion from the law, and DWP officials have recently contemplated investing in another coal-fired power plant in Utah, angering environmentalists.

City Council President Alex Padilla called for the city to try to comply with the requirement, and this week, Mayor James K. Hahn called for the formation of a “green-ribbon” panel to study how to hasten compliance. Thursday’s hearing by Councilman Tony Cardenas, chairman of the council’s energy committee, was to launch that process.

Bernadette Del Chiaro, policy advocate for Environment California, said that, even in the worst case, the city could meet the standard with an added cost of only 40 cents a month for the average ratepayer -- a “small price for clean air,” she said.

But former Assemblyman Roderick Wright of Los Angeles, a consultant to utilities, said that, although renewable power was worth examining, it should remember that the DWP’s primary mission was to provide reliable, cheap power to the city.