PUD releases information - at last

Aberdeen May 13th, 2008 – The Grays Harbor PUD is forced to respond to a Freedom of Information request from enterprising reporters at the Aberdeen Daily World. Using the PUD’s own numbers the annual cash loss to ratepayers will be at least $4.5 million a year and over the life of the contract far in excess of $55 million. Further, the PUD admits that to pay for the Cosmopolis mill everyone in Grays Harbor will see their electricity bills rise, forever.

To see the full Aberdeen Daily World story go here
To see the full details on how the cash loss to the rate payers could exceed $100 million click here.

Introduction

The importance of energy in America and the climate change debate will over coming years have a significant impact on each of us and on how we fuel our cars, light our homes, and operate our schools, hospitals and other public services. We have already seen the cost of gasoline rise dramatically and we can see the time in the near future when the cost of electricity may follow suit as a host of “green” policies come into effect. I am concerned that many of the decisions being made about energy in Gray’s Harbor and in our state do not receive the local attention that they warrant. A case in point in recent weeks has been the purchase of the Cosmopolis Pulp mill by the PUD. While I wholeheartedly support the restart of the Cosmopolis Pulp mill I do not support using rate-payers money for this. First and foremost, the power generated at Cosmopolis does not meet the I-937 requirements as being “green”. Secondly, the mill consumes 23 megawatts of power but it only generates 15 for a deficit of 8 megawatts. Third, as was demonstrated with the closure of the Port Angeles mill, the PUD may be taking on significant environmental risks if the pulp business fails; at Port Angeles the environmental remediation costs are already over $100 million and still rising. Lastly and perhaps most importantly all of the discussions surrounding this decision have been made in secret. We don’t know what the costs are and we don’t know the risks or the full extent of the commitments that the commissioners of the GHPUD have committed ratepayers to. I think that this is wrong and that we need more information before the PUD commits all ratepayers to a $17 million cost for a mill that is not “green”. I have written to the PUD with some questions on this decision and this is available here. Thanks for taking the time to visit this site and I hope that you make your views known by joining the discussion and voting to indicate whether you are in favor of the PUD's decision on the Cosmopolis pulp mill.

Cosmopolis - It's not green, not cheap and not qualified

In my letter to the PUD, I pointed out to them that Cosmopolis’s power generation is from black liquor and that this is specifically excluded as Green Power under I-937;  so why are we paying $17 million to Weyerhaueser for it? The mill consumes 23 megawatts of power but it produces 15 megawatts so we don’t gain any power and the power it does produce costs twice as much as the power we buy from Bonneville. After having done some additional research I now find that under I-937 only power facilities in operation AFTER 1999 qualify for green credits. As the Cosmopolis mill dates to the 1950’s how much clearer does it have to be that this isn’t Green Power? Further, this begs the question, has anyone at the Grays Harbor PUD actually read I-937? If they had read I-937, what is driving then into the pulp business and the desire to subsidise brown power?

What is the overall cost to the taxpayer?

It appears the net cost to the ratepayer will be in excess of eighty million dollars. The calcuation can be found here