Entergy CEO: Utility Wants Vermont Yankee to Keep Running

1. Ah, yes. The usual last-resort rationale that VY is not carbon free because the plant had to be built, etc., nonsense. Under that sophistry, nothing is carbon free, including your wind turbine and all the biomass plants, wind turbines, solar arrays, and hydro dams you want to talk about. Harvesting trees and shredding them and trucking them to McNeil produces more carbon per megawatt than VY does. Insulating homes also emits carbon. But after being built almost 40 years ago, virtually every megawatt from VY has been carbon-free, as opposed to BOTH the fueling of and the operation of the coal and oil and gas fired plants that you will force us to rely on.Stop the desperate argumentation.

2. John, I am trying to enter into a debate with you. If you care to please lets try to go point for point. Your long rants make it difficult to sort through. Pick a single point and lets go from there. Let’s start with energy needs : The data from DOE (http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/states/energy_summary.cfm/state=VT)shoes the trend in energy from 1986 to 2005. While I concede that since 2005 our energy demands may have decreased between that period that has been an slight increase. Even if energy consumption does decrease we are still at a net negative with VY and are nearly 300MW in the hole with out it as outlined above. Do you dispute this point and/or the numbers. Please provide a source if you do.

3. That should have been “I have not opposed.” Sorry.

4. “Interstate and international commerce is good. Energy dependence is not.” Unless, of course, it’s Webber’s car, in which case, it’s fine. Yeah, I got it.And by the way, your “power plant in Vernon” is NOT non-carbon emitting. Carbon was emitted in constructing it. Carbon was emitted in mining the uranium, milling it, fabricating it into fuel and transporting it. Carbon will be emitted when the plant is decommissioned, and when the waste — both “high-level” and “low-level” is transported to a disposal site and disposed of. But why let any facts get in the way of a good rant.P.S. For the record, I have not oppose international trade treaties and I do have a windmill which the PSB let me put up.

5. “I assume he or she doesn’t drive a car burning gas or diesel, drink coffee, tea, or cocoa, eat bananas, oranges, grapefruit, lemons, etc., or indeed buy any other products from outside Vermont’s borders . . .” You simpleton. Interstate and international commerce is good. Energy dependence is not. And talk about hypocrite, I’ll bet your one of these activists against the international trade treaties, like NAFTA, while at the same time apparently arguing that VT should just happily trade its milk for someone else’s electricity.Feel free to put up all the frickin’ wind turbines the PSB will let you put up (that is, if you can get past your “environmental” NIMBYist friends’ opposition to them), but keep your politically correct hands off my cheap, baseload, reliable, non-carbon emitting, VT jobs producing, VT tax revenue producing, clean energy development fund supplying, power plant in Vernon, got it?

6. JCarter and Webber appear to be running out of steam. But they still raise a number of points requiring correction and clarification:1) JCarter keeps insisting that Entergy’s offer is “unfactual.” (“Lets stop debating points that are unfactual.”) Sorry, but that just won’t wash. In its letter to the Board, Jay Thayer of Entergy wrote: “Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee, LLC (“EVY”) hereby advises the Public Service Board (the “Board”) that it will make, in early January 2010, a unilateral offer to sell power to Green Mountain Power Corporation (“GMP”) and Central Vermont Public Service Corporation (“CVPS”) … (Those) negotiations have produced an extensive sharing of data and views but have not produced a new PPA [Power Purchase Agreeement] governing the period following license renewal.” This letter was filed on December 18, 2009 — it’s actually misdated 2008 — not on a whim, but because the Board had set that date as a deadline for presenting the new PPA. The letter serves as the basis for testimony and briefing in Docket 7440.It’s certainly true that “Offers are not contracts.” I never suggested otherwise. But the FACTS are what they are: the offer was made; no contract was signed.So it does not follow that I’m “trying to guess.” I’ve presented the offer for just what it is: Entergy’s unilateral description of the best deal it was willing to make at the time, a deal which the utilities were unwilling to accept.In other words, unlike JCarter, I’m not guessing at anything. More importantly, unlike JCarter, I’m respecting, rather than flying in the face of, the known evidence: namely, that negotiations over a period of years failed to bear fruit. 2) JCarter needs to read more carefully, so I can stop repeating the same points over and over. “Why then John did ISO release a report that stated without Vermont Yankee reliability of the grid would be increased [sic, though that’s not what JCarter means] and I believe they said severe.” The ISO statement, which I quoted above, says “with OR WITHOUT Vermont Yankee.” The statement pertains to transmission problems in Vermont, NOT to power supply. Indeed, it first appeared in a press release about ISO’s last capacity auction, in which there were roughly 8,000 MW of excess capacity. Here’s the full sentence and the source (note the subtitle): “The studies completed so far have shown that with or without Vermont Yankee, the system in Vermont has reliability issues that must be addressed; without Vermont Yankee in service, those issues are more severe and could affect neighboring areas.” (“Final Capacity Auction Results: Surplus Resources Available for 2013–2014,” August 30,2010.) 3) JCarter suggests: “You are putting a lot faith in the “grid” and utilizing spot market energy.” No, actually, I’m not. I’m just stating the facts as they are: ISO auction data ahows that more than enough grid power will be available and the best evidence suggests that it will come at a price slightly lower than VY offered in the letter quoted above. On the other hand, I have repeatedly recommended, here and elsewhere, replacing VY power with a combination of sharply increased energy efficiency and in-state renewables. I have also noted that there are quite a number of other alternatives, including grid power purchases, purchases from out-of-state renewable generators, etc. The utilities appear to be using all of these.4) JCarter asks me to back up my statement that the utilities have been replacing the power. There have been quite a number of announcements, mostly small, and I regret to say that I have not kept a running tally. I will note this large one, however, which appears to have been overlooked by JCarter and Webber: on Feb. 17, 2010, the utilities announced contracts for up to 100 MW of power. There were articles in the Rutland Herald and Burlington Free Press, and perhaps elsewhere as well. If JCarter wishes, he or she can spend the time to try to tally up all the contract announcements, existing contracts, efficiency grants (which will replace the need for power) so forth. I know of no easy way to do this, and do not intend to try; it would be a time consuming task.Three further points are also worth noting in this context. First, officials from Vermont’s utilities, VELCO, and ISO-New England have all stated repeatedly and testified, to the legislature that there would be no power crisis if VY shuts down at the end of its current license. Second, while the Douglas administration strongly supported continued operation of VY, its own Department of Public Service concurred, and, in fact, argued to the Public Service Board that in the absence of a good power contract, VY should NOT receive a Certificate of Public Good. That remains the Department’s legal stance today. Since the Department’s job is to represent the public interest in all proceedings, and since power shortages or overpriced power would hardly be in the public interest, this is a pretty relevant fact at this stage of this debate.Third, VY proponents, including JCarter and Webber, hammer away at the fact that VY will close next year, unless its license is renewed and a CPG is granted, implying that the sky will fall if all the power is not replaced in the best way possible before that happens. But, if necessary, solutions can be adopted for a transition year or two and need not be long-term solutions. If, thanks to slow permitting in this state, planned renewables projects take another several years to come on line, the lights will not go out as a consequence. Instead, one or another short-term solution will be adopted. Some of these might involve carbon emissions for a few years, which is unfortunate. Officials could have done a better job of planning for this, but they did what they did and we are where we are. It’s important to adopt the best long-term strategies possible (my cards are on the table), even if they entail some short-term downsides. But it’s also important to recognize that there simply is NO crisis here, if VY shuts down at or before the expiration of its current license. The lights will stay on, and the impact on rates is likely to be exceedingly small (and perhaps, positive).4) Despite what JCarter reports that the DOE and/or VEP have to say, Vermont’s demand has not been increasing in the past few years. See, e,g, http://www.iso-ne.com/markets/hstdata/znl_info/monthly/index.html and compare 2003 to 2010.In fact, since the beginning of the recession in 2008, demand has dropped in VT. Before that, it is my understanding, based on information from EEV, DPS, and other sources, that demand was being held more or less steady by Energy Efficiency Vermont’s efforts in the preceding few years. Indeed, in a DPS document presented for study groups a few years ago, there’s a chart showing that VT’s electrical demand peaked in the 1970s.5) Webber calls it “unfair, selfish, unconscionable, and also uneconomical” to buy baseload power from out of state producers, later calling it “stupid and an economic crime.” That’s a lot of heavy breathing.I assume he or she doesn’t drive a car burning gas or diesel, drink coffee, tea, or cocoa, eat bananas, oranges, grapefruit, lemons, etc., or indeed buy any other products from outside Vermont’s borders, since all such purchases would qualify for the same vilification, and I’d hate to think that poor Webber would qualify for these hyperbolic descriptions. But maybe that’s why most Vermonters would not agree with this completely fatuous evaluation of how Vermont’s economy should work.With these points out of the way, let me say that I am not, and don’t purport to be, a power planner, but from what I’ve observed by talking to CVPS and GMP planners and participating more broadly in this debate for several years, there are a variety of considerations that need to be played off against one another: price to ratepayers, effects on the broader economy, impact on the environment, portfolio diversification considerations, and quite a few more. The only point at which all these considerations converge is energy efficiency: it is, by far, the cheapest “power” source, with the least impact on the environment; it creates substantial numbers of jobs (about 3 times more per MW than VY) and creates none of the kinds of risks which require diversification. Yet while Vermont is considered a leader in the field, studies still show that 20% of our power is wasted. That’s precisely why I keep mentioning it at every opportunity, as I have repeatedly above.In any case, as I have noted previously, the actual decisions as to how to replace Vermont Yankee are being made every day by the utilities. Until and unless we change the regulatory structure of the state, that will continue to be the case going forward. In short, for better or worse, these decisions are actually in the hands of the utilities, not ours.

7. Greenberg concedes that “the grid” needs baseload power. But he wants to push the responsibility for generating any of that baseload power onto other states, so that Vermont can simply buy the baseload power off the grid while other states bear the burden (whatever it may be) of hosting the generators and at the same time get the benefit of sourcing the power.That is unfair, selfish, unconscionable, and also uneconomical.For lots of reasons, Vermont should host at least a good poerion of its own baseload power needs, as it currently does with VY — and reap the economic and reliability benefit of doing so. Forcing other states to host our power supplies is unfair to them, and at the same time puts us at the entire mercy of “the grid” — both in terms of reliability and price. We use 700+ MW and we’re going to generate 80 MW of that using wind turbines that won’t turn half the time, and solar arrays that don’t see the sun half the time?That’s both stupid and an economic crime.We bemoan the loss of manufacturing jobs in the state of Vermont, but now we plan to kick 500 workers onto the unemployment rolls, and put ourselves at the mercy of “the grid.”

8. John, after looking much of this up here is what I found :Currently VT uses 700 MW of power. According to the DOE VT’s energy consumption has a 1.5% increase annually. Currently VT gets 225MW from HQ 270 VY 88 renewables (wind, methane biomass) 80 from instate hydroThis leads to around 45 MW of power being bought on the spot market currently. In 2012 we will need slightly more power and we will have225 HQ88 renewables80 instate HydroFor a deficit of 317 MW. Thats what the State needs to find before 2012. Plain and simple. It’s irrelvant to what is “planned” or “offered” There is a projected supply of 95MW from the “planned” projects. If we assume that the lowell wind farm etc etc are built that leaves us with a deficit of 222MW if VY is not relicensed that will need to be bought at spot market prices. Simply put to be stable in our energy prices Vermont needs VY. This information is current as of May2010 from a report done by Vermont Energy Partnership.

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