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This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by editorial page staff and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers

Sunday, June 29, 2008

Killing Energy Options Will Leave U.S. in Dark



      It is truly maddening. A California utility is poised to do everything environmentalists have called for, shifting more than half its customers to electricity generated by the sun, wind and geothermal resources. But the green proposal is being blocked — by environmentalists.
    They can't live with the power line.
    The world is laughing at us, America. We are becoming a helpless giant, addicted to foreign oil and strangely unable to put our own vast energy resources to work for us. We have placed billions of barrels of coastal and arctic crude oil off-limits to ourselves. We haven't built a nuclear power plant in 30 years. And now the San Diego Gas & Electric Co. faces fierce opposition in its effort to build one of the world's largest solar power plants east of San Diego.
    How, exactly, do the opponents of domestic oil, nuclear power and SDG&E's solar-wind-geothermal operation expect the United States to break the stranglehold that $4-a-gallon gas has on our economy? If those opponents are serious about the threat that greenhouse gases pose to a warming planet, how can they block every attempt to shift the nation away from coal-fired generating plants?
    The centerpiece of SDG&E's proposal is a gigantic, $400 million solar plant that would use technology partially developed at Sandia National Laboratories. Some 12,000 solar dishes, each four stories high, would heat a liquid-filled chamber to drive a generator sending clean, renewable electricity to San Diego.
    The sticking point for environmental groups is that the 150-mile transmission line would cut through 23 miles of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. Efforts to reroute the power line are certainly in order — but killing this groundbreaking renewable energy project because it would diminish scenic views would be the act of a nation in the dark, in every sense.
   

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