Energy is Like Food: There’s Plenty to go Around, and Nobody Would Starve if Only the Distribution Were Better.

Los Angeles needs to meet the renewable energy goals imposed by its green-minded mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, who wants 20 percent of the city’s power to come from renewable sources by 2010, and 35 percent by 2020. And it also has to catch up with the rest of California. None of the state’s other utilities, from the investor-owned Southern California Edison to the public Sacramento Municipal Utility District, emit anywhere near the 13 million metric tons of carbon dioxide that LADWP does every year. And while the public utility was previously exempt from a state anti-global warming law, it may soon be subject to a statewide cap-and-trade system taxing all greenhouse gas emitters, public and private.

So the LADWP, which currently derives only eight percent of its energy from renewable sources -- up from three percent in 2006 -- has had to scramble to find green power. Geothermal fields near the Salton Sea seem to offer a panacea - But to get that green power to were the user's homes in the city will require the construction of many miles of high voltage transmission lines across fragile desert environments.

Nothing is ever as simple or straightforward as we would hope - click the link to read the thought provoking article...