Ruling for clean air and renewable energy offer hope

In an excellent ruling in LA the judge took the health interest in the community, not to have asthma and cancer from high flow users, to say that new gas fired powered plants need to show their clean their clean air merits before the permit is issued.

Naturally high flow users, in Orange County which would benefit, rather than paying their way, are warning of blackouts. But the low flow users are hip to the tradeoffs: "Many of the plants, such as a 914-megawatt generator sponsored by the small industrial city of Vernon, would be in low-income, crowded areas that have high rates of asthma and other pollution-related diseases. Though they would be outfitted with the latest in pollution-control technology, the gas-fired generators would emit thousands of tons of fine soot particles, which are linked to cancer, heart disease and other illnesses.

Years ago, the air district set aside what it called Priority Reserve credits so that projects such as hospitals and police stations could be built even if they added to the region's pollution. Last year, the district, lobbied by a host of former politicians, decided to sell the credits to energy companies for $420 million: about half the market value, according to environmentalists' calculations.

Environmental and community groups said Wednesday that they would sue in federal court to nullify such credits.

The decision, meanwhile, left air regulators perplexed at their next move."

Why now? The CAA has been around since the seventies. The Times writes "Under the federal Clean Air Act, no polluting facilities can be built unless soot and chemicals are reduced elsewhere in the region through a complex system of pollution credits, also known as offsets."

Renewable energy benefits. " Under California law, private utilities, which produce 11% of their power from renewable sources, must boost their so-called "green" portfolio to 20% by 2010. But a recent plan released by the state Air Resources Board said the amount must increase to a third by 2020 for all utilities, if the state is to meet its goal of reducing greenhouse gases that are causing global warming.

Aides to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger are negotiating with legislators to put the 33% requirement into law this year, a measure that could alter plans for many of the new gas-fired plants."

The Times writes: The 32-page decision came in response to a lawsuit filed by the Natural Resources Defense Council, Communities for a Better Environment and other groups. In it, Judge Ann I. Jones told the air district it could not sell offsets to the plants without a fuller analysis under California's Environmental Quality Act. In particular, the judge said, the district needed to analyze exactly how many tons of pollutants, including health-damaging soot and planet-heating greenhouse gases, that each proposed plant would emit.