power plant in india

Thursday, 11 July 2013

Power Play

Nukes like San Onofre may be exempted from the state's already watered-down policy on once-through cooling.

Good things come to those who wait. Unless you’re a fish.

Last week, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s office finally allowed the State Water Board to release a modified once-through-cooling power plant policy. The governor’s office held the policy hostage for months while every major power generator in the state lobbied heavily to weaken the last draft. What a surprise. The power brokers won. They should at least say “Thanks for the fish” like the dolphins in the “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”

For those keeping score at home: The State Water Board had already weakened the last version of the policy because of power industry lobbying, but the California Energy Commission, the Public Utility Commission and the California Independent System Operator supported the draft.

The environmental community largely welcomed the draft policy, but still wanted some of the loopholes filled, such as making the preferred compliance method one that does not rely on seawater for cooling power plants and instead requires air cooling.

Meanwhile, despite over two years of a painful public process, a technical advisory committee review and numerous opportunities to comment on the policy, the power industry by and large wanted to maintain the status quo.

Numerous lobbying trips to the governor’s office led to severe erosion of the technically sound policy. What did the power industry get for its troubles? Ka-ching!! Here goes:

The nukes at Diablo Canyon and San Onofre got a potential way out of the policy altogether.

Because nukes don’t produce greenhouse gases, and this administration has remained tough on climate change, the plants could use economics as an argument that saving marine life is just too darn expensive.

They may even skate without having to implement any significant controls to reduce fish impingement and larval entrainment. I’m not sure if the decision to go with marine life death by boiling vs. acidification factored into the decision making, but I’m sure that the nukes’ arguments about the multibillion dollar cost to retrofit the plants played the key role.

The nukes getting their way isn’t much of a surprise, but the rest of the policy surprised even the most cynical of environmental leaders.

One of the big national fights that the environmental community has won is the definition of “Best Technology Available.” Once-through-cooling is not BTA and there isn’t much debate that closed cycle or recycled cooling does count as BTA.

The state decided to waffle on the issue by providing two tracks to comply with the policy. The first makes it clear that a power plant would comply through the use of BTA – closed cycle or recycled cooling. The second track calls for reduction of the impingement and entrainment by the equivalent amount of reducing the flow by about 90% of the design flow, not the actual or generational flow.

That leaves plenty of opportunity for power plants to have fun with statistics and provide minimal reductions in actual cooling water flows, especially for all of the peaker plants that run only when base energy isn’t adequate to meet the local region’s needs.

Thanks to the state removing its stated preference for the first track, guess which track that most power plants will choose?

The first, which will move California forward on energy efficiency, create green jobs and protect marine life? Or the ambiguous second track, which will allow for many power plants to maintain the status quo with the implementation of a few screens and intake flow management measures that surely won’t meet the marine life protection goals of S.316b of the Clean Water Act?

It’s definitely an easier pick than choosing the winner of the latest March Madness tourney.

Furthermore, the state made the second track even weaker by regulating based on the design flow of the plant. Keep in mind that many of these coastal power plants were designed in the 1950s. Because much more efficient plants now exist, these older facilities only kick in during times of peak energy demand. They rarely, if ever, operate according to design.

So if plants are being asked to reduce their salt-water intake by roughly 80% a year, it’s easier to meet that goal if it’s based on designed potential rather than actual use.

Compliance should be determined based on the amount of flow actually needed to generate energy.

For some reason, the fish and larvae sucked into the power plant to make bouillabaisse don’t understand the real-world difference between how much ocean water actually gets sucked into the intake vs. a vastly larger engineering design flow that will make policy compliance easier.

But wait. That’s not all. Thanks to the lobbying of Moss Landing and LADWP, there is now a combined cycle power plant clause. If a power plant already ditched 1950s technology to go to combined cycle cooling, then it gets credit for that intake flow reduction.

The way the policy is written, it appears as if the facility gets to apply these flow reductions for the entire plant, even if only one or two units were converted to combined cycle.

There are other creative ways to meet policy requirements, like reducing intake flow velocity to 0.5 feet per second based on monthly flow to account for seasonal impacts. (There are more fish larvae in SoCal during the summer than in winter.)

So, there’s not much chance that any of those power plants will move to BTA in my lifetime.

And if these watered-down compliance requirements are still too hard to meet, the energy industry can always go back to Cal-ISO to ask for extensions. Construction delays, CEQA compliance problems, financial issues and inclement weather could all lead to further appeals for delay.

The appeal process has been modified despite the multi-year extension of the many compliance deadlines, including those for DWP power plants. These extensions have been determined in conjunction with Cal-ISO, the Energy Commission and the Public Utilities Commission.

The final decision on the policy rests with the State Water Board, which votes May 4.

The environmental community, business community and fishing community should get together to strongly advocate for a strengthened policy.

If they don’t, then the odds of California’s OTC policy making a significant beneficial difference for marine life will be similar to those of the Butler basketball team winning it all a week from tonight.

Filed under: Environmental Governance, Power Plants, Water Quality, wildlife Tagged: | coastal power plants, once through cooling, State Water Board

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Steamed With the L.A. Times

The Times ignores that the Scattergood power plant in El Segundo is in violation of the Clean Water Act.

The Los Angeles Times finally ran its long-awaited article on the state’s proposed rule to phase out California’s ecologically devastating once-through cooling power plants over the next 12-14 years. Not surprisingly, reporter Jill Leovy missed the point.

She omitted any discussion of the requirements of the federal Clean Water Act to use Best Available Control Technology to reduce larval entrainment and fish impingment in power plants. Federal courts all the way up to the Supreme Court have upheld the requirement, under section 316b of the act.

And once-through cooling (OTC) doesn’t fit anyone’s definition of Best Available Control Technology. Energy plants that use OTC literally suck the life out of the ocean, diverting millions of gallons of seawater via intake pipes to cool themselves. Somehow, the fact that every coastal power plant in California is in gross violation of the Clean Water Act didn’t get included in the article.

The Times piece didn’t include any information from the reporter’s interviews with the State Water Board or the energy agencies (California Energy Commission, Public Utilities Commission and the California Independent System of Operators) that support the draft policy.

If the Times did include this information, the reader would have seen that nearly all of the coastal power plants need to be repowered anyway because they use arcane, energy inefficient technologies. Also, the reader would have seen how California wants to move forward with the policy to self determine how OTC will get phased out rather than waiting for a one-size-fits-few approach from the federal EPA.

Instead, we got the usual “it’s too expensive to protect the environment” argument. The overly simplistic thesis props up the mistaken belief that the enviros are at war with the entire power industry.

Further inflaming the media-manufactured battle, the article included quotes from David Freeman, the acting G.M. at LADWP. David does not speak for the city of Los Angeles. And the Mayor’s office and the City Council have not taken a position on the policy.

Freeman, a legendary advocate for green power, is not exactly an expert at protecting wildlife. The state’s estimate is that OTC power plants kill between 8%-30% of Southern California nearshore sportfish. That’s a huge impact.

The OTC policy is needed just as much to protect local fisheries as the network of Marine Protected Areas. It would be great for the fishing community to end its silence on the issue and make it clear to the state that the OTC policy is needed to protect members’ livelihood and recreation.

All of the noise about getting rid of coal vs. protecting coastal waters, and the cost of compliance, has given the state cold feet.

In particular, the nuclear power plants’ arguments that getting rid of OTC is too expensive in comparison to the benefits of greenhouse-free power have resonated in Sacramento. As a result, the final policy has been stuck in the Governor’s office for about a month and the hearing on the policy has been delayed multiple times until mid April.

The bottom line — the proposed rule is good for California at many levels. Every major enviro group in the state supports a strong policy, from NRDC to Sierra Club to all of the Coastkeepers to HtB. Even the energy groups are in support. It protects California’s coastal ecosystems. And it will act as a catalyst to repower woefully inefficient coastal power plants.

Now California needs to stand behind the technical recommendation by moving forward on this long overdue policy.

Filed under: Heal the Bay, Marine Life, Marine Protected Areas, Media & the Environment, Power Plants Tagged: | Los Angeles times, once through cooling, Power Plants

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A Level Playing Field

The distribution of IPL franchises is not a question of entitlement, but should be seen as a reward for good governance and economic performance.

In a peculiar piece in The Telegraph, historian Ramachandra Guha—author of some of the best Indian books on cricket—condemns the improper distribution of IPL franchises across the country:

Consider the following statistics. Uttar Pradesh has a population…of 166 million people, but it has no team represented in the Indian Premier League. Maharashtra has a population of a mere 97 million, but two of its cities, Mumbai and Pune, have IPL teams.
Now consider this second set of facts. Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar are three of the most populous states in India. Roughly one in three Indians live there. On the other hand, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh together account for less than one-fourth of the country’s population. Yet there is not one IPL team from those three large states in North India, whereas from next year, 2011, each state of South India will have its own IPL team.
The Constitution of India says that every citizen of India has equal rights…This lopsided allocation of IPL teams is thus insensitive to democracy and demography.
This maldistribution of IPL franchises undermines its claim to be ‘Indian’, and is in defiance of sporting history and achievement as well. The truth is that citizenship and cricket have been comprehensively trumped by the claims of commerce.

Why is this such an affront to Indianness or democracy? Guha himself brings up the constitutional right to equality. The IPL was designed—first and foremost—as cricket for television audiences. Today any Indian can turn on a television and watch the same cricket match, regardless of where it is taking place. Is that not equality?

But more importantly, Guha promotes a somewhat outmoded position of how we should consider egalitarianism, which is indeed enshrined in the Indian constitution. Social equality, in this view, is no different from democracy, which functions on a one-person-one-vote basis. The hazard is that it leads to a sense of entitlement. Just as a vote is each person’s birthright, each of us has the right to similar levels of material well-being (in this case, access to watching live cricket near us), with no consideration of effort exerted or quality of performance. Consequently, Kanpur, Cuttack or Gwalior deserve IPL franchises.

But frame this as the right to equal opportunity, and Guha’s argument appears a lot less compelling. Rather than focus on the individual rights of people and states—that U.P. deserves an IPL franchise by the simple fact that it has more people—why can’t he project the designation of franchises as rewarding good governance and economic performance? South India has performed well on both counts compared to the North. So have Gujarat and Maharashtra compared to Orissa or Madhya Pradesh.

That Pune has better nightlife, and Hyderabad a better airport than Kanpur, Cuttack or Gwalior is not a sign of inequality, as Guha would have it, but simply a manifestation of better performance. If Kanpur had Hyderabad’s airport and Pune’s hotels, the IPL would come knocking. Given that each city and each state has an equal opportunity to attract an IPL franchise, the distribution of cricket teams seems quite a fair one.

I have great respect for Guha’s contributions as an intellectual, but sometimes I wish he realised he lived in the 21st century.

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Cricket and Cognitive Biases

The compilation of an all-time XI of Indian cricket reveals some of the same cognitive biases that blur our assessments of recent history.

Cricinfo—that venerable authority on all things cricket—is compiling an all-time XI for India, having already performed similar exercises for seven other Test nations. Comparing athletes across eras is always tricky, but based upon the other lists of all-time greats, it seems that the criteria for selection is based upon some combination of the following:

Players’ performance in Test matches. Ajay Sharma, who played but one Test, probably does not deserve to be considered for his First Class batting average of 67.46, his off-field activities notwithstanding.How players compared with their contemporaries the world over. For example, the 2000s was an era of bloated batting averages; the 1990s were lean years for batsmen. It’s more than just a strict statistical comparison.How important players were to achieving important results for their sides. Did players save their team from defeat, or play crucial roles in famous wins?

Unfortunately, it looks as if sentimentality is set to obfuscate what should be a fairly objective activity. Take, for example, the short-list for openers, which consists of Sunil Gavaskar, Virender Sehwag, Vijay Merchant and Navjot Singh Sidhu. All four have the credentials, but I was disappointed that the jury failed to recognize current Indian opener Gautam Gambhir. Gambhir has a batting average of almost 53, higher than Gavaskar’s (51), Merchant’s (48) and Sidhu’s (42), and just below Sehwag’s (54). One argument against him would be that, as a relative newcomer, he has not played enough matches (32 so far). Yet Merchant played in only 10 Tests and Sidhu not many more (51). In fact, this further strengthens Gambhir’s case: despite fewer Tests, he has already scored as many centuries as Sidhu (9), not to mention many more than Merchant (3). The argument can also be made that Gambhir’s figures are exaggerated by batting-friendly conditions and weak opposition. Fair enough. Yet two of his centuries came in wins over quality opponents (Australia and Sri Lanka). Merchant, while no doubt a great player, never played for a winning Test side. Compared to his peers, Gambhir was voted the best Test player at the 2009 ICC awards. Had such awards been around during their careers, it is unlikely that Merchant or Sidhu would have ever been in the reckoning for them, based on their Test performances alone (Merchant did indeed have a stellar First Class record). I still think that India’s two best openers have been Gavaskar and Sehwag, which may make this debate irrelevant, but there appears to be no objective basis for Gambhir’s exclusion from the short-list.

I bring this up for what it tells us about our attitudes towards recent history and the various cognitive biases that come into play when considering important policy debates.

On the one hand, a set of logical processes bias us in favor of what we have experienced firsthand, a trait that has long been documented in psychological literature. Thus, many of us are more likely to appreciate contemporary achievements, such as those of Sachin Tendulkar, Tiger Woods or Roger Federer over Don Bradman, Jack Nicklaus or Rod Laver. Similarly, the big ideological breakthroughs of recent memory overshadow those of earlier times. We may have all had the experience of reading an older work of scholarship, only to be struck by how applicable it is to a current situation; it is often quite humbling to realise that complex ideas have already been so well thought through by thinkers of an earlier era, many of whom are now nearly forgotten. In the security realm, the disproportionate emphasis placed on Indian sacrifices during the Kargil War (India’s first televised conflict) when some 2-3 times the number were killed in 1947-48, 1971 and 1987-1990 in Sri Lanka would be one noteworthy example, one that is by no means meant to diminish the achievements of Indian forces in 1999.

By contrast, most of us fall victim to a number of cognitive biases that make us favour the more distant past over the present. Consequently, the achievements of Merchant, whom none of the Cricinfo jury saw play, take on a mythic aura and his failures get overlooked. By contrast, all of Gambhir’s failings, technical or otherwise, are both seen and recalled. While demonstrably talented and successful, he remains a mere mortal.

Such thinking is particularly applicable to evaluations of politics and policy. For example, there has recently been a rediscovery of sorts of Indian internationalism in the early years after independence, which—according to most such narratives—gradually gave way to a closing off of the country to the outside world, particularly during the Indira Gandhi years. Supporters of this view point to India’s mediation before and during the Korean War and the leading role that Nehru took in the early years of the Non-Aligned Movement, as among the examples of past Indian activism on the global stage.

But these ought to be offset by other considerations: the much smaller size of India’s foreign policy infrastructure (for example, India lacked an external intelligence bureau, and had only three IB officers posted abroad in its early years), the lack of resources at home to leverage to its advantage, and the immensity of security challenges nearer at hand. Neutral mediation and third world multilateralism are both the domains of countries with little or no stake in major issues (take present-day Finland, for example). Indian activities in the first two decades after independence, successful or not, take on that same rosy aura that Vijay Merchant’s batting does, placing current efforts in a comparatively unfavourable light. Such biases should not come in the way of objective appraisals of achievements past and present.

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