Roofs, not desert, need solar panels most of all

By: JIM TRAGESER - Staff Writer | Wednesday, June 6, 2007 8:47 PM PDT ∞

The Vatican has announced that it will cover the roofs of some of its newer buildings with solar panels to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels.

While a rather stodgy church hierarchy moves to lessen its impact on the environment as much as possible, here at home our local utility claims it needs -- needs! -- to run high-tension power lines through state parks, near national forests and over other previously unspoiled backcountry areas of San Diego County.

The proposed Sunrise Powerlink lines are needed, San Diego Gas & Electric assures us, to meet growing electrical demand in the county as well as to comply with pending state regulations to increase the amount of "green" energy the utility supplies us.

Hey, I'm all for green energy, but not at the cost of spoiling our few remaining undeveloped lands. The kind of visual pollution utility towers in the desert represent is as damaging to the soul and heart as airborne particulates are to the lungs. And it's not just granola-munching tree huggers who need respite from civilization's ever-encroaching embrace. Hunters and fishers and off-road vehicle enthusiasts enjoy our wilderness and undeveloped lands as avidly as any Sierra Club member.

Besides, while SDG&E is right when it says we have to rely more on solar power than on fossil fuels in the years to come, there's simply no reason we can't generate that solar power here, where it is going to be used.

Last time I checked, every house in the county has a roof.

And if the Vatican can put photovoltaic cells on the roof of the Paul VI Auditorium (tinyurl.com/yr8l7z), then there's no reason we shouldn't be able to put those electricity-generating solar panels atop every new building going up from here on out.

Of course, the folly of running high power lines through pristine wilderness is only one of the many problems facing SDG&E's proposal.

There's also the fact that a local watchdog group has run its own projections on the region's energy usage -- and determined that SDG&E is wildly overstating the need for the Sunrise Powerlink line.

The Utility Consumers' Action Network down in San Diego figures SDG&E is overstating the future electricity need by more than double (tinyurl.com/32gwja).

And now a fellow utility, Dynegy, has filed a report with state regulators arguing that SDG&E's desert-marring power lines would actually cost consumers more than generating the power here with natural gas (tinyurl.com/2ln2jf).

Again, burning fossil fuels is not the long-term answer (although natural gas burns more cleanly than coal or oil).

But if it's cheaper to generate the power by building a new gas-burning generating plant, imagine how much cheaper it would be to generate electricity from solar power here, in San Diego County, than it is to generate it in the Imperial Valley and transport it here.

The arguments against the Sunrise Powerlink line are starting to accumulate a critical mass. Here's hoping state regulators are paying attention as the evidence continues to come in.

-- Contact columnist Jim Trageser at (760) 631-6628 or jtrageser@nctimes.com.

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