Comments

1

Thank you PSE.

2

They just want to put an LNG terminal in Seattle, to go along with the one they're trying to build in Tacoma.

Fossil fuels are a deadend, too expensive, and we literally have to replace 80 percent of them by 2025 and 100 percent of them by 2030.

Unless you want your kids to grow up in a submerged city. No, literally. Check the maps for 2050 and 2100.

4

The Tacoma facility is so ships can be fueled with natural gas instead of bunker fuel.

@2 Why do you hate the environment?

5

The city of Berkley, California has banned the use of natural gas in all new construction beginning in 2020. Seattle should do likewise as well as banning the replacement of existing gas heating systems, ovens, water heaters, and fireplaces in remodeling. For existing buildings a graduated timeline should also be implemented for the total elimination of gas fired appliances.

6

But what about the Cow Farts?
Can we not harvest them?

No fraKKKing involved
so no aquifers (necessarily) wrekkked.*

'cause who don't like a little [Profits-enabling!] Poison in they're [or the Kid's] Morning Covfefe?!

7

Hold on, back up, we have a "Civil Rights, Utilities, Economic & Arts committee"?

9

This is really good news. For years Seattle has been going further and further to the radical left to where even Stalin and Lenin would want to back off. Bringing the City Council to a more reasoned center will be a great thing for Seattle

10

look at me, agreeing with @3 for once. the city is approving new buildings that use gas-fired boilers every day. I understand where @2 is coming from, but the 2030 goals are aspirational. they'll never be met. I'd be shocked if our natural gas use even peaks by then.

@9: your hyperbole is ridiculous.

11

If there's any species of creature lower than the sort who looks to corporate america to save them, I can't think who it my be.

12

And it Will happen.

13

@3 wrong. It's actually fairly easy.

Have you driven one of the 13 all-electric trucks yet? I'm torn between the Ford F-150 electric and the Rivian, probably going for the Rivian, most of them have about a base 400 mile range.

Adapt. Or go plant trees. But jawboning won't stop the Climate Crisis.

14

@6 it's mostly burps actually. If you must eat red meat, which you shouldn't really eat more than one meal a week, try scrub-fed bison. 1/10th the impact, tastes way better, and the cowboys are real men, not like the wusses that handle cattle.

15

LNG provides a 21% reduction in GHG emissions compared to bunker fuel, with near zero emissions of particulate matter. That's a good thing, but somehow that fact didn't make it into this Slog post.

If efforts to transition marine transportation to LNG are blocked, then that means that ships will continue to burn bunker fuel (and USLD where required). It seems idiotic to me to block the use of a relatively clean fossil fuel, ensuring that a very dirty one is used instead.

16

The author fails to point out the irony of Seattle instructing Tacoma on public policy and clearly has bias on these matters. The fact that PSE is private is the real issue the leftists have with it. It's demise would give the government a monopoly on energy. As to the Green New Deal, one needs to look no further than this statement from Comrade Sawant:

According to Sawant, such a deal "would transition workers from the fossil fuel sector, and create tens of thousands of public-sector, unionized, living-wage, clean-energy jobs."

Translation: A ton of union dues to the SEIU which would turn into the very campaign contributions our author seems so concerned about. Only those would be directed at the type of CM's currently lording over the city. You won't read any articles in the Stranger complaining about that.

18

Buried deep in the article is the reason the composition of the Seattle City Council is not relevant to any local
energy company’s long-term strategy:

“Because of a clean energy bill package passed this year in Olympia, PSE will have to get 80 percent of its energy from clean sources starting in 2030.”

However, the composition of the City Council is immediately important to any business which needs City permits for major construction projects. Ridding Seattle of the current CMs reduces the chance any approved or requested permit gets “Showboxed” by an activist Council.

19

Prior to FDR and the New Deal, and the construction of hydroelectric dams, Eastern Washington was slow to electrify because private companies dominated the landscape and wanted potential consumers - towns and rural homesteads both - to pay very high rates. Basically, electricity wasn’t seen as a “public good.” Public policy makers had to win the debate, and had to show that having huge numbers of people live without electricity was in fact bad for the country.

Once again, a matter that I really thought was settled is brought to the fore again, as people with no sense of corporocratic values run interference for the notions that private companies are going to deliver public utilities well and fairly. No, they won’t. Like all companies, their main focus will be returning a profit to shareholders.

A public utility company means public oversight. It means we all share the burden, which means low rates and efficiency. Public utilities don’t have strategy meetings where employees try to find ways to subvert regulations to increase profit.

Regardless of the environmental concerns, PSE should be a public utility. I was surprised to learn about its ownership here. Thanks for that.

20

@18, I believe the "80% renewables" only applies to the sources of energy for their electrical customers. I don't think PSE has any electrical customers in Seattle, so that's not relevant at all. The article doesn't do a great job of distinguishing electricity generated by natural gas power plants and natural gas delivered for use in NG-powered appliances.

I think for residential and commercial use, natural gas is probably never going to be fully phased out. There's fundamental limits on heating using electricity supplied by the normal electric grid that make some applications impossible (pool heaters, for one) and of course you can pry the gas ranges out of the dead hands of various commercial chefs and foodies. Electric water heaters also suck, they either have really long reheat times or are instant models that can only provide limited flow. In heating applications natural gas is way way more efficient than electric heating, so until you've got a 100% renewable electric grid the net gain of phasing out natural gas appliances is pretty low.

22

@21: The more perceptive, not-in-total-denial writers at The Stranger understand our upcoming elections could dump a number of their favorite office-holders. Since “these elected officials pursued failed policies” is a doubleplus unallowed explanation, they are pre-emptively fabricating a narrative which will ‘explain’ any possible defeat as a triumph of nefarious forces which manipulated the elections. “A horrible polluting capitalist entity bought votes!” is this article’s brick in that wall of denial.

23

"In general," said City Council Member Lisa Herbold, the vice-chair of the Civil Rights, Utilities, Economic & Arts committee, "they get concerned when the Council passes fossil fuel resolutions, particularly about fossil fuel infrastructure projects in other jurisdictions."

Well, Doh! And really, Lisa, your lofty resolutions accomplish little. And your (and especially Sawant's) concern for the environment seems rather hollow, given your propensity to fly to say, NYC to bash Amazon (though you're a piker compared to Sawant, who has no problems flying all over to agitate for her "movement," or even, just to go home--two R/Ts to India in the past year and a half).

24

@13 no one that is outside of the skunkworks of an electric pickup truck project has driven one. They aren't on the market yet. You can get custom shops to convert one for you but no manufacturer models yet. End of 2020 for the 2021 model year is about a quick as we'll see them. With that range I'd reckon they'll be about what a Tesla costs, $60-70k. It's probably going to be another 5 years or so before the battery range/cost curve makes lower cost higher volume EVs more palatable in the market.

25

Since Herbold and Sawant are so concerned with Carbon free power generation I'm sure they would support the development of more nuclear power.

Life is about choices. Carbon emissions are cooking the biosphere. Nuclear generates tremendous amounts of energy with close to zero carbon emissions.

If you are really and truly concerned with climate change you have to admit that there is a place for nuclear.

This is why Cory Booker has the best climate change strategy among all of the Democratic candidates for president. I'm still voting for Warren but because of his climate policies Booker is my second choice.

As for the Seattle City Council, it doesn't matter whether I agree with their ideas or not. They are 9 completely incompetent individuals who have no business running a major metropolitan city.

26

Oh and who the heck decided that oversight of Seattle City Light and Seattle Public Utilities should be lumped together with Civil Rights, Utilities, Economic & Arts?

27

PSE, an out of state fossil fuel company/utility, opaquely spending vast sums of money on the local council election? Wonder whose interests the(ir) politicians they fund will serve...

28

Gosh, if only Corps had Souls.

Which'd be a Goodthing, cause we'll never ever Execute one. Unless, and this goes without saying, they fuck with the Rich.

When profiteering off the masses is your Business Plan you can make some people very Wealthy. The rest?
WHO fucking Gives a Flying Fuck?

America has sold her Soul, baby.
Do YOU make a Killing?

29

@17 tell BC and Cali that, they're already exceeding the use of renewable energy to replace gas, at the rate you say "we can't do for buildings".

Or look outside at the UW or WSU or SU which are all doing what you say can't be done. And saving tons by doing it.

By the way, PSE is effectively owned by Canadian investors, so that's FOREIGN DOLLARS BUYING YOUR POLITICIANS.

30

@20 - damn straight. We recently replaced our water heater with a tankless gas system and hoo boy, it is WAY cheaper to operate and 1000% times better (efficiency, flow, function) than the old tank we had. IMO, the greenies aren't going to have much luck trying to convince the First World to give up natural gas as an energy source for residential applications like heat and hot water. It's the same logic over and over again - "just accept these reductions in your standard of living because the human race might go extinct someday..." I'm pretty sure the human race is going to end up extinct someday whether I have the best water heater I can buy or not.

31

$30K??? That’s nothing

32

thebeavs dear, let me calm your fevered brow by telling you that PSE is already heavily unionized. No utility that I know of has a contract with SEIU. Even The City of Seattle doesn't have an active SEIU contract that I know of.

Gentle down, dear. Gentle down.....


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