Iowa's First Nuclear CWIP: FL to NC “Don't Do it”
[Editor's note: The Iowa Legislature is currently considering HSB 124 and SSB 1144 which are study bills that propose Iowa public utilities are enabled to charge customers for the capital expense of building a nuclear power generating station before it is built, even if it is not built. See our post from Sunday for more information about CWIP.
“Senator Fasano warns NC governor and legislature not to make same nuke power mistake,” according to the Miami Herald Blog.
“Sen. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey (FL), still so regrets his decision to allow Progress Energy and Florida Power & Light to charge customers for nuclear power plants before they're even built that he's sent a letter today to the governor of North Carolina and the North Carolina legislature, urging them not to make the same mistake.” Click here to read the article from the Miami Herald Blog.
He wrote, “Allowing utilities to charge customers for new power plant construction work in progress will hurt already strapped customers with possibly large increases in their electricity bills. According to Progress Energy filings with the Florida Public Service Commission, the average Progress customer could see an estimated increase of nearly $50 per month by 2020 from the Levy capital additions.”
Click here to download a copy of Senator Fasano's letter.We don't know the cost to customers for MidAmerican Energy's proposal yet. However, using the Florida example, a $50 per month increase for a CWIP could raise Iowa customer rates as much as 75%. Our point is that there is a lot to consider before the Iowa legislature enacts its own CWIP.
A MidAmerican Energy representative said yesterday that future compliance costs would raise rates, and it may be true that carbon regulation will increase current electricity costs. If a person has been following the 112th Congress, nothing seems likely to happen on an energy bill anytime soon. While we wait for Congress to act, and it could be a while, there are other ways to make and use energy that eliminate the need for either carbon or nuclear fuels entirely. One example to consider is Arjun Makhijani's Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for US Energy Policy which can be downloaded here. While Makhijani's policy proposal is not a panacea, it is innovative, and what Iowa needs to meet its energy needs is innovation, something lacking in a proposal for nuclear power.
More importantly, the lesson Iowa should learn from Florida about our potential nuclear CWIP is that not doing one's homework can cause trouble for constituents and get legislators changing their mind. There are lessons to be learned from other states that considered and enacted or rejected CWIP for nuclear power generating facilities. This is not trivial and it takes time.
Let's encourage Iowa state legislators to make the right decision for Iowa by doing their homework on CWIP before voting on HSB 124 and SSB 1144. If it takes until the 2012 legislative session to get it right, Iowans will be glad they did.
~Paul Deaton is a native Iowan living in rural Johnson County and weekend editor of Blog for Iowa. E-mail Paul Deaton
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