CPS and Mayor Opt for Energy Poverty Over Prosperity

By Patty Gibbons

Last week the San Antonio CPS trustees voted 4-1 to adopt a generational portfolio that will phase out coal energy in favor of using more renewables.

San Antonio’s two coal plants, Spruce 1 and Spruce 2, have been in place since 1992 and 2010, respectively.  They have been our main source of cheap, reliable energy for decades, producing enough megawatts (1,300) to power anywhere from half- to over one million area homes per year.

Unit 1 had an LO-NOx burner installed in 1999 to reduce nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions.  To meet future electricity demand, CPS Energy built Unit 2 in 2010 at a cost of $1 billion.  Unit 2 included modern pollution controls such as the installation of a SCR system, and a flue-gas desulfurization (FGD) system which removed both NOx and sulfur dioxide (SO2) from the atmosphere.

As the Spruce 2 plant was being built, the Sierra Club and other critics were ready to have it shut down right then.  As KENS5 reported in September of 2010, CPS called it “the cleanest and most energy efficient plant in the company’s history.”

Climate Change is not an easy issue to keep up with, let alone understand. 

It is often packaged in lifesaving terms and phrases, such as “we need to save the planet,” or “your children will breathe better.”  Then there are the more intellectual science majors who will give formulas of amounts of CO2, and carbon footprints, and its effects on the ozone layer.  It often comes down to who has the right panic button at the moment to sway public sentiment.

In San Antonio, Mayor Ron Nirenberg has been doing the swaying, or just telling the public about the dangers of climate change since 2018, with the Climate Action and Adaptation Plan, or CAAP.

Now in its second rewrite, CAAP is comprised of a panel of over fifty contributors from the community.  It ranges from developers, environmentalists, city council members and departmental supervisors, and out-of-state writers.  They hope that CAAP will help with ”a more equitable, safe, affordable, and prosperous future for all San Antonians.”

For now, the focus is on the latest news; energy sources for your city are going to change by 2028.  

Reasonable people and sound scientists have NOT been able to thwart the Sierra Clubs of the world and their extreme language in their attempts to shut down all coal and gas immediately.  What WAS gaining ground for coal plants was the advanced technology in ‘cleaning’ coal.

The World Nuclear Association cites those cleaning processes for coal as follows:

• ‘Washing’ has been standard practice in developed countries for some time.  It reduces emissions of ash and sulfur dioxide when the coal is burned;

• Electrostatic precipitators and fabric filters, technologies in widespread use, can remove 99% of the fly ash from the flue gases;

• Flue gas desulfurization reduces the output of sulfur dioxide to the atmosphere by up to 97%, depending on the level of sulfur in the coal and the extent of the reduction.  It is widely used where needed in developed countries;

• Low-NOx burners allow coal-fired plants to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions by up to 40%. Coupled with re-burning techniques, NOx can be reduced 70% and selective catalytic reduction can clean up to 90% of NOx emissions.

All these processes are in place on CPS’ Spruce plants.  So, what has changed?  What has brought us to this new portfolio of more solar and wind, and closing of the coal plants?  The answer is a very long line of actors in the play for power over our energy.

For that we go back to the CAAP plan, the beginning of the end of coal for San Antonio.

The plan itself (one of the actors) is looking for ways to do many things, but the two main plots from this view are 1) to reduce all fossil fuel systems in the city, be it car, bus or energy plants, to get to net-zero by 2050, and 2) to ‘train’ citizens to be resilient when they must do without.  

That is basically the story, under the writer guidance of ideologues and bad science.  These activists have a real disdain for coal, so relentless are they to see its end.  No matter the cost, no matter the truth, no matter the burden to people.

This is where we must come to understand the God-given gift of coal, and its history to the life and prosperity of mankind on this planet.

Coal, oil and gas (fossil fuels) have become a commodity subdued by man.  Over decades of research and revised ways to tame it, they are the cheapest, most extraordinary form of energy on the planet.  With them, homes and offices are cheaply heated, cars are inexpensive to own and drive.  Farming, manufacturing, transportation, technology, and more have all prospered with the help of this rich mineral. Until …

Man forgot.

We have taken this fuel source for granted, with nary a thought to its rich history of advancement from our grandparent’s day to our own lives today.  We have underappreciated its worth.  In its place comes the show, “the planet is dying”, from human consumption of fossil fuel.  

This narrative, now a global forum, has played out over and over again long enough that people have become actors as well.  “I need to buy an electric vehicle to ‘save the planet’,” or “I’ll lower my thermostat to ‘save energy’.”  That is the point, programming you to believe that coal, oil, gas are enemies to our planet, and you are aiding it.

The disdain that activists and politicians have for fossil fuels Is really a disdain for you and me.  We are the consumers that ravage the earth, and therefore we need retraining; first by suggestion, then by force.

In his book (and in phone conversations) “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels,” Alex Epstein lays out the slow boil of climate destruction talk to the world.  Alex clearly and factually proves the case which shows no climate change to have occurred over decades that warrants a crisis.    

“The fossil fuel industry is a moral industry at its core.”

Mankind will not survive on the antihuman dogma that drives the renewable mandates globally, and for our mayor.  Our standard is that human life and its value, and this source of energy, is what has and will continue to transform us from poverty to prosperity.

Remember when our mayor declared to Black Live Matters protesters “I am the mayor of this god damn city”?  I take that language to be revealing.  A man who cared not for the people he is to serve, and with this week’s vote of which Mayor Nirenberg voted as well, he shows us he cares more for mother earth (or a higher political future).

Strong sentiment, no doubt, but to rationalize the idea that taking down two large, clean energy plants, with no mention of the cost to ratepayers of the huge debt burden, says that the climate change issue has become like a god for this city.  We must be aware of the dogma talk that seeks to silence our own reasoning.

Whatever the stage at the moment, whomever is the Greta Thunberg of the day, we are a voice, too.  We can rethink the words we’re hearing, research the facts being presented, reform that which is out to change prosperity into poverty.  Mother Earth isn’t in our wheelhouse, but rather in that of God’s. 

It just takes coming to this one understanding of the greatest find on the planet: energy = prosperity.  That is the true call to all mankind.

Patty Gibbons is the president of Greater Harmony Hills Neighborhood Association (GHHNA), subcommittee chair of the Small, Minority and Women-Owned Business Enterprises (SMWBE) for Bexar County, and former zoning commissioner for District 9 in San Antonio.  She will have a full presentation on this topic with CPS at the next GHHNA meeting Thursday, Feb 2, 2023 at 7:00 pm at Vogt Auction Galleries at 7233 Blanco Rd.  It is free and open to all.

The views and opinions expressed here are those of Mrs. Gibbons, and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of InfuseSA.  InfuseSA shall not be held liable for any inaccuracies represented in guest editorials.