Look Out for Future Power Shortages

Remember this story when we in Southern California have power shortages in twenty years. The mayors of Burbank, Pasadena (!), Anaheim, Los Angeles, Glendale, and Riverside have decided not to renew power contracts with a coal-fired power supplier. These people should know that it takes 20 years to build a power plant, but they are hoping that boon-doggles such as wind and solar, which need at least 10 more years of development, plus the delays in finding sites for them, which even liberal darling Senators don't want in their backyards, and then actually building those plants, will save them. If this collection of mayors had made any noise about nuclear power, I might take their stance seriously. But if they did that, they would lose the support of envirobats who hate anything nuclear more passionately than the propped up ghost of man-made global warming. The only sane sentence in the entire story:

The moves could put the region in the forefront nationally of the commercial use of alternative energy in coming years, but researching and building the infrastructure to replace coal-fired power will be a costly, risky business.

Wind farms take up much more land than any other power production plant, so good luck playing with the conservationists in the envirobat camp. Solar panels might be an interesting choice if new roof tiles were designed to double as photo-voltaic cells, but good luck with all the homeowners' associations. Costly and risky business, indeed.