{"id":1012,"date":"2012-03-14T11:59:27","date_gmt":"2012-03-14T15:59:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/03\/why-cwip-is-a-bad-idea.html"},"modified":"2012-03-14T11:59:27","modified_gmt":"2012-03-14T15:59:27","slug":"why-cwip-is-a-bad-idea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/03\/why-cwip-is-a-bad-idea.html","title":{"rendered":"Why CWIP is a bad idea"},"content":{"rendered":"Iowa is rejecting CWIP, and Georgia can, too.\nHere’s why.\n

\nHerman K. Trabish wrote for Green Tech Media 22 February 2012,\n\nThe Nuclear Industry\u2019s Answer to Its Marketplace Woes:\nConstruction Work in Progress (CWIP) financing shifts the risks of nuclear energy to utility ratepayers,<\/a>\n

\nA sign of the nuclear industry’s difficult situation in the\naftermath of Fukushima is a proposal before the Iowa legislature\n
\n“Construction Work in Progress was intended to circumvent the\ncore consumer protection of the regulatory decision-making\nprocess,”<\/td><\/tr><\/table>\nthat would allow utility MidAmerican Energy Holdings, a subsidiary\nof Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, to build a new nuclear\nfacility in the state using Construction Work in Progress (CWIP)\nfinancing (also called advanced cost recovery).\n

\n“Investment in nuclear power is the antithesis of the kind of\n\n<\/a>\ninvestments you would want to make under the current uncertain\nconditions,” explained nuclear industry authority Mark Cooper,\na senior fellow for economic analysis at Vermont Law School’s\nInstitute for Energy and the Environment. “They cannot raise\nthe capital to build these plants in normal markets under the normal\nregulatory structures.”\n

\nCWIP would allow the utility to raise the money necessary to build a\nnuclear power plant by billing ratepayers in advance of and during\nconstruction.\n

\n“Construction Work in Progress was intended to circumvent the\n\n<\/a>\ncore consumer protection of the regulatory decision-making\nprocess,” Cooper explained. “It exposes ratepayers to\nall the risk.” The nuclear industry’s answer to its\npost-Fukushima challenges, he said, “is to simply rip out the\nheart of consumer protection and turn the logic of capital markets\non their head.”\n<\/blockquote>\nAnd the Iowa Utilities Board staff agreed with Cooper and recommended against CWIP.\n

\nHis message to policymakers is simple, Cooper said. “This is\nan investment you would not make with your own money. Therefore, you\nshould not make it with the ratepayers’ money.”\n<\/blockquote>\nMeanwhile, in Georgia:\n\n\n
\nVogtle has just been licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission\n(NRC), causing a stir among environmental activists. To Cooper, the\nNRC’s decision on Vogtle was “a non-event” because, he\nsaid, “The morning after the license was issued, nobody on\nWall Street woke up and said, ‘Hey! Now I’m going to buy in!'” The\nlicensing decision had, he said, “no effect on the\neconomics.”\n

\nMore significantly, he added, the Obama administration has not\nadvanced the Vogtle $8.33 billion federal loan guarantee that has\nbeen on hold since last year because of the budget and schedule\nproblems.\n

\n“The Obama administration talks about nuclear power,”\nCooper said, “but it has stopped putting the people’s money\nwhere their mouth is.”\n<\/blockquote>\nAnd the people of Georgia can demand Georgia Power stop putting\nits customers money where its mouth is by demanding an end to CWIP.\n

\nWhat can we do for power instead?\n

\nCooper pointed out that renewables are an economically viable\nalternative to nuclear power. “They always say it’s hard to do\nrenewables and it’s hard to convince people to do efficiency,”\nhe explained. “But then they always assume it’s easy to build\nnuclear. And it’s not.”\n

\n\n“Base load,” Cooper said, “is so 20th\ncentury.” Given “the sum total of the tools we have for\nintegrating resources and managing the grid,”<\/a> he explained,\n“it is time for utilities that are not transitioning to grow\nup and adopt some new technology.”\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<\/a>\nNew technology like\n\nDr. Sidney Smith has already developed<\/a>\nwith his electric meters to enable a commodity market in solar power,\nto provide lower rates for customers, resilient power sources, energy independence, and profit for all involved.\nGeorgia Power could stop being a 20th<\/sup><\/small> drag\nand become a 21st<\/sup><\/small> century leader.\nOr, if gapower won’t lead, we can tell it to get out of the way\nso we can get on with distributed renewable energy.\n

\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Iowa is rejecting CWIP, and Georgia can, too. Here’s why. Herman K. Trabish wrote for Green Tech Media 22 February 2012, The Nuclear Industry\u2019s Answer to Its Marketplace Woes: Construction Work in Progress (CWIP) financing shifts the risks of nuclear energy to utility ratepayers, A sign of the nuclear industry’s difficult situation in the aftermath […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97,142,14,17,8,18,2,1808,20,312,21,22,23,24,3],"tags":[824,2903,1323,8746,1037,2904,2652,8701,8708,397,8841,8737,2162,2515,432,8714],"class_list":["post-1012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-cwip","category-economy","category-ga-psc","category-georgia","category-georgia-power","category-government","category-iowa","category-law","category-lower-rates-for-customers-llc","category-planning","category-politics","category-renewable-energy","category-solar","category-transparency","tag-baseload","tag-commodity-market","tag-construction-work-in-progress","tag-cwip","tag-distributed","tag-doe","tag-dr-sidney-smith","tag-georgia","tag-georgia-power","tag-grid","tag-iowa","tag-nuclear","tag-obama","tag-psc","tag-renewable","tag-solar"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-gk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1012\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}