I live in the PRK, for now. In my town there are two power plants sitting idle. These plants were built by a company named Capco. Capco built these plants as Co-Generation plants. That is they burn Ag. waste instead of natural gas. There are thousands of acres of trees, grapes ect. to supply the plants with more than enough ag. waste to run for years. What happened is that after these plants were running for about 2 years PG&E (Pacific Gas & Electric) came in and shut the plants down. I don't know if they bought them out or what but they shut them down. For years I could not figure out why they would do that.
Then I heard that because of the power shortage they were going to open one of them back up. But this time It was going to be converted to run on natural gas. I thought,"why natural gas?". Then my dad pointed it out to me. You see PG&E will sell the natural gas to the plant, making a profit, and then sell the electricity, also making a profit. That is why they shut these plants down over 8 years ago. They were not makeing ALL the money. That also explains why all the new power plants being proposed are natural gas plants.
Their are two other plants sitting idle with in 20 minutes of my house. Both of these were shut down by PG&E as well. I have called my local news and even CNN (I had to wash my phone about 6 times before I could use it again). No one in the media wanted to even check into this.
You know most companies that are having $$ problems lay off workers to cut costs. PG&E and Southern Edison have not layed anyone off. They are playing the Democrats in charge for every dime they can get. I have to take my hat off to them. They set this shit up years ago.
I love my town and my comunity but I hate Kalifornia!!