Contra Costa Supervisors voted 4-1 to place a 0.625% sales tax increase on the June ballot earlier today. If the measure passes, sales tax rates will reach an all-time Northern California record of 10.875% in portions of West County and 10.375% in Antioch, Concord, Richmond, and San Ramon (and this is before the November transit tax adds another 0.5% to our bills).

Supervisors plowed forward despite revelations that the County had greatly overstated the loss of federal funds from last year’s budget bill. Instead of delaying the tax (as Supervisor Candace Andersen suggested), or seeking a lower amount, they moved forward with the full take hike in June.

Expect to hear much more from us on the sales tax measure as well as other taxes and bonds once the ballot is finalized later this month.

More Concerns About MCE

After MCE CEO Dawn Weisz presented at our February meeting, CoCoTax members David Berti and Robert Lavoie analyzed her slide deck. Before retiring, David ran a consulting engineering firm and Rob is a fractional CFO for small businesses and a former CPA.

You can find their markup of her slides here and their analysis below.

MCE uses the term Renewable Energy as a positive characteristic of energy generation, although there are acceptable and unacceptable types. Renewable energy is generated from natural sources that replenish themselves but is not necessarily non-polluting—wood is renewable for example. Large hydroelectric plants are not considered renewable in California due to environmental issues. Renewable energy sources per page 20 are bioenergy, geothermal, small hydro, solar, and wind. Non-renewable sources are large hydroelectric, natural gas, and nuclear.

Burning fuel produces pollutants and carbon dioxide (CO2), which is a colorless, odorless, non-toxic, non-combustible gas that makes up a tiny part of our atmosphere (0.045±% = 450 ppm), and used to be considered the ideal by-product of combustion (burning). Due to concerns about global warming, CO2 has been rebranded a pollutant (recently reversed by Trump). Production of CO2 is often referred to simply as carbon. (1) Energy from natural gas, coal, wood, and fuel oil come from burning and therefore produce CO2—such sources are spurned by the state.

The ideal electrical energy source can be varied and turned off and on quickly to match demands. Such sources include natural gas, coal, wood, and fuel oil, while hydropower and nuclear are best operated at near constant levels. (2)

The main problems with solar power are no production at night, large land use, and reduced capacity over time. Problems with wind turbines are no power production under low and high winds, and the killing of birds. Both have relatively short lives.  The intermittent operational problem can be rectified by building storage, which now means pumped storage hydro or batteries, which have problems and significantly increase total power cost (3).

Residential cost of electricity in the continental USA is highest in California. Idaho has the lowest costs at only 38% of California’s. Electricity is exceptionally expensive in California primarily due to investments in grid infrastructure to prevent wildfires, high operational costs for monopoly utilities, and high regulatory compliance costs for climate goals as explained above. High taxes, high cost of living, and cap and trade with high speed rail costs also contribute. 

It is expensive to have clean, carbon-free electricity that is also dependable. Carbon-free requirements (no CO2) limit available power sources and require the building of expensive storage. It can be argued that carbon-free is not worth the cost, given the unknowns and the huge yearly increases now in CO2 output by China and India. Alternatively, by acknowledging that large hydro and nuclear are carbon free and clean (and renewable in the case of hydro), we could reduce the network costs and still accomplish some of the climate goals. 

Although MCE acts as a "community choice aggregator" that buys much of their power, MCE has invested $62 million in local renewable projects, mainly solar sites. MCE uses PG&E’s power Transmission and Distribution (T&D) system, which is at present the largest part of the cost of electricity (4). With higher PCIA fees, this makes electricity from  MCE 6% more expensive than from PG&E per page 8.

Page 20 shows energy source breakdowns. Except for bioenergy and natural gas, all energy sources shown are “clean” and produce little or no pollutants or CO2. PG&E is 95% “clean” and standard MCE Light Green is 98% “clean.” But either storage or combustion energy sources are needed to counter the intermittent nature of many clean renewables, as noted above.

In summary, we do not believe that MCE provides real solutions to California’s energy problems of high prices and unreliability. MCE is mainly competing with PG&E for the same power resources. MCE is worthwhile as limited competition to the PG&E monopoly and will enable customers to obtain their electricity almost totally from solar energy sources, if they so desire, but with the likelihood of added costs to do so. MCE claims other benefits to the community that we have not addressed.

Notes

(1)   CO2 is plant food and nurseries run at up to 1500 ppm, which encourages significant increases in productivity and leaf growth). Water vapor (makes up 0 to 4%,  0.4 % (4,000 PPM) on average of the  atmosphere) and methane (.00017% ( 1.7 PPM) but is claimed to have 28-84X more impact on the climate than CO2) are considered bigger greenhouse gases. But CO2 is produced in much greater quantities and is therefore paramount according to supporters of the global warming theory, which include the California state government. However, the science is complex and uncertain.

(2)   All nuclear power is fission only, with uranium or plutonium. Fusion may or may not be available far in the future, but technical problems are legion. Nuclear energy is generally considered non-renewable because it relies on uranium-235, a finite resource. Much of this problem can be overcome by breeder reactions, which have not been used in the US due to weapon concerns.

(3)   Batteries require the rare earth minerals, have relatively short lives, and have disposal issues.  It is now impossible to have enough batteries to completely back up the unreliable Solar and Wind capacity.  

(4)   Transmission and Distribution (T&D) is 29.53¢ = 65% of 45.76¢ total cost on page 8.

Upcoming Events (all lunches at Denny’s)

Friday, March 27th: When Public Schools Stray from Education – Attorney and public school mother Laura Powell will discuss her thoughts about the waste and parental rights violations occurring as local school districts focus on student gender identity rather than teaching the ABCs.

Save the date. Friday, April 24. Contra Costa County Chief Administrative Officer Monica Niño.