Today in the Express-News Jan Jarboe Russell wrote a great op-ed piece on recent news that Mayor Julian Castro had suggested a reduced investment in the South Texas Project, the nuclear generating facility located at Bay City, Texas of which San Antonio currentlly has a 40% investment in. In the piece Russell says that reducing our investment gives San Antonio more flexibility in terms of its energy portfolio and financial feasiblity. “In terms of the city-wide dialogue, we need to make sure that investments in nuclear and renewable sources in solar and wind not only work for CPS Energy’s bottom-line but also for the city’s long-term economic vitality — in other words, the city’s bottom-line,” said Russell. This makes a lot of business sense with regards to San Antonio’s energy future.
Currently Texas leads the nation in wind energy production and CPS is number one in the nation for wind energy capacity according to the San Antonio Business Journal. With more units coming online every quarter Texas will continue to provide more options for energy other than fossil fuel. Solar continues to grow as another source of renewable alternative energy for the city. Recently San Antonio became home to Texas’ largest solar project at the Pearl Brewery through a joint venture with CPS. This is just a start to what San Antonio could do on the solar energy front.
In Energy Digital article Bob Sohn, senior advisor for Pearl Brewery planning, pointed out the opportunities for San Antonio. “Texas should be a prime location for solar, but it currently generates a relatively small amount of solar energy,” said Sohn. “Our hope is that our solar partnership with CPS Energy will serve to encourage further development of solar projects in Texas.” While the solar array is impressive it only generates one quarter of the capacity for the building’s energy needs. To really realize solar energy as a viable alternative larger invesetment will be needed in San Antonio to help provide financially viable sources for energy.
One thing to consider regarding both alternative energy sources is that these are leveraging early generation technology. While it is good to invest in these options to help provide growth to the industry the investment should be limited to allow for new technology advances to provide higher capacity solutions in the future. That’s another good reason for keeping an investment in STP to help provide San Antonio with low cost non-fossil fuel energy capacity. This will help San Antonio to continue to reduce dependency on fossil fuels as the technology develops. It would be great to see the facility at Calaveras Lake eventually phased out as new sources replace the capacity of the plant.
One option San Antonio should consider in the area of alternative energy is to invest in developing new innovation and turn San Antonio into an industry leader in this area. I recently wrote about the possibility of creating innovation incubation in green energy. Having funds available to help foster this innovation could help jumpstart the development across the board. If that money had been earmarked for STP this option would never be available. Now we have options. One thing to consider is why no one ever thought of having this option to start with. jdhoward, in comments to the Russel article, points out that there seems to be a lack of “out of the box” thinking on these matters. I completely agree and feel some more discussion is needed on these matters.
I’m sure many will question the reduced investment and only time will tell if this served as the right option. For now I think we’re on the right track thanks to Mayor Castro. A pretty good accomplishment after only two weeks in office if you ask me.