As you probably are aware, our state went through what the press called an "energy crisis" last year. We now know, particularly since the Enron debacle, that there was a fair bit of foul play and incompetence surrounding our shortfall in modestly priced electricity. Nonetheless, the rolling blackouts we endured forced us to reanalyse our energy situation and pursue alternatives to nuclear, coal and oil fired plants with greater vigor.

What we have found, a year later, is that so-called 'green energy' solutions (wind, micro-hydro, wave-power, bio-gas, solar) are actually simple to implement, are tremendously robust and reliable, and are as good for our economy and national security as they are for our environment. They generate none of the 'negative externalities' that plague fossil and nuclear fuel supplies and are invulnerable to terrorist attack. And they really work!

We favor now a strategy where both supply and distribution of energy are deregulated, leaving it up to producers and consumers to decide where and when and from whom to get their energy. What we are seeing all over our state now is the strong emergence of what we call "distributed generation" where invidividual home owners and businesses often become their own and their communities energy suppliers, using a combination of safe, clean and economical technologies.

Many of us here are actually producing more energy than we consume. In my own case, I took my own apartment "off the grid" last year and have been using attractive easy to install 1.2 kW array of photovoltaic cells on the roof to generate all the electricity I need for blackout-proof power all year long.

I use my solar generated electricity for everything from my refrigerator and microwave oven to my electric guitar and high-end video editing equipment.

I never have to worry about power failures, for they just don't happen, and I never worry about voltage spikes ruining my equipment, have no need for surge protectors or expensive UPS backup devices and never ever have to worry about the threat of a melt-down or disaster. I also don't pay any utility bills and never will again. The remarkable thing is that setting up the system was no harder than hooking up a home stereo system!

Friends of mine in the northern part of the state, where rainfall and cloud cover are more abundant, are also doing quite nicely with slightly larger sized solar arrays, and many of us are actually generating surpluses with the addition of small micro-wind turbines. In areas with running streams home-owners are tapping micro-hydro power for reliable 24 hour electricity. And where we have geothermal heat we also see residents and businesses providing themselves clean and unlimited power 24/7.

There are many other technologies we are implementing at the home, community and city scale level (residential fuel cells are another area we are exploring) and here in California we are proving on a daily basis that we can have the highest standard of living the world has ever known with the cleanest, safest and most risk free energy generation strategies the human race has ever conceived of. And we are proving that it can all be had at tremendous financial savings and returns on investment.

We would be happy to share our results, our strategies and the numbers we have obtained to help you make the responsible and correct decision to retire and rid yourselves of the nuclear power plants threatening your state and community. We in the renewable energy field actually call nuclear power plants “the most dangerous and ridiculous way to boil water ever invented”.

These dangerous plants were implemented as a transition state technology when we were facing a perceived oil crisis and didn’t fully understand what our other options were. We’ve grown up in the last half of the 20th century, and now, in the 21st, we don’t need these unacceptably risky behemoths at all.

Please let me know what I can do to help you in this matter; as a former resident of Dobbs Ferry with family and friends still living there, I can’t conscience the idea of these dangerous nukes continuing  to operate and putting all those I love so much at risk, particularly when so many good and inexpensive solutions to obviate these plants already exist.

T.H. Culhane is a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Los Angeles in Environmental Analysis and Policy

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