Many in the dark about energy

The city of Edgerton's rejection of a proposed power plant illustrates, once again, the difficulties of finding publicly acceptable places to generate electricity in Wisconsin. It is time for the state Public Service Commission to devise a new process for siting power plants, because the current system isn't working.

Edgerton's city council voted this week to send the Calpine Corp. back to California with no hopes of building its 765-megawatt, $ 500 million power plant -- or anything like it. Hundreds of citizens in Edgerton voiced their opposition to the plant, proposed for a 75-acre site near an industrial park but also within walking distance of a residential neighborhood. Opponents didn't like the Calpine site because it was close to a park, a quarter mile from a hospital and within one mile of three schools.

This plant would have generated electricity by burning natural gas, but some folks in Edgerton reacted as if Calpine would have been churning out nerve gas.

The Calpine site in Edgerton wasn't ideal -- but neither was it terrible. And yet, Calpine's ''merchant plant'' proposal (it would have sold to Wisconsin and out-of-state power companies) seemed doomed from the start.

How can Wisconsin move beyond NIMBYism, in which almost every power plant proposal is hotly contested, to pragmatism? This is a state that has teetered on the brink of energy shortages for several years. Only a cooler-than-normal summer prevented more problems this year.

People crave electricity for an ever-expanding list of reasons, but they don't want to acknowledge that almost all of it comes from power plants. We've become like people who enjoy eating steaks but object to slaughterhouses.

In a statewide generation plan unveiled last week, the four-year-old ''Customers First!'' group summed up the predicament: ''(W)hile Wisconsin continues to work on electric restructuring in a careful and deliberate fashion, it is clear that the state faces a continuing electric generation shortage. . . . A strong Wisconsin economy is driving power demand upward, straining transmission and generation systems. . . . We need to find responsible ways to get the electricity our state needs.''

Customers First! members, which range from Madison Gas and Electric Co. to the Citizens Utility Board and the Environmental Decade, are worried that Wisconsin's investor-owned utilities have no new power plants on their drawing boards.

Local opposition to power plants is one reason utilities are so skittish. In addition to economic barriers erected by law, utilities face public opposition at almost every turn.

Let's hear from the PSC and the Legislature on ways to get beyond the ''not in my back yard'' attitudes that threaten Wisconsin's energy security. That starts with restoring the incentives for Wisconsin power companies to build their own plants, while consulting with the communities they serve.

If not Edgerton, where? If not tomorrow, when? Wisconsin citizens should think long and hard about those questions before the light bulbs start to flicker.

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" ... A strong Wisconsin economy is driving power demand upward, straining transmission and generation systems.... We need to find responsible ways to get the electricity our state needs ... "

"This plant would have generated electricity by burning natural gas, but some folks in Edgerton reacted as if Calpine would have been churning out nerve gas. "