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Microsoft 'Cuts The Cord' With A Local Power Utility To Pursue Greener Energy (seattletimes.com)
Frosty Piss summarizes the Seattle Times:
Microsoft will bypass Puget Sound Energy to secure carbon-free power on wholesale markets under an agreement with state regulators. In 2015, 60 percent of PSE electricity came from coal and natural-gas plants, according to company statistics. The agreement calls for Microsoft to pay a $23.6 million transition fee to Puget Sound Energy, which the utility will pass on to its Western Washington customers... But the settlement does not address one major financial issue that hangs over PSE and its customers -- how to handle the costs of shutting down coal-fired units in the Colstrip, Montana, power station... State regulators and Puget Sound Energy determined that Microsoft is legally responsible for a share of the Colstrip, Montana coal-fired generating plant costs.
No only that, but PSE is going to be stuck with the clean-up costs of the sites containing the coal-fired energy generation plants.
There is this:
The agreement calls for Microsoft to pay a $23.6âmillion transition fee to PSE, which the utility will pass on to its Western Washington customers.
A "transition fee"... What does this mean? They have to pay not use the utility? I'm not saying the fee is bad, just that the story doesn't say what this fee is for. Reading the actual agreement suggests that the costs of the Montana clean-up is still an open issue and will be litigated.
Now, Microsoft "dislike" aside, and for the sake of argument let's suppose it was some other big customer, why should they pay anything for the clean-up and shut-down of the Montana coal plant? Did Microsoft (or any other big customer) have some powerful say in the construction of this plant? A choice not to support it's use? Is there some compelling reason why Microsoft (or any other customer) should pay for Puget Sound Energy's ill-advised reliance on an energy resource that was almost certainly environmentally questionable when the plant was built?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Power companies do this sort of thing all the time. For instance...
Back when we still resided in Seattle, (20+ years ago) my wife and I were up in NE Washington on our way home from a vacation in the Canadian Rockies. We decided to take in a dam tour up in that corner of the state. Funny thing was, that dam was owned by Seattle City Light! They weren't sending that electricity over 300 miles of dedicated line over to Seattle, though - they were selling it to local utilities, and through a game of economic musical chairs were in turn eventually getting an equivalent amount of electricity from sources much nearer to Seattle.
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