NOW'S THE TIME TO DEVELOP RENEWABLE ENERGY.

Byline: Ruth Galanter 

THE city of Los Angeles has long been a leader in environmental protection, water and power conservation, and recycling. Yet our movement away from fossil fuels toward renewable sources of electricity generation has been slow.

The city controller recently reported that the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power's Green Power Program has generated far more public support than it has generated actual green power. And we must do better or it will cost us more money.

During last year's electric-power crisis, Los Angeles' residential and business customers demonstrated their commitment to conservation by cutting power use by 5 percent.

But we are a society that uses a lot of electricity - for everything from heavy manufacturing to powering TVs to lighting movie sets to running computers and recharging cell phones. We should be proud of how we've cut back, but we have to do more than conserve.

Unlike the electric utilities supplying most of California, LADWP runs its own generating plants. Within the Los Angeles Basin, all our power plants have long since been switched from coal or oil to much cleaner natural gas. More than half of our power is still generated by burning coal, but now we burn it in Arizona, Utah and Nevada. Instead of generating power with clean, renewable resources that benefit us all, we've made the worst-polluting generators our neighbors' problem.

LADWP produces less than 2 percent of its electricity from renewable sources. The department's program responsible for promoting and developing alternative sources of electricity has lagged behind programs of other utilities in California. It's time to take the plunge into a serious generation program using renewable sources.

This will not come cheaply. LADWP will have to make significant new investments, whether in wind farms, massive solar plants or other renewable power systems, and the money invested in these new generating facilities must come from existing revenues or out of the funds the LADWP transfers to the city budget each year.

Earlier this year, the state Legislature required that 20 percent of the electricity the privately owned utilities sell within the next 15 years must come from clean, renewable sources. Because LADWP is owned by the city rather than shareholders, it's not covered by this legislation. Yet. But if we don't act soon, the state or federal government will make us act.

It's in our own interest to avoid this. By avoiding the state's mandate to sell our power plants, we kept our lights on and rates stable during the energy crisis, while our neighbors were suffering blackouts and skyrocketing electric bills.

LADWP and its customers must become more creative. For example, LADWP is currently exploring buying power from a ``bioconverter'' that takes yard waste and, using microbes, turns it into gas, which then is used to generate electricity. And it creates other byproducts, which can be reused or recycled and sold.

The result is electricity without polluting our air or our neighbors' air, and we reduce the amount of trash that goes into our landfills.

It is time to take the plunge into a serious generation program using renewable sources. LADWP will have to make major new investments in wind, solar, biomass, hydro and geothermal power plants. If we do not begin a serious, long-term effort to generate a substantial part of our electricity from renewable sources, we will have to spend huge sums on lawsuits and fines. And we will still have to build these types of power plants in the long run.

As customers of LADWP, we must all demand that the utility begin planning and building clean, alternative-fuel power plants. We have to do it, and the longer we delay, the more it will cost all of us.