EoW March 2011

EuroWire – March 2011

Transat lant ic Cable

Energy

After more than seven million

installations, a backlash against ‘smart

meters’ erupts in Northern California

“The meters are a crucial building block for what the Obama

administration and the industry envision as an efficient ‘green

grid.’ The goals are to help utilities allocate power more smoothly

and to give people more information on how they consume

energy and incentives to use less.” Felicity Barringer, of the

International Herald Tribune, was referring to wireless meters

which transmit real-time data on patterns in the use of electricity.

Since 2006, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) has installed more

than seven million of them, but the Northern California utility

now finds itself up against fierce opposition from people who

claim that the meters threaten their liberties and their health.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, Ms Barringer reported: “Stop

Smart Meters” signs and bumper stickers have been multiplying,

and protesters have been arrested for attempting to prevent

deliveries of the devices. (“New Electricity Meters Stir Fears,”

January).

The campaign is supported both by left-leaning individualists

and by conservatives associated with the Tea Party, the anti-

government political movement that played a prominent role

in the 2010 mid-term elections. Its members were key to the

successful Republican bid to wrest control of the House of

Representatives from President Obama’s Democratic party. The

Tea Party takes its name from the dumping of tea in Boston

Harbour in 1773, the anti-tax gesture that has become an iconic

event of the American Revolution.

Some of those objecting to PG&E’s meters regard the monitoring

of home appliances as intrusive, while others perceive a health

threat in the meters’ radio-frequency radiation. Whatever the

impetus, the highly vocal opposition has been effective. In Santa

Cruz County, south of San Jose, the Board of Supervisors recently

extended a year-long moratorium on installations. And officials

in Marin County, north of San Francisco, approved a ban on the

meters in the unincorporated, largely rural areas that are home to

about a quarter of the population of the county.

The

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Herald Tribune

considered the health concerns aroused

by the smart meters. These centre on a phenomenon

known as “electromagnetic hypersensitivity,” or EHS, whose

complainants trace a variety of symptoms (dizziness, fatigue,

headaches, sleeplessness, heart palpitations) to radiation