A consortium of California cities and the Intermountain Power Agency of Utah, which has been supplying them with sixty-five percent of their energy, have been engaging in a series of bluffs and counterbluffs over the future of alternative energy in California’s Southland.

Although the cities’ long-term contracts with Intermountain do not expire until 2027, Intermountain had issued them an ultimatum requiring that they agree to a renewal offer by May 2007. They have now extended that deadline until 2023, and will attempt to find alternative energy sources to supplant the cheap coal-based power which they had been providing up to now.

Intermountain is investigating clean-burning alternative energy biomass as a replacement for coal. Intermountain’s general manager, Reed Searle, said that the power company would attempt to satisfy the greenhouse-gas emissions standards in the recent California green legislation which will become effective on January 1, 2007.

The California cities, including Burbank, Pasadena, Anaheim, Glendale, and Riverside, as well as the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, will turn their attention to alternative energy from desert wind farms and solar collection. They are gambling that those, and other alternative energy technologies, will be advanced enough by 2027, when their Intermountain contracts expire, to shoulder the load.

Burbank’s officials originally agreed to renew their contract, but, following urging from U.S. Senator Diane Feinstein (D-Calif), changed their decision.

Meanwhile, the California utilities which were purchasing power from Intermountain are scrambling to guarantee ways of replacing it. Faced with infrastructure issues, and having to rely on relatively untested alternative energy technologies, they met with California State Senator Don Perata, who authored the green legislation, to discuss their concerns.

Phyllis Currie, the general manager of Pasadena Water & Power, wanted to impress on Perata the challenges of replacing 65% of her utility’s cheap, coal-based power supply with alternative energy.

The Southern California utilities hope that, if Intermountain succeeds in reducing greenhouse emissions with its own alternative energy program, state regulators will allow them to renew their contracts.

The odds are good that other cities will be watching to see how Southern California’s gamble pays off.