From the
LA Times: Larry Eisenberg had a vision. "Amazing," he called it. "Spectacular." The Los Angeles Community College District would become a paragon of clean energy. By generating solar, wind and geothermal power, the district would supply all its electricity needs. Not only would the nine colleges sever ties to the grid, saving millions of dollars a year, they would make money by selling surplus power. Thanks to state and federal subsidies, construction of the green energy projects would cost nothing upfront.
As head of a $5.7-billion, taxpayer-funded program to rebuild the college campuses, Eisenberg commanded attention. But his plan for energy independence was seriously flawed.
He overestimated how much power the colleges could generate. He underestimated the cost. And he poured millions of dollars into designs for projects that proved so impractical or unpopular they were never built.
These and other blunders cost nearly $10 million that could have paid for new classrooms, laboratories and other college facilities, a Times investigation found.
The problems with Eisenberg's energy vision were fundamental. For starters, there simply wasn't room on the campuses for all the generating equipment required to become self-sufficient. Some of the colleges wouldn't come close to that goal even if solar panels, wind turbines and other devices were wedged into every available space.
Going off the grid did not make economic sense either. Given the cost of alternative energy technology, it would be more expensive for the district to generate all its own electricity than to continue paying utilities for power.
Weather and geology also refused to cooperate.
Three solar power arrays had to be scrapped because the intended locations were atop seismic faults.
Plans for large-scale wind power collided with the reality that prevailing winds at nearly all the campuses are too weak to generate much electricity. To date, a single wind turbine has been installed, as a demonstration project. It spins too slowly in average winds to power a 60-watt light bulb.
In the end, Eisenberg's grand plan was scaled down to what was actually doable, which was a fraction of the green energy capacity he had envisioned.
By then, the district had committed at least $4 million to designs for solar and wind energy farms that would never get beyond blueprints.
As one project after another was scratched, an elaborate plan to pay for it all with money from private investors fell apart. But the investment banks that put the deals together had to be paid for their work. The cost: $2.8 million.
At Southwest College, the district spent an additional $1.2 million on a parking lot shaded by solar panels, only to abandon the project with the work half done.
At Valley College, one of the solar arrays that was actually built sat idle for 14 months, thanks to a dispute between a contractor and the district over who was supposed to arrange a hookup to the power grid. The delay cost $1.5 million in potential energy savings, according to the college.
Eisenberg, the district's executive director of facilities planning and development, conceded some mistakes but voiced no regrets. He cast himself as an environmental visionary and predicted that the college system would eventually achieve energy independence. "Somebody needs to be first," he said. "If the great explorers really had a map and knew where they were going, maybe we wouldn't have the result we have today."
Unyielding enthusiasm
Eisenberg, now 59, grew up in Sun Valley, the son of a TV repairman and a secretary for the probation department. He was student body president of North Hollywood High School and became the first member of his family to attend college. He earned a bachelor's degree in urban studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a master's in public affairs at the University of Texas at Austin.
After a succession of jobs managing public buildings in Wisconsin, Eisenberg was hired in 1993 as facilities chief for Washington County, Ore., which encompasses suburbs of Portland.
In 1995, he and his wife, Christine, filed for personal bankruptcy, listing assets of $236,000 and liabilities of $262,000. Most of the debt, aside from their home loan, was to credit-card companies; they also owed $21,000 in back taxes. The bankruptcy case was closed after the couple completed a payment plan in 1999.
Eisenberg ran into difficulties at his job as well.
His boss, Bob Davis, "wanted to get rid of Larry because of mismanagement," Washington County Commissioner Andy Duyck said in an interview. Duyck said he did not know the reason for Davis' displeasure, and Davis, the county administrator, declined to comment.
Eisenberg recalled that Davis "let me know he was unhappy" with his job performance. He depicted it as a clash of management styles: Davis' was conservative, while his own was creative and entrepreneurial, Eisenberg said.
"I'm not risk-averse," Eisenberg said. "In retrospect, maybe they think they should have gotten rid of me sooner."
Eisenberg left the Oregon job in August 2003 to become head of facilities and new construction for the Los Angeles college district. He acknowledged that he had not told district officials about his bankruptcy. He said it had no bearing on his professional life.
Eisenberg was put in charge of the campus construction program, one of California's largest public works projects.
A mandate from the district's Board of Trustees to incorporate renewable power into new buildings offered him a chance to make his name as a leader in green construction.
He was tireless in promoting the program's eco-friendly aspects, traveling at taxpayer expense to Zurich, Switzerland, to speak at a conference of the International Sustainable Campus Network. He made similar presentations in New Orleans, Seattle and Atlanta.
His advocacy had a messianic tinge. In one e-mail to his advisors, he described his renewable-energy agenda as "what the world needs now. No one else is doing it. We can and will."
The trustees encouraged Eisenberg's push for green energy, even as his plan grew steadily more ambitious. They liked the idea of freeing the colleges from dependence on fossil fuels and were content to leave the practical details to him.
But Eisenberg's enthusiasm obscured an inconvenient reality: With the technology now available, the cost of renewable power exceeds that of energy derived from burning coal and natural gas.
Green energy advocates often argue that the added cost is justified by the reduction in pollution, particularly carbon emissions that contribute to global warming.
Eisenberg talked up the environmental benefits of his plan. But he also insisted that it would cost less than continuing to rely on conventional sources of electricity. Private investors, he explained, would put up almost all the money in order to take advantage of tax breaks, and they would pass the savings on to the district.
In the end, he said, government subsidies would reduce the district's purchase and installation costs as much as 90%.
One thing was for sure: No matter how it was financed, the bill for all those solar panels and wind turbines would be huge. Eisenberg's cost estimates for taking the nine campuses off the grid ranged as high as $975 million — this for a college system that in 2010 spent less than $8 million on power bills.
An engineering consultant put the cost far higher: $1.9 billion. That number caught the attention of Marshall Drummond, then chancellor of the college district. It was enough to pay for several dozen new classroom buildings. In December 2008, the chancellor summoned Eisenberg and his energy team to explain.
Drummond was unimpressed by what he heard. In an e-mail to college presidents, he complained about "missing components and what may be shaky assumptions." He called Eisenberg's plan "an unvalidated 'dream.'"
Drummond welcomed Eisenberg's push for solar power and his efforts to maximize energy efficiency in new buildings.
What concerned him were what he called "Martian technologies."
Eisenberg wanted to spend $98 million on hydrogen fuel-cell equipment that had never been put into commercial operation. He called for spending $59 million on untried hydrogen storage devices and $78 million on batteries. The idea was to stock up on solar power during the day and use it at night, a concept experts see as too costly to be viable with current technology.
Eisenberg also proposed $78 million in geothermal and wind projects — even though local weather patterns had led his own technical advisors to conclude that these plans made no sense.
In regions prone to extremes of hot and cold, pumping water through pipes hundreds of feet underground to heat or cool buildings with geothermal energy can produce big savings. But in Southern California's temperate climate, a geothermal system would not work well and the savings were unlikely to justify the cost, the advisors said.
Eisenberg's enthusiasm for wind energy also outran the facts. Among the projects he touted was the Windjet, a windmill that could be built in various sizes, including one as big as a Ferris wheel.
Its creator, a Manhattan Beach inventor named Brad Sorenson, called the Windjet the "highest efficiency wind power system in history." It existed only in miniature prototype, run in part with a bicycle chain. Sorensen hauled the contraption around in the trunk of his car.
Eisenberg wanted to put one on each of the nine campuses.
A district energy advisor, Andrew Hoffman, dismissed the Windjet as a fantasy, telling Eisenberg that Sorensen "claims he can extract more power from the wind than is theoretically possible.
"When dealing with issues on the human scale, the laws of Newtonian physics are non-negotiable," Hoffman wrote.
Undeterred, Eisenberg asked Sorensen how soon he could produce a Windjet for each college. "We need to proceed immediately with purchase and installation," Eisenberg told the inventor in an e-mail.
Nothing came of the proposal.
"I don't think it's really ready for the world," Sorensen said in an interview.
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