Energy and the Environment [The Price of Power studio session]

Transcript: Energy and environment

Participants didn't discuss environmental effects in great detail, but they did touch on those that are the most visible and contentious in our region: fossil fuel production in Wyoming and Utah, nuclear waste storage in Nevada, Utah, and Idaho, dams in Oregon and Idaho, and electrical generating plants throughout the region.

These are selections from the whole transcript. Some comments will also occur on other themed pages because they cover more than one topic.

Jim McClure: Well, right now we have a tremendous demand for natural gas because it was relatively low priced, relatively abundant and relatively friendly to the environment and so the, the demand for natural gas went up very rapidly and now we're bumping against the ceiling of availability at prices we're willing to pay at the current market price.
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Jude Noland: And we also saw a tremendous leaps in efficiency in terms of gas turbine technology where they were must more efficient and they were also developed in to be much less polluting and so it was a to a large extent a win/win situation. The problem is that with everybody putting their eggs in that basket we had price, pressure on the price of natural gas and it starts to become expensive.
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Michael Grainey: The cleanup costs of that reactor ran into the hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars if not billions of dollars to that utility, lost to the damage caused by the meltdown. I think that there's certainly not a utility in the United States that's been willing to take that kind of risk since then and for a new generation of reactors I think it's going to be a very hard sale. You know I think we also need to recognize that any resource has environmental impacts, even renewable energy, and I admit that, that there's adverse impacts. I think there's less and I think they're easier to control, but they all have impacts and I think that's why energy efficiency is really fundamental. Whatever resource we use we need to use wisely.
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Corbin McNeill: And if you looked at one of the results of natural gas expansion there are 13 liquid natural gas facilities under plans for licensing in North America today. They each of those implies, importing more natural gas to this country and making us, and displacing our current dependence on oil with dependence on natural gas and part of that is because we don't have the, we have opposition toward utilizing existing resources in the country valid or invalid, but just saying we have debates on that issue in the United States. There's a book coming out later this year that really looks a paradoxes that we deal with as a nation. You know with the fact that we want cleaner and cleaner water and cleaner and cleaner air, but at the same time we have tremendous increases in life span. The fact that we had objection to building the pipeline in Alaska because we were going to decimate the caribou herds, and the caribou herds have grown by something like 200% in the time that, that's been there. This issue of what happens when you have a nuclear accident is another one that has you know a great deal. And we really struggle as a nation to some extent with these things, it's not unnatural, but in fact its probably good for us to debate those kinds of issues as we go forward, but there is a lot of paradoxical outcomes that come from, from these debates.
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Mark Maher: And if we're going to smaller, more locally distributed resources it's going to be "not build in my backyard again" the arguments we'll have to go through. If we continue with wind development the sites will get further and further away from existing infrastructure and transmission is going to become a major cost component of that too and so that's an issue we're looking hard at how, how can we minimize the cost of that transmission. Large coal plant development they tend to be mind mouth plants and they're far from grids also so as we look at that portfolio development the transmission component becomes a pretty large player in there. Even though transmission is probably what 10% of a rate payer's bill it's, it's the environmental, social impacts also that transmission bring along with it.
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Ralph Cavanagh: A final constraint that certainly bears mention and here I might actually drag Corbin along with me. I think we are all increasingly concerned about the gigantic experiment that we're collectively conducting with the atmosphere in terms of increased concentrations of greenhouse gases. I'm sure this panel is all over the place is terms of how it feels about climate science, but it has to be cause for at least alarm that in our lifetimes the atmosphere is changing in ways that we have reason to think have, have significant implications for the climate of the country and the earth. And I think all of us would like to see that climate experiment suspended if it could be done at a reasonable cost. That will enter into the equation about what to do and it will influence the development portfolios. It will help nuclear, but it will also help energy efficiency and renewable and my own view is that they will end up prevailing, but that's part of the competitive equation that we haven't mentioned yet. And I think for the public and for policy makers an increasingly important part.
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Peter Johnson: Joan, let me suggest let's go back to one of the things we saw in the beginning and that is the methane natural gas source here in the western you know in Wyoming starting there, but its suggested it's going to go all over the country potentially. I for one and I'd be interested in how others feel about that, I think that has merit because natural gas and the combined cycle gas turbines are right at the leading edge of what I consider to be right now the best base resources that we can build. So and, and as somebody mentioned earlier maybe Corbin that yeah we're not natural with natural gas we're particularly liquefied natural gas we're brining it in from all over the world so we're just as vulnerable as we are with oil. But I think that obviously there's going to be an EIS, an Environmental Impact Statement, that should be you know prepared for that entire you know idea of technology that we'll end up you know with recommendations to mitigate impacts on wildlife and habitat. Now whether it survives that test that's something again that I compliment Senator McClure. Thank goodness we have a National Environmental Policy Act so that we can critically look at all of the alternatives, but that one seems to have merit in the back of my mind particularly to supply they say in what 10 years of supply of natural gas for this country to serve the needs because right now I think the fastest growing base technology that's being invested in is gas.
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Corbin McNeill: Peter, I live in Wyoming and while I'm not involved in the politics of Wyoming I can tell you this is probably the most contentious issue in the state today. And right in the area, the Green River Basin that was highlighted in that article and it, you know if you over fly that area you have some sympathy for the people that say because you see the roads and the bare-scaped lands and everything else.
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Ralph Cavanagh: And the waterways.
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Corbin McNeill: Yeah my view is that each of these and this would be supportive of, of Ralph and that each of these issues needs to be addressed under the circumstances of you've got to restore the place to its natural habitat. That then incurs a cost that begins to find the right economic source. I, my view is that what many people call externalities right whether it's CO2 emission into the air we don't have ways to value those to charge the cost to the person that utilizes them and it is the inability to do that in my opinion and, and to have a definition that, that goes out 30 or 40 years in time that really causes us to have these just arguments about cost versus environmental impact and things of that nature. For instance if you were to say, All right, all those places have to be restored like you know in I think coal mining regions in the midwest when they have a pit mine they've got to restore it back to something similar to what it was.
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Jim McClure: Approximate original . . .
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Corbin McNeill: Yeah and, and if we could do that in what we have going forward then we begin to achieve what I think are the right economic decision criteria that I would be confident in which I'm not confident in today as to what is the right portfolio choice.
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Ralph Cavanagh: But the . . . there are special places where we shouldn't drill.
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Corbin McNeill: I, I'm not going to argue about you know I don't want anybody drilling in the Grand Teton National Park and a fine wilderness area or things of that nature. I'm not, these are open public lands, Bureau of Land Management lands, I mean they're, they're not highly valued for by most people for other purposes.
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Jim McClure: Having been at the focal point of a lot of those environmental debates -- they are highly valued by a lot of people, and there isn't an acre out there anywhere that isn't highly valued by some, somebody who's going to contend for their protection and for their use in the way they define the use. But I do agree with you that we need to find a, a much, much better way to internalize cost.
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Corbin McNeill: And you were beginning to do that in terms of forests and . . .
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Jim McClure: I wish we did it across the board much better and I agree with with Peter that I'm glad we have those environmental policies in place, I think that they've in some instances overrun their objectives and we need to balance that dialogue better and make it just better decision-making process, but nevertheless we're there and I'm glad we're there. There are a couple of areas we haven't touched on Joan one is where do we go. We talked mostly about electricity -- maybe its because of this light bulb out.
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Michael Grainey: I think our goal should be to assure an affordable, reliable supply of power with environmental impacts that don't cause significant damage so that we can pass on the environment to our next generation and be proud of what we pass on to them.
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Ralph Cavanagh: But of course we don't want to have to rely solely on volunteers to solve national environmental problems and so the other, if you read your utility bill and can't understand it, if you don't know where the power is coming from and don't see the energy efficiency investments then the hometown utility remains a crucial point of leverage as an investor for all of us.
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