This governor's legacy runs on clean energy

[depakid]

Renewable sources - Kulongoski pushes a sweeping plan to help Oregon catch up to and move ahead of other states

SALEM -- Former Gov. Tom McCall had the bottle bill. Former Gov. John Kitzhaber had the Oregon Health Plan. By the time he hands the office keys to his successor in 2011, Gov. Ted Kulongoski says, he wants Oregon to be the clean energy capital of the nation.

Kulongoski's vision: Bustling rural refineries turning canola seeds into biodiesel. Buoys the size of refrigerators bobbing off the Oregon coast, turning waves into electricity. And thousands of people employed in new jobs aimed at slowing the pace of global warming and breaking the nation's addiction to foreign oil.

Kulongoski says he'll keep schools and health care at the top of his priority list, as will every governor who comes after him. But he says he wants "to do something that dramatically changes the way we are, for the better" by making Oregon the leader in alternative, renewable energy. That," Kulongoski says, "is the legacy issue."

<snip>

....other governors are working on their own legacies. At her inaugural speech, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius pledged to make her state the nation's leader in wind energy production. Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter has called for doubling his state's renewables mandate to 20 percent by 2015. But Kulongoski says Oregon -- with its sprawling farm fields, its famously windy Columbia River Gorge and its nearly 400 miles of coastline -- offers the best combination in the country for green energy and alternative fuels. He says he hopes his plan will restore the state's fading reputation as a national and world leader in innovative environmental laws.

More: http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/117109230722700.xml&coll=7

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Kulongoski's energy bills:

Renewable energy: 25 percent of state's electricity use by 2025 to come from renewable sources, including wind, solar, geothermal and ocean waves.

Biofuel: Tax incentives for growing crops to make ethanol or biodiesel; tax breaks for building biofuel plants; require dealers to sell blended fuel once in-state production hits certain levels.

Business tax incentives: Increase tax credit for renewable energy projects to 50 percent, up from 35 percent, and project cost limit to $20 million, up from $10 million.

Residential tax incentives: Increase maximum tax credit for fuel cells and wind generation to $6,000 over four years, up from $1,500.

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

1. Four permits have already been filed for wave generation sites.

[NNadir]

2. Does this mean he plans to oppose the two new gas terminals in Oregon?

Has he planned to phase out either natural gas based electricity or coal based electricity?

Inquiring minds want to know.

[depakid]

3. I don't know the exact positions

but I assume that coal burning in Oregon will be severely limited and the one plant we have will eventually be phased out:

State limits coal-burning power plants
Environment - A PGE operation in Boardman must cut 90 percent of its mercury emissions by 2012.

Bowing to public pressure, Oregon's Environmental Quality Commission endorsed tough new mercury controls Friday for coal-burning power plants in the state.

The rules, stricter than standards set recently by the federal Environmental Protection Agency, will require Portland General Electric to cut 90 percent of the mercury emissions from its coal-burning power plant in Boardman by 2012.

PGE's Eastern Oregon plant is the only coal-burning power plant in Oregon, but the rules also would apply to other plants that might be built....

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1166239541303680.xml&coll=7

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As to LNG terminal siting, there were plans afoot in 2005 that would preempt state and local regulation. I couldn't find what happened to that on my preliminary searches- it may not have made it into law, due to federalism and "states rights" concerned shared by some Republicans and Democrats alike.

I did find a 9th Circuit brief outlining the legal issues (they are somewhat complicated to a layperson- or to someone who doesn't have the time to peruse the law in depth ;-) ).

http://www.rpalumni.org/nolng/pdf/CPUCBrief.pdf

Maybe someone has kept up to date on that issue?

Unfortunately, a lot of the ticky tack construction that's been going on around here is using natural gas for heating and/or cooking. These places are just crap (I feel sorry for the suckers buying them) and they have spurred proposals before our new Democratic legislature to tighten up building codes and hold developers and contractors more accountable.

Depending on snow conditions, between 7 and 15% of Oregon's electricity is produced by natural gas fired plants. Given that natural gas is in depletion in North America- and that Alberta is adamant about exploiting its tar sands, one would expect that economic forces will make natural gas less and less attractive in the coming decade.

[NNadir]

4. Of course, one could look up Oregon's electrical generation history.

I, of course, have no idea what will happen to Oregon's hydroelectricity with climate change, but it does dominate electrical generation up there. No one, I bet, has any idea about that subject, although it does seem that the future of snow is less than certain.

Oregon burns more coal for electrical generation than it did in 1990, about 2.5 times as much.

Similarly it burns ten times as much natural gas for electrical generation as it did in 1990.

Of course it produces a brazillion times as much energy from wind than it did in 1990, wind power having moved from nonexistent to merely trivial.

What I find interesting is that Oregon produces almost no electricity, at least according to the EIA, from geothermal. One would think that Oregon would be a leader in this area, but apparently it's a pipe dream there too. I do not live in Oregon, but I have visited it a few times. As I recall, and correct me if I'm wrong, the place is laced with volcanoes.

The data is all right here in table 12: http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/states/sep_use/total/pdf/use_or.pdf

Oregon to my mind is mostly famous for having blown up one of its prime greenhouse free power plants and displaced it with more fossil fuel burning. One of the more curious things about this state of affairs is that the people of Oregon actually seem proud of this dubious outcome.

I fully note that a discussion of mercury output in 2012 can technically be addressed without phasing out coal. Mercury is a serious form of filth associated with coal, but it is hardly the most serious form of coal filth. The most serious form of coal filth is carbon dioxide, the same filth associated with natural gas burning.

A coal phase out would not be, in general, a discussion of mercury standards in 2012. It would be a discussion of ordering coal plants shut by a specified time. How about a carbon dioxide standard? How about a standard that is "zero?"

If one set a carbon dioxide standard of "zero," there would be zero discussion of "coal plants that might be built."

Now let's talk further about "clean" renewable energy in Oregon:

The number of renewable strategies in Oregon that have kept pace with the growth in Oregon's growth in consumption is, as I read it, zero. The consumption of biomass was actually less in 2003 - the last year reported in this table - than it was in 1990.

What a surprise.

I am always amazed that people get all kinds of credit for talking about 2025. That's a full generation from now. I note that none of the people appealing to such nonsense have any plan for phasing out fossil fuels by that time. Instead they attempt to obscure numbers by talking in mathematically illiterate terms like "percent." The unit of energy is not the "percent." The unit of energy is the joule, which is easily converted from the English unit used by the EIA, the BTU. A meaningful "clean energy" policy would say nothing about percent and lots about joules, specifically about planned reductions in the number of joules of fossil fuel use that will be eliminated. A 20 "percent" increase in the use of, say, wind power, in Oregon will be a tragedy if Oregon's consumption grows by 40 percent.

The conversation is about as useful as that being engaged to the steroid crazed Governor of the State to your south, who is also substituting talk for action to much popular acclaim. Of course, the reason that politicians find substituting talk for action so attractive is because the people have the critical thinking skills of a moldy dishrag.

[depakid]

5. While there was considerable opposition to Trojan

from some in the environmental community, the reasons why it was decommissioned were largely economic ones. The plant was poorly constructed and sited and PGE found it too expensive to upgrade and operate.

In addition, the WPPS debacle was still fresh in peoples' minds (a lot of investors lost big money on that scheme- and they'll no doubt be gun shy about future nuclear plants).

Similarly, while technologically feasible- and if the EPA were following how what the law intended in terms of "maximum available control technology" (MACT) we'd be seeing far fewer coal plants, because they'll be more expensive to operate. Of course, subsidies for renewables will also help.

btw: the 7%-15% came from the Portland Peak Oil Task Forces summary materials, which of course deals more with transportation fuels and urban planning than with electrical power generation.

http://www.portlandonline.com/shared/cfm/image.cfm?id=126582

They've issued a new report in January, which I haven't read yet:

http://www.portlandonline.com/shared/cfm/image.cfm?id=145732

One thing that you have to recall is that the state has lived through 12 years of a Republican legislature. NOTHING meaningful got done on on almost any front- we've basically been playing defense, so these efforts are a welcome beginning.

As to geothermal, I don't know why we don't have more proposals- though my thoughts are that just because you have volcanoes, doesn't mean that there are appropriate places to site a plant- either economically or ecologically.

[NNadir]

6. Whatever.

The risks of Trojan were never as high as the risks of a gas plant, no matter where one put it in Oregon. The fact is that nuclear opponents argue that only nuclear power plants need to be perfect.

Coal does not compete with wind or solar or any other renewable toys - except geothermal, since geothermal can be continuous.

Frankly the ecological cost of a geothermal plant on Mt Hood could not compare in ecological impact with any coal plant any where.

Clean energy is banning fossil fuels, and not legalistic hair splitting.