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May 2007 Along Those Lines
Bridging the ‘reality gap’
National electric cooperative meeting speakers outline challenges and offer inspiration for the future
Two key speakers at this year’s annual meeting of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association painted a challenging future for the nation’s electric co-ops and the nation itself:
• the need for new electric generation to meet projected demand;
• initiatives to curb greenhouse gas emissions in response to the growing concerns over global climate change;
• higher costs for fuels as a result of global demand and competition;
• misconceptions in the ability of today’s renewable energy sources to meet electric demand;
• foreign competition creating higher costs for steel and other resources to build power plants and infrastructure;
• and geo-political turmoil and terrorism in areas from which the U.S. relies for natural gas and transportation fuel.
But keeping the lights on and electricity affordable in rural and suburban America are the challenges co-ops must meet. Despite the rocky road outlined ahead, NRECA CEO Glenn English and former CIA director James Woolsey suggested in separate speeches these challenges must be met and will be met.
English told 10,000 of the nation’s co-op leaders at the meeting, held March 20-22 in Las Vegas, that the technology does not yet exist to meet the ambitious carbon dioxide reduction goals being bandied about by Congress. “What we have before us today is a reality gap in regard to this issue,” he said. “We need to reach out to our elected officials — lay out the technological challenges posed by their policy initiatives — and work together to find real-world solutions.”
English said there is no one miracle solution or energy source, one “silver bullet.” It’s extremely important for co-ops to work closely with Congress on the issue. “If you’re not at the table, most likely you’re going to be on the menu,” he said. “And I can assure you, this is one issue we do not want to be on the menu.”
English then turned to a seven-pronged approach to reduce carbon emissions yet ensure reliable electricity that was recently introduced by the Electric Power Research Institute.
The plan, which he said was a “practical road map” calls for:
• Increasing end-use energy efficiency in homes, building and industry;
• Boosting deployment of cost-effective large-scale renewable energy resources;
• Continuing the operation of all existing nuclear generating plants and adding substantial new generation from advanced light-water reactors by 2020;
• Improving the efficiency of new coal-based generating plants;
• Deploying CO2 capture and storage technologies at most new coal-based generating plants by 2020;
• Accelerating the wide-scale adoption of “plug-in” hybrid electric vehicles;
• Expanding deployment of distributed energy resources including solar photovoltaic.
English said the good news is co-ops are already on the right track and heading down these roads.
In his speech, Woolsey gave a sobering assessment of terrorism and the role energy plays in shaping America’s domestic and foreign policies.
“We are at war with a complex movement, Islamic totalitarianism,” he said. “And that war will last decades, like the Cold War lasted for four and a half decades.”
He said our nation’s billion-dollar-a-day addiction to Mideast oil, a chunk of which ends up in the hands of terrorists, makes this “long war” we’re in “the only war the U.S. has ever fought … which we pay for both sides.” He wryly added, “This is not a good long-term strategy.”
Woolsey said, “Any society that believes that for any appreciable period of time we can safely depend upon this part of the world for 97 percent of our transportation fuel has got to have its head examined.”
Dealing with global warming, Woolsey said, is like buying insurance. The question is how high a premium do we want to pay to insure against future unknowns. But he cautioned co-op leaders to take no chances. He said if the projections are right, global climate change could be “at least bad, and perhaps catastrophic.”
He echoed English’s comment that no silver bullet exists to solely slay the future problems in electricity generation or transportation and reduce carbon emissions. But he did offer examples of “silver-plated buckshot” — a mix that would work together to achieve those goals. Many of his proposals paralleled the EPRI plan.
He also noted fundamental changes need to be made how we transmit electricity or go about building transmission lines. He said we could get all the permits to build wind farms on the Great Plains where the wind blows steadily and plentifully within a couple of years. But securing the permits to build the transmission lines to get that power to where it’s needed would take seven to 12 years — if it can be done at all. “A lot of people have gone beyond NIMBY — not in my back yard — to BANANA — build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything,” he said.
But he’s encouraged by the entrepreneurial spirit and growing grassroots movement that’s creating strange bedfellows to push the nation to cleaner energy and energy independence. “I call it a coalition of tree huggers, do-gooders, sod busters, the chief hawks, the evangelicals, the venture capitalists and Willie Nelson,” he said to some laughter and applause.
“We’ve got some problems and some very malevolent people on the other side of the world who want to do us in,” Woolsey said in closing. “But think back to the 20th century. Five major powerful empires decided they wanted to be our enemies, and they wanted to destroy us: the German Empire in the World War I era, the Nazis, the Italian fascists, the Japanese imperialists and the Soviet communists. If you ever think about being downhearted in all of this, all of these decided to take us on. They’re all five on the ash heap of history. And we’re still here.” — Story by Richard G. Biever, senior editor of Electric Consumer
To download a pdf of Glenn English’s entire address to the national electric cooperative membership, click here.
Written By: eceditor
Date Posted: 4/30/2007
Number of Views: 415
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