Utah among states in the West with elevated risk of energy shortfalls
Lawmakers say federal policies and political pressure are helping to turn the lights off in the West and in Utah, with the state facing the very real possibility of rolling blackouts.
Rep. Colin Jack, R-St. George, pointed out that the National Energy Reliability Corp. classifies a huge swath of the West as “Code Orange,” meaning the region is at elevated risk of not being able to meet energy demands.
“What we want to avoid here in Utah is repeating the same mistakes other states have done, which is to demolish our reliable, affordable generating resources and replace them with intermittent and expensive resources that work 20% of the time,” Jack told the Deseret News.
He said what states have done is take federal incentives to demolish power plants, replace them with intermittent resources and rely on the market to make up the difference.
“What we have seen in recent years is there is not excess capacity in the market to go get (that energy) all the time. So multiple states, maybe a dozen states in the last couple years, have had regular rolling blackouts.”
Related
Did renewable energy cause Texas grid failure? Could it happen in Utah?
Are your lights on and are they on for the military? Why the power grid is at risk
Rural electric provider in Utah warns of ‘impending U.S. energy crisis’
Energy Week on the Hill
Leadership has declared Jan. 29-Feb. 2 as “Energy Week” at the Utah Legislature and as such a flurry of energy-related bills will be discussed, including three bills by Jack that will be heard Monday in the Public Utilities, Energy and Technology Committee.
House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, told reporters Friday that energy is a top priority during this session.
“There’s been a lot of concerns mainly about what’s coming at us from the federal government in the way that we transition. We’ve been working with our power companies and the regulations that’s coming at us from the federal government and we simply can’t comply fast enough,” Schultz said.
He added there is a recognition about the need to transition to clean energy sources, but it has to be done at a reasonable and fiscally sound pace.
“We just want to take a thoughtful approach and make sure that we’re doing it with an all of the above approach, 58% of our current power capabilities, and a larger percentage of this during our peak power times, by the way which is between 6 and 9 o’clock at night, comes from coal.”
Those energy related bills include:
HB191 sponsored by Jack. The Electrical Energy Amendments bill puts guardrails up around the Public Service Commission’s purview of the potential early retirement of coal-fired power plants. When PacifiCorp’s Integrated Resource Plan contemplated that early retirement, Jack said that was premature.
“We could see that was a recipe for the same rolling blackouts in California and that’s not the way we do business in Utah,” Jack said. “You have to replace the resource before you tear down the resource that’s working. And you can’t just do it on a wish and a promise.”
That is what Jack’s bill does, requiring the Public Service Commission to make sure there is a viable resource ready to go before any power plant unit goes offline.
“The bottom line is Rocky Mountain Power got the cart before the horse and they’ve realized that now,” said Rep. Carl Albrecht, R-Richfield.
Clean energy advocates argue the measure “ties the hands” of the Public Service Commission, boxing them into a corner and taking away their discretion.
Another bill is HB48, also by Jack. Called the Utah Energy Act, it mandates the Office of Energy Development work at overcoming federal regulatory hurdles by overseeing legal strategy and to also address long-range energy planning. The energy office was recently roundly criticized in a legislative audit that said turnover and varying mission statements over the years had made its effectiveness unclear.
HB374 by Jack further solidifies the state’s commitment to clean, reliable, dispatchable, secure and sustainable energy. It prioritizes energy resources based on adequacy, reliability and being dispatchable.
Between Albrecht and Jack, they have decades of professional experience in the electrical utility sector. Albrecht is chair of the Public Utilities, Energy and Technology Committee while Jack is his vice-chair.
Albrecht wants to clean up state law with HB241, a bill he is sponsoring that changes references from “renewable” to “clean.”
“We just want to do to clean up the code and define clean rather than, you know, than (just) renewable and talk about future sources like nuclear, geothermal and pumped storage, those type of things.”
All of the above strategy
Both Albrecht and Jack believe Utah needs to embrace the emerging technologies of geothermal, nuclear and invest more in pumped hydro-storage.
But those energy sources remain largely out of reach on a scale that is affordable.
The two cited the demise of the Carbon Free Power Project by the Utah Associated Municipal Systems, announced earlier this year because the costs became untenable.
NuScale Power’s Small Modular Reactor technology turned out to be unworkable for its intended recipients.
“They got a $500 million infusion in a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy and if you can’t make it work with that, there is something wrong with that picture,” Albrecht said.
Related
Utah just lost an important future energy source. Here’s why
Utah lawmakers seek details on planned nuclear plant in Idaho
Two more cities opt out of nuclear power project planned in Idaho
The two said the death of the Carbon Free Power Project underscores the need to have a workable, reliable source of alternative baseload energy in place before any coal-fired unit comes offline.
HB124, sponsored by Albrecht, seeks to grant tax credits for certain high-cost geothermal, nuclear and hydroelectric power projects. Again, Albrecht emphasized this is part of the state’s all of the above energy strategy as it seeks a secure energy future.
Equity in energy?
Lawmakers are also preparing to tussle with the Intermountain Power Agency and its power plant oversight in Delta.
SB120 by Sen. Scott Sandall, R-Tremonton, seeks to set up a governance board over the plant that includes lawmakers from both the House and Senate, an appointee from the governor’s office as well as someone who represents one of the municipalities it serves.
IPA has become an increasingly annoying animal for lawmakers who first witnessed it go out of state to purchase coal to send power to California and now with its impending transition to natural gas, it is also planning that natural gas to come from elsewhere.
Related
A legislative audit found that the Utah power plant operates with little state oversight or transparency even though it was created as a subdivision of the state in the 1970s.
“The state legislature has just given them too much power over the years,” Albrecht said. “Ninety-eight percent of the power has gone to California, yet they use our water, and at one point our coal and our airshed,” he said. “We want to bring control back to the state of Utah.”
Both Albrecht and Jack said the bottom line is Utah has to act now to ensure a reliable, affordable grid going into the future, especially in light of federal regulatory pressures and the political steamroller that seems destined to smash all existing coal-fired power plants, including the two in Utah in Emery County.
“Having dispatchable, reliable, affordable energy is key to living here in the modern world. I don’t think any of us wants to go back to living in caves. And we feel like there have been policymakers around the country who have made decisions that are affecting us, affecting the lives and the futures of our children and our grandchildren,” Jack said. “We’re trying to curb that and insert some dose of reality.”
