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Threading the needle – cheaply – to meet
power demands: Editorial
The Dalles Dam is one of
several to generate electricity
marketed by the Bonneville
Power Administration. (Staff)
By The Oregonian Editorial Board
on December 31, 2015 at 4:00 PM
Few things underwrite the Northwest lifestyle as much as plentiful, affordable power. It's unseen
but there, greasing the economy and igniting opportunity. The biggest broker of power is the
Bonneville Power Administration, which sells electricity generated by hydroelectric dams in the
vast Columbia Basin, a region the size of France. Still, nothing's free, ever, and frugality is as
much a part of the Northwest power equation as the certainty of flowing rivers. Ask the utility
that reads your meter and bills you monthly.
A soon-to-be adopted draft of the once-every-five-years Northwest Power Plan builds upon this
fact. Configured by specialists who report to a panel of two representatives each from four
Northwest states – Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana – the plan declares against
expectation that the electricity needs of a surging population should be met not with more power
plants or costly commitments to certain renewables. Instead, the staff of the Portland-based
Northwest Power and Conservation Council calculates that all anticipated demand for electricity
over the next 20 years, despite the scheduled closure of sullying but productive coal plants, can
be met through greater efficiency in everyday energy use and an embrace of something called
"demand response" commitments.
Everybody understands efficiency: More is better, seal those window air leaks. But "demand
response," not widely known in the popular lexicon, may pack greater rewards: Commercial and
industrial users of electricity should be enticed by their supplying utilities to schedule their fullproduction processes to occur in off-peak times. An example might be a pulp and paper mill that
runs around the clock but could, by ramping up production in the middle of the night, ramp it
down in the early morning and late afternoon hours, when the rest of society wants electricity the
most. It sounds like a no-brainer but could involve significant workforce rescheduling at any
number of industries – more difficult to do than to talk about.
The aims of conservation and demand-response behavior should meet with little resistance, as
they are elegant in considering non-use as untapped supply. Even utilities, which make more
money by selling larger volumes of electricity, can benefit from a level demand for their product.
Gas-burning as a bridge to a more renewable future? It's the right call.
But things may get squirrelly for the power council when it meets in January to adopt its plan
and signal BPA and utilities on the best way forward. Another of its key calculations is that
certain kinds of renewable sources of energy – wind and solar, chiefly – pose problems in being
unsteady in their output. The region's peak winter demands for electricity are difficult to meet
already, for example, and wind and solar power do little to help out. (Separately, when the wind
produces a profusion of electricity, BPA has difficulty in uploading all of it to an already maxedout power grid.)
Result: The power council would prefer to diminish the role of what it calls "variable-output"
renewables and instead encourages research and development of ocean wave or geothermal
sources, which it characterizes as having "a more consistent output." While this may seem like
inside-baseball from the energy world, it is significant in light of the hefty investment and
imprint, not to mention history of tax-break incentives, of wind and solar projects across Oregon.
Put another way, the council is going against some widely shared green aspirations.
Angus Duncan, founder and president of the Bonneville Environmental Foundation and for six
years an appointed member of the power council, argues the council's computer-driven view is
limited to 20 years when the real work of lowering CO2 output extends well beyond – as it does
for the profitable development of green technologies that will ensure lower CO2 levels. But Tom
Eckman, director of the council's power division, wrote in an email made available to the
editorial board of The Oregonian/OregonLive: "We (are) evaluating policies that would reduce
carbon emissions at the lowest cost, not on how to increase the use of renewable resources.... The
best policy option involves the use of multiple tactics, which include retiring coal plants and
substituting lower carbon-emitting gas, then building renewables only to the extent needed."
Gas-burning as a bridge to a more renewable future? Gas burns cleaner than coal but still emits
hefty CO2 levels. Yet it's the right call. The council's plan is built on rational calculations that
address inexpensively meeting power demand in the next two decades while also encouraging
the development of steady-output renewables. It makes sense that green energy technologies
must prove themselves in the present before being counted upon as part of the Northwest's lowcost energy future.
It makes sense, too, that the Northwest would lead the country in conservation measures while
developing sure-bet renewables that will help to deliver ever-lower C02 levels at prices everyone
can afford.
Oregonian editorials
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Members of the editorial board are Helen Jung, Erik Lukens, Steve Moss and Len Reed.
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