Power Surge

Within 20 years, more of the electricity that lights our homes and powers our business computers may come from coal.

A review of long-range planning studies and memos shows that Avista Utilities, the company built on hydropower dams on regional rivers and once named Washington Water Power, will turn increasingly to burning fossil fuels.

Most notably, perhaps, Avista is investigating the probability of:

“Building new coal-fired power plants that would ultimately produce more than a third of Avista’s power by 2026;

“Joining the energy rush in the Alberta oil sands area and stringing major transmission lines across the Rocky Mountains to the Inland Northwest;

“Entering a business partnership to build a new nuclear power plant.

Every other year the company submits a 20-year plan to state regulators. It’s a best-guess document that forecasts population and business growth, how much electricity will be needed, and how best to procure it.

Clint Kalich, Avista’s resource planning manager, said the company must balance multiple issues. Topping that list is cost to ratepayers. Other issues include reliability and the ease of integrating new electricity resources into the power grid.

Avista’s last document, produced in 2005, called for increased reliance on coal, wind, and renewables such as biomass, power produced from wood chips and manure from dairy cows, for example.

This fall the company will release a new planning document that suggests Avista look into developing nuclear energy.

Kalich acknowledges that the very idea of nuclear power is controversial. The only such plant in Washington is operated near Richland by a company called Energy Northwest. The megawatts are fed into the Bonneville Power Administration, a federal agency.

Interest in new nuclear plants has moved beyond indifference, Kalich said, to something that looks very attractive in the long term. The main reason is because nuclear power is reliable and does not contribute to global warming, though Kalich is quick to add that nuclear waste is not benign.

It remains too expensive and controversial, yet for planning purposes, Kalich said, it’s appropriate for Avista to at least have the conversation as it looks to grow from a utility with 2,150 megawatts to one needing about 3,100 megawatts by 2027.

The tougher issue may be so-called “clean coal.” While coal critics such as the NW Energy Coalition agree the process of burning clean coal cuts back on some pollutants, they are quick to point out that it does nothing to curtail global warming emissions without taking the added and costly step of capturing and storing carbon.

That makes Avista’s plan to rely more heavily on coal troubling, said coalition spokesman Marc Krasnowsky.

“The fact is that none of the proposed (clean coal) plants proposed in the Northwest now have plans to capture and sequester (carbon emissions),” he said. “That won’t do … especially when that fact is combined with a multitude of studies that say that we’ve got enough energy efficiency and affordable renewables to meet projected demand for a long time.”

But can conservation and renewables such as wind offset the need for major new power sources in the coming decades?

The U.S. Energy Information Administration predicts the country will demand 45 percent more electricity within 23 years. That’s another 350,000 megawatts of new generation across the country. One megawatt is enough electricity to serve about 650 homes.

These are the sorts of numbers that brought added nuclear capacity from whispers to dialogue. There are now 103 operating nuclear reactors in the country. About 30 new ones are under consideration, according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

On the other end is conservation.

Tom Karier, who chairs the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, a four-state board that helps direct long term power planning, said conservation is a matter of small, simple changes residents and businesses can make, such as installing fluorescent light bulbs and efficient appliances.

“With everything under consideration, achieving conservation clearly costs less and carries the least risk,” Karier said, adding that Avista has been a strong conservation advocate for decades.

Perhaps the most surprising planning consideration at Avista involves the oil sands of Alberta.

The utility, for the first time, is openly considering the idea of generating electricity in the sands area north of Edmonton and then wiring that power into the Northwest.

It would be a tremendous cost — $2.5 billion by some company estimates. The oil sands, however, are seen by many as the world’s next big oil field. The oil — perhaps eight times as much as beneath Saudia Arabia — is entrapped in sands below forests covering an area the size of Florida. This means it won’t come gushing to the surface.

Companies are now strip-mining the most accessible oil sands. The much deeper and substantial deposits will require different extraction techniques, including injecting steam into the sands.

That steam, made by burning natural gas from the area, can also be used to generate electricity, making the power coveted by Avista a virtual byproduct of extracting oil. The problem, say critics, is the electricity is a contributing factor of continued burning of fossil fuels.

Kalich disapproves of using natural gas to generate electricity as inefficient. The best use of natural gas, by far, he said, is heating homes and businesses. He points to the Inland Northwest’s conversion to natural gas heat as one of Avista’s and the region’s great energy efficiency success stories.

Such concerns, along with the volatile market pricing of natural gas, is one reason Avista will not rely on the fuel that right now is responsible for generating 36 percent of its electricity.

The renewable power source discussed most right now is wind.

Its promise is being realized across Eastern Washington and Oregon as huge wind farms are built. Avista and other utilities, however, remain cautious about counting on wind as a primary power source.

At issue is reliability and moving the power onto the transmission grid.

Consider last summer, said Avista spokesman Hugh Imhof. During the hottest days of summer, when residents turned on their air conditioners en masse, the wind quit blowing in Central Washington.

“That was really something,” Imhof said. “Just when the system needed (wind) electricity most, there was nothing.”

Had the system been reliant on a massive, stable supply of wind power, supply problems would have rippled across the region.

This means wind power needs a backup plan, Imhof said.

Nicolas Garcia, a policy strategist with the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission, said that’s exactly the purpose of long-range planning.

“One thing that this exercise of long-range planning does is creates discipline,” he said. “Companies thoroughly investigate what all their options are, and come up with a plan.

“Sometimes their guesses are pretty good. Sometimes not. But it’s a public process … and seems to work.”