Editorial: Conservation goals should add energy from trash

Midway between Spokane and Seattle, Interstate 90 arches half a mile across the Columbia River just upstream from the turbines of Wanapum Dam.

In a way, this spot – where powerful gusts buffet passing cars and force windsocks to stiff right angles from the bridge’s girders – is an intersection of this region’s energy past and the future.

The mighty Columbia has generated unparalleled amounts of hydroelectric power, sustaining the economy and providing enviably cheap residential electricity. But it’s pretty much reached its capacity.

Leaving the river behind at Vantage, westbound motorists climb steeply past a battalion of modern windmills advancing along the ridges of the Frenchman Hills and right up to the highway.

Wind power generation in the West has doubled in the past three years as Washington and other Western states adopted standards for renewable energy resources that can augment the hydro system without resorting to burning coal or natural gas. In the next three years wind generation is predicted to double again.

To most people, renewable energy means wind or solar power, but it could mean many things, even garbage.

The Spokane region’s waste-to-energy plant burns trash and generates electricity, which it sells to Puget Sound Energy. That contract expires at the end of 2011, and a request for proposals is about to go out to secure a new contract for the next three years.

Under Washington’s renewable standards law, passed by voters in 2006 as Initiative 937, garbage is not considered a renewable resource. Efforts over the past two years to amend the law have failed, but this is a campaign Spokane-area lawmakers should wage in earnest.

Trash is a fact of life. It’s being incinerated now and will continue to be. The power it produces may be small compared with wind farms, but it is reliable and predictable, operating around the clock.

Wind, for all its promise, has problems. Mainly, it sets its own schedule, making it hard to integrate into the power grid that distributes electricity to where it’s needed.

Two months ago, in a one-hour period, a surge of wind pushed more electricity onto the grid than it could handle, forcing overseers to shut the wind turbines down, to the displeasure of the utilities that derive revenue from them. Wind clearly has a major part in the region’s and the nation’s energy future, but its sporadic nature is not going to change. Renewable energy strategies can’t focus on one or two sources only.

From Spokane’s standpoint, whatever energy it can sell from trash incineration would be more marketable if it helped a purchasing utility meet the renewable portfolio standards. Not only that, the plant includes the potential for generating steam that could be an attraction for industrial users – food processors, perhaps – near Spokane International Airport.

If the region is serious about the conservation goals set by Initiative 937, all options should be explored.