Energy initiative generates debate

OLYMPIA – In recent years, Cheney-area rancher Maurice Robinette has watched as monitoring towers sprouted on ridges throughout Eastern Washington.

The meters are a sign of prospecting landowners hoping that the gritty gusts they tolerated for years are strong enough to now justify a lucrative second crop: wind-generated power.

“It’s a chance for us to make some extra income,” said Robinette, a third-generation rancher. “And we sure need it.”

So he’s hoping voters approve Initiative 937, an environmentalist-backed measure requiring large power companies to get 15 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020 and to spend more on conservation. Supporters say it will mean cleaner, more diversified power, plus homegrown electricity and jobs.

“This is our opportunity to take control of our energy future in Washington state,” said Chris McCullough, campaign manager for Yes on I-937.

Opponents – including Avista Corp., Weyerhaeuser and rural electric cooperatives – say that alternative power is growing very rapidly already. By trying to force the market, the initiative will inflate prices and cause a hike in people’s power bills.

“It’s just going to make people’s power rates go up much faster,” said Avista spokesman Hugh Imhof.

The Washington Research Council says the measure could boost Washington power costs by hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Higher power costs, the group projects, will also mean thousands of lost jobs by 2020.

“Change is coming,” the group said in a recent report. “Don’t force it.”

Environmental groups have long tried unsuccessfully to get state lawmakers to pass similar measures.

“I don’t want to artificially just go out and try to spur the alternative-energy market with taxpayer dollars,” said Rep. Larry Crouse, R-Spokane. “I really like alternative forms of energy, but I think they’re happening already.”

A recent industry report backs that up. Earlier this month, the Northwest Power and Conservation Council said that “the current rate of renewable resource development in the Northwest is unprecedented in the history of the council.” Some 1,820 megawatts of renewable power are slated to have come online from 2005 to 2008, the report said. Of that, 99 percent is wind power.

More than 20 states have set goals similar to I-937’s, according to North Carolina State University’s Solar Center. Among them: Montana, which seeks 15 percent renewable power by 2015, and Nevada, which seeks 20 percent by 2015.

Washington’s version wouldn’t count the state’s already-abundant hydropower, although it would count improvements through more efficient dam turbines or other added capacity.

Avista’s plans already call for half of its new power to be renewables over the next 20 years, Imhof said. It’s been trying to buy a 35- to 40-megawatt wind project since February, only to have a larger utility buy up all the available wind turbines.

“We’re all for renewables,” he said. “It’s just that we’re against the mandates.”

The initiative organizers have out-raised opponents three to one: $1.5 million versus about $500,000. Among the major backers: Seattle investor Jabez Blumenthal, Democratic congressman Jay Inslee’s campaign, Horizon Wind Energy, Seattle Biodiesel and the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The measure would also require utilities to boost their conservation efforts.

McCullough said, for example, that utilities would be encouraged to expand their rebate programs for homeowners and businesses who weatherize buildings, retrofit heating or cooling systems, or who use manufacturing byproducts to make power.

Conservation “is the cheapest power source – and the cleanest – that we can imagine,” he said.

Although the measure cites a wide variety of alternative power – geothermal heat, landfill gases, tides, methane from manure, solar and wood waste among them – the vast majority of Washington’s known energy potential is from wind. A Power Council study pegged the potential power from manure at about 50 megawatts, for example, and two to four times that for landfill gases. A megawatt is enough electricity to power about 750 homes, according to Imhof.

The potential power from wind, the group says, is about 5,000 megawatts. But that comes with an important caveat: wind power typically only produces 30 percent of its capacity, since the wind isn’t constant.

As utilities look to add power sources for the future, McCullough said, they’re largely looking at two sources: wind or coal. I-937, he said, is intended to tip that balance toward wind.

“To be building new coal plants in 2006 doesn’t make much sense,” he said. Coal costs could rise. Shipping it is expensive. And burning it produces carbon dioxide, thought to cause global warming.

Imhof said it’s not that simple. New technology converts coal into a gas that burns far more cleanly than it used to, he said.

“People talk about coal being this big bad boogeyman out there,” he said. “If we get more coal into the mix, it will be the state-of-the-art technology.”

Robinette, who works for the Washington Sustainable Food and Farming Network, said he looks forward to seeing 130-foot turbine blades twirling 200 feet in the air as farmers farm and cows graze below. It likely wouldn’t be him – his acreage is flat land between Cheney and Medical Lake. There’s not much wind.

Tapping more wind power, he said, is inevitable. But I-937 will speed it up.

“We’ve got to get there sooner or later,” he said, “and sooner is better. So let’s get on with it.”