A Smart Way to Keep the Lights On

Demand for electricity nationally will increase by 40 percent during the next 22 years, according to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Yet even with an optimistic projection of a 9 percent reduction in electricity consumption due to increased efficiency and an increase in renewable power sources, our nation will soon run out of excess generating capacity and needs to build more power plants and transmission lines to keep the lights on.
This raises a catch-22 situation. Unless significantly more power plants are placed into service soon, there’s a good chance consumers could experience brownouts and even rolling blackouts in the not-too-distant future. But this generation will be the most expensive in history, coming at a time when prices for fuels to produce electricity and construction materials like steel, copper, and concrete are skyrocketing.
On top of it all, local, state, and federal lawmakers are considering additional costs on power plants to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, notably carbon dioxide, blamed for contributing to global climate change.
For electric co-ops, experiencing 2.6 percent overall growth (twice the national average), we take our responsibility of maintaining a safe, reliable, and affordable supply of power seriously. We also have an obligation to serve, and a special responsibility to protect you, our consumer-members, against dramatic and potentially crippling increases in electricity costs.
When it comes to meeting our nation’s energy challenges, including climate change, electric co-ops believe answers can be found in a diversified mix of advancements in energy efficiency and technology; renewable, nuclear, and natural gas generation; and advanced coal generation. No magic “silver bullet” exists.
On the climate change front, electric co-ops believe recommendations developed by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), a non-profit utility-sponsored consortium based in Palo Alto, Calif., whose members include electric co-ops, offer a workable framework for starting debate on solutions. EPRI has spelled out how U.S. electric utilities can slash carbon dioxide emissions below 1990 levels by 2030 (roughly 45 percent)–even as they take on about 40 percent more load through aggressive steps in seven principal areas: boosting energy efficiency, investing in renewable energy, expanding nuclear power capacity, capturing carbon produced by coal-fired power plants and storing it deep underground, improving the operating efficiency of coal-fired power plants, adding distributed generation resources, and putting plug-in hybrid electric vehicles on the road.
Consumer-owned electric co-ops have a great story to tell in how we’re already tackling each of these ambitious goals, which provide the additional bonus of helping reduce the need to build as much new generation. Today, more than 80 percent of co-ops supply electricity produced by wind, solar, hydro, biomass (including landfill gas, livestock waste, timber byproducts, and crop residue), and other renewable power sources.
Electric co-ops are also recognized industry leaders in promoting energy efficiency and wise energy use. Nearly half provide financial incentives–such as low- or no-interest loans for household improvements, leases on efficiency-related equipment, and ownership or maintenance of standby generators to reduce power use when consumption spikes–or include interactive energy use calculators on their Web sites. More than 40 percent offer efficiency and weatherization services, including selling and installing high-efficiency lighting systems, electric water heaters, geothermal and air-source heat pumps, insulation, and Energy Star appliances. And an electric co-op in North Dakota operates the only large-scale plant in the nation that captures carbon dioxide gas before it goes up a smokestack, compresses it, and then pumps it down into spent oil reservoirs for permanent storage.
Of course, implementing many of EPRI’s ideas on a large scale will require a massive investment of government resources–similar to putting a man on the moon–and mobilization of every sector of the economy. But as consumer advocates and industry leaders, electric co-ops know what works. Tapping our varied resources, we can provide elected officials with expertise on what programs are feasible technologically and can be sustained economically–and politically.
When it comes to energy, electric co-ops recognize that consumers ultimately pay the freight for whatever decisions are made. As our commitment to you, we will work to ensure that folks in positions of power understand this fact as well and seek out practical, long-term remedies based on new technology that will allow us to continue providing safe, reliable, and affordable power in an environmentally responsible fashion. Through it all, the co-op drumbeat will be loud and clear: “we’re putting consumers first.”
Source: U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Energy Information Administration, and Arlington, Va.-based National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, the service arm of the nation’s 900-plus not-for-profit, consumer-owned electric co-ops.