Wyoming's Energy Future
by Molly Absolon
 Thirty-some years ago, President Jimmy Carter sat in front of television cameras in a button-down cardigan asking Americans to conserve energy. Some pundits claimed that moment clinched his subsequent decline and fall. President George W. Bush wasn’t going to be sucked into that trap, until now. This fall, with the price of energy skyrocketing, Bush has changed his tune and is talking conservation.
Bush is quick to differentiate himself from his predecessor, but the point is clear. Even he is beginning to recognize America has to rethink its energy future. Implementing effective energy efficiency measures can be the fastest and most cost-effective approach to balancing demand and supply in the near term. The Union of Concerned Scientists found that a combined efficiency and renewable energy scenario could reduce natural gas use by 31 percent and natural gas prices by 27 percent compared to business as usual in 2020. Carter’s sweater may have been just too visionary for his time.
“Part of a robust energy economy is improving conservation and energy efficiency. But there is more to it than that,” says Scott Kane, a Wyoming Outdoor Council board member and co-owner and founder of Creative Energies, a renewable energy company based in Lander. “It is totally realistic that we can transition into an energy future more dependent on renewables.... But it takes time and is expensive to do.”
According to Kane, the primary challenge to shifting to an energy future based on renewables is that it is up against a fossil-fuel economy that has been built up over 200 years. The infrastructure for coal-fired and natural gas power plants is established and mainstream. People rely on automobiles to commute, drive to the store and to get away from it all. Industries have been built up around oil, gas and coal. Plastics are used for everything from packaging to toys, appliances, containers, furniture and more. Millions of jobs and billions of dollars are inextricably linked to the fossil fuel economy. At a minimum, leaving this world behind will be expensive and slow; at its worst it could be difficult and disruptive.
Easing that transition takes leadership. Bush’s tepid endorsement of conservation hardly seems to fill this role. The administration spends more time kowtowing to industry than coming up with a visionary plan for the future. Last summer’s energy bill did not take any steps toward institutionalizing conservation, and it still contained subsidies for oil and gas companies in spite of the fact that they are making more money than ever before. (During the third quarter of 2005, Exxon reported $9.92 billion in profits, the most for any American company in history.)
 With this kind of money to be made, why would the government want people to slow down and conserve? The answer is: For the long-term future of our country, we need to look beyond petroleum.
Last month, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer of New York joined with the Natural Resources Defense Council and others in a suit against the U.S. Department of Energy over its failure to meet deadlines to review and strengthen efficiency standards for 22 products and appliances. Strengthening standards is not particularly controversial or partisan. The first President Bush strengthened 5 efficiency standards; President Clinton strengthened 11. The current Bush administration has not addressed any. In fact, it tried unsuccessfully to rollback standards for central air conditioners.
Improving appliance standards has significant impacts. According to the New York Times, new standards for furnaces and boilers alone could save about 3 percent of the oil and 6 percent of the natural gas used to heat American homes. The electricity savings could equal the output of 40 power plants, and the value to consumers could amount to $6,000 per household by 2020. But Bush seems too tied to his industry cronies to see the potential of taking this relatively innocuous step.
Without presidential leadership, people are increasingly turning to other sources of inspiration. These include local governments, city councils, private businesses and the Western Governors’ Association’s Clean and Diversified Energy Initiative (see story page 10). Even Wal-Mart appears to be making the shift. This fall the retailing giant announced a “green” plan that calls for eventually securing all of its energy from renewable sources. Wal-Mart—in spite of its mixed reputation—packs a punch. Its leadership could sway others to follow.
“We’ve had other businesses that understood energy efficiency as a key to fattening the bottom line, but now we’ve got Wal-Mart,” Neal Elliott, the industrial program director for the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy told the Christian Science Monitor in late October. “Having the nation’s biggest retailer on board is going to make a big difference in how much attention other companies pay to this issue.”
Kane and Creative Energies recently helped Wal-Mart in its effort to go green by installing solar panels on a new store in Denver. The store is using solar power, solar heating and natural light to meet its energy needs. Kane says the one building probably has more photovoltaics on its roof than all the buildings in Wyoming.
Beyond Solar and Wind
For most people, renewables mean wind and solar power, but when you look at the Western Governors’ Association’s Clean and Diversified Energy Initiative, the scope is much broader. It includes biomass, geothermal and clean coal. For Wyoming, coal holds the most promise because of its vast deposits. But the idea of clean coal sounds like an oxymoron to many.
 Petroleum geologist Kenneth Deffeyes in his book Beyond Oil calls coal the “best of fuels, the worst of fuels.” Best because it is plentiful (there is an estimated 300 years worth of coal left in the world) and cheap; worst because it leads to smog, acid rain, mercury pollution, acid mine drainage and a choice between hazardous underground mines and surface-disturbing open pit mines. Coal-fired power plants are the single largest source of human-made carbon dioxide in the world accounting for one quarter to one third of the total. Yet in spite of these drawbacks, U.S. utility companies have announced their intention to build more than 100 new coal-fired plants over the next 10-15 years, driven largely by America’s insatiable appetite for cheap energy.
Enter the idea of clean coal. The notion that coal can be clean relies on the capturing and sequestering of carbon dioxide and other pollutants. The easiest way to do this is to liquefy the coal. The process was used originally to power the German Luftwaffe in World War II, but the technique is dirty, according to a recently released report by the Northern Plains Resource Council of Montana, and it spews pollutants into the air. There is only one commercial-scale coal-to-liquids plant in the world, Sasol in South Africa. According to Amy Frykman of Northern Plains, Sasol is currently switching from coal to natural gas as a feedstock to reduce pollution.
A newer process, called integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC), is meeting more favorable reviews from conservationists. With IGCC, coal is heated to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit; oxygen is added, and the coal breaks down into its chemical building blocks, including carbon dioxide, making it easier to separate the greenhouse gases out. The hot gases are used to turn turbines to generate electricity rather than to produce liquid fuel.
The next step is to figure out how to get rid of the greenhouse gases. One possibility is to inject them into aging oil fields to enhance oil recovery. In Weyburn, Canada, EnCana is injecting 110 million cubic feet of carbon dioxide per day into its oil fields; this equates to more carbon dioxide per year than 100,000 cars produce in their lifetimes. Experiments are also taking place to sequester carbon dioxide in geologic formations, such as brine deposits. These results are unknown. Still there is hope that the process may produce favorable results. Currently there are two experimental IGCC plants in the United States; one in Tampa, Fla., the other in Beulah, N.D.
This all sounds good, but IGCC is expensive and to date, there has been little incentive for companies to make the shift largely for the same reasons energy companies in America have opposed the Kyoto Protocol: higher costs handicap the nation’s ability to compete with China and India.
But Tom Micheletti, co-president of the Minnesota-based energy development group Excelsior Energy, told reporters, “If you consider only the up-front costs of putting the plant in the ground, then yeah, IGCC probably costs between 10 and 20 percent more than pulverized coal. But if you do a life-cycle analysis, my view is IGCC is the best bet from a purely economical point of view because you’re never going to have to worry about putting on additional pollution-control equipment. Anyone who takes a look at where the country is going knows that we’re going to end up with more stringent control requirements.”
The federal government is pushing for clean coal. A ten-year, $1 billion project called FutureGen calls for building the first power plant in the country, and maybe the world, that would combine IGCC electricity production with capture and geologic sequestration of carbon dioxide. Wyoming is vying to be home for the project.
But critics say it isn’t enough. Regardless of how effective IGCC may be, the process of removing coal from the ground is fraught with environmental problems; furthermore, the effectiveness of capturing and sequestering carbon dioxide remains to be seen. And the costs may be insurmountable. Nonetheless, most energy analysts believe we have no choice but to explore these options if we want to increase energy production and limit global warming.
“There are three big tools in the global warming toolbox: efficiency, renewable energy and carbon capture and storage for fossil fuels,” says David Hawkins, the director of the Climate Center at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “We need to use them all.”
Biomass
The other mysterious renewable fuel source tossed around is biomass. Biomass is any organic material—wood, crops, garbage, landfill gases and alcohol fuels—that contain chemical energy from that sun that can be released through combustion or converted into liquid fuels. Up until the late 1800s, biomass provided nearly all of the world’s energy needs. Currently, it produces about 3 percent of the energy used in the United States.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) thinks this contribution could rise. DOE predicts we could produce 10 percent of our transportation fuels from biomass by 2010 and as much as 50 percent by 2030. As far as energy supplies, DOE estimates biomass could supply 5 percent of our electric supply by 2010. The Electric Power Research Institute is a bit more optimistic, putting that number at 8 percent.
Biomass can be cultivated from fast-growing native crops—so-called power crops that include trees like willows and native prairie grasses like switchgrass. These perennial crops grow back when harvested. In fact switchgrass can be harvested annually for up to ten years before it needs to be replanted. Because these plants are native species, they are less damaging to the local ecosystem and provide some wildlife habitat. They also require fewer pesticides and fertilizers and less energy than annual crops such as corn.
The Union of Concerned Scientists sees biomass as having huge potential in rural, farming country. Because biomass has less energy per pound than fossil fuels, it is unsuited for long-distance transportation, but could be ideal for creating power and fuel locally, allowing rural economies to be virtually self-sufficient.
The drawbacks to biomass are varied. In some areas, such as parts of rural Wyoming, there is simply not enough material to supply any large-scale power plants. Combustion of biomass does create carbon dioxide, though advocates claim most of the CO2 is cycled back into the energy crops through photosynthesis.
People also worry about more monocultures and industrial agriculture. The Union of Concerned Scientists claims the only response to this argument is to use sustainable agricultural practices. Like all energy sources, biomass is not without its problems, and energy crops, although native plants, are still not as productive to the ecosystem as natural habitat. But they are closer to the natural world than modern industrial agriculture, requiring less in terms of pesticides, fertilizers and energy, and that is an improvement.
Conclusion
Kane is remarkably optimistic about America’s energy future. He works with a varied clientele, including ranchers who would never consider themselves environmentalists and businesses like Wal-Mart that are taking this step not for any idealistic reason but because it makes sense for the bottom line. In Kane’s mind, this marks a transition to a time when renewables won’t be associated with “greenies” or back-to-the-earth hippies, but with sound-business practices.
Rocky Mountain Institute, an energy think-tank located in Aspen, Colo., echoes this belief. Their Web site promotes “natural capitalism,” which they say will spread a business model that harnesses environmental performance as an engine of competitive advantage. Like the Bush administration, Rocky Mountain Institute believes market-based profit motives are what will change the economy. Unlike Bush, they recognize that doesn’t just mean business as usual.
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