PGE's coal fired Boardman Power Plant. Photo from Ted Timmons
The news must have landed at PGE like a ton of coal.
Oregon DEQ says its looking at three options for an early closure of PGE’s coal-fired power plant at Boardman. They call on the utility to spend millions more to keep the plant running, or shutting it down a lot earlier than PGE wants.
PGE's coal fired Boardman Power Plant. Photo from Ted Timmons
Environmental groups hope they’ve found another way to force an early closure of Oregon’s only coal fired power plant, the PGE facility near Boardman.
The idea is to make PGE to spend so much money on pollution controls, the utility will decide that shutting down Boardman will be cheaper than cleaning it up.
This weekend, Environment Oregon released its take on PGE’s proposal to close the coal-fired power plant near Boardman. The group has been active in the campaign to close Boardman by 2014. PGE’s most current plan is to shut it down by 2020.
The EO statement calls the announcement, “A major milestone on Oregon’s path to a 100 percent clean, renewable energy future.” And it’s generally more optimistic in tone that what we’ve heard from the Oregon Sierra Club.
But the statement includes a new angle to the debate over 2014 or 2020.
PGE's coal-fired power plant near Boardman, OR. Photo from Brian Pasko.
In the campaign to shut down the coal-fired power plant at Boardman, the Oregon Sierra Club isn’t ready to declare victory.
Doing so might have been understandable.
PGE’s decision to close Boardman by 2020, two decades ahead of schedule, is major news. It’s an acknowledgment that its cheaper to shut down the plant early, rather than pay a half billion dollars for new emissions controls.
It means 20 fewer years for the state’s only coal-fired power plant, our biggest single source of greenhouse gases, and a major source of haze, mercury and acid rain in the Gorge.
Instead, the Sierra Club is moving forward with its campaign to shut down Boardman by 2014. Here’s why.
With a combination of holiday gimmick and serious talk, two of Oregon’s leading environmental groups are kicking off a new drive to shut down PGE’s coal-fired power plant near Boardman.
The gimmick? Having one of the members dress up as Santa Claus, and proclaiming that the Boardman power plant had been “very naughty” for being the biggest single emitter of carbon emissions in Oregon.
The serious part? A new national report from Environment Oregon which says the U.S. and Oregon get too much of their electricity from power plants that burn fossil fuels and rely on out-of-date technology.
In the past two weeks, Portland General Electric has held several public meetings about its plans for a new high voltage power line.
A view of Mt. Hood from Timothy Lake. Photo by K. Carpenter/U.S.G.S.
Called Cascade Crossing, PGE wants to build a 200-mile, double circuit, 500-kilovolt power line from Boardman to Salem. Along the way, it crosses two national forests and the Warm Springs reservation. If all goes according to plan, construction will begin in late 2012 and the power line will be operating during the first half of 2015.
Today, I had an interesting conversation with Amy Harwood of Bark, the group that acts as an environmental watchdog for the Mt. Hood National Forest. Like all of us, she’s just getting acquainted with the issue. Bark is withholding judgement on the power line until it gets more information. But her first impressions are worth passing along. They include questions all of us should be thinking about and asking. This story isn’t going away anytime soon.
Do We Really Need This Power Line?
PGE warns that our current transmission system to close to capacity. Despite the growth in population and the increased demand for electricity over the past 25 years, no new major power lines have been built. Without this power line, PGE says our grid may become unreliable, raising the odds of power outages or brown outs. It also says this line will help bring in more renewable energy from the wind farms in Eastern Oregon. It says that will help Oregon meet state mandates to get 15% of our power from renewable energy by 2015.
For now, Harwood is skeptical. “I start to get squirrelly on the reliability thing,” she admits. “A lot is being done in the name of reliability.” While not outright questioning the need for more lines, she’d like to see more attention paid to conserving energy and says some of the new projects being proposed may not be necessary. Some in the energy business, she says, are “operating on fear tactics.”
As we’ve seen recently, PGE isn’t the only company proposing a new power line in the area. The Bonneville Power Administration is looking at a 70-mile high voltage line in SW Washington and a 28-mile line that runs through the Columbia Gorge Scenic Area. In Eastern Oregon, Idaho Power wants to build a 300-plus mile high voltage line from Boardman to SW Idaho.
How Do Projects Like These Affect The Forest and Wildlife?
PGE says it wants to build this new power line along existing corridors. But Harwood says there’s too little information to see how that will be carried out. An energy corridor amounts to a path of clear cut through a forest. At best, PGE would expand a current corridor by several hundred feet. But Harwood says it could also mean a totally new path that just happens to be close to an existing one.
Harwood says energy corridors impact the forest in a number of ways. Creating a new path of clear cut makes it easier for invasive weeds to spread into the forest. Not only does it give them a foothold, but without tree cover the weeds thrive and become harder to control.
She says this will change the relationship between predator and prey. It creates more edge habitat that makes it easier for some predator species to hunt for food. This can have an impact on wildlife numbers.
The corridors interfere with the migration of large animals such as deer and elk. Harwood cites studies that show as wildlife moves from one site to another, they’re reluctant to cross these wide clear cut paths. In the winter, big mammals need trees and other cover to stay warm. Harwood says the end result is that these animals will have fewer options for habitat and tend to corral themselves into tighter groups.
Adding It All Up
It’s not just PGE that wants a piece of the forest. NW Natural is a partner in the Palomar Pipeline project. It’s proposing a pipeline that would run through the Mt. Hood National Forest to carry imported natural gas from an LNG terminal on the Columbia River to an interstate pipeline connection near Maupin.
Hardwood says Palomar is a good example of a bad plan. She says there’s no need to import natural gas and the pipeline route goes through old growth territory of the Northern Spotted Owl and other pristine forests around Mt. Hood.
Will PGE’s power line have a similar impact? Harwood says there’s simply not enough information out there yet.
But the demand for energy paths on public lands is likely to grow. Even the Obama Administration wants to speed up the process of siting these kinds of project.
Can Mt. Hood or any other National Forest handle all the new demands for power lines, pipelines and who knows what else?
As Harwood puts it, they “keep taking these little bites out of the forest.”
One of the biggest sources of air pollution in the state, the PGE coal-fired power plant near Boardman, may soon undergo a very costly environmental makeover. Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality wants PGE to install more than $470 million worth of pollution controls by 2018.
The goal? Cut emissions of nitrous oxide and sulphur dioxide by 80%.
The benefits? Major reductions in haze and acid rain in the Columbia River Gorge, and major reductions in haze at a dozen wilderness areas around the state.
DEQ staff will submit the rules to Commissioners at their next meeting on June 18-19. The Boardman clean up is the centerpiece of a proposed Oregon Regional Haze plan that’s designed to improve visibility across the state. Commissioners could vote to adopt the plan, or ask staff to work on other options.
They’ll have to do something. The Environmental Protection Agency is requiring states to reduce haze at what are called Class 1 Wilderness areas. There are a dozen of them in scattered throughout Oregon, so reducing haze at these places will also clear the air in the rest of the state. Some of the better known Class 1 Wilderness areas are located near Mt. Hood, the Three Sisters, Crater Lake and Hells Canyon.
PGE asked for so-called “decision points” which would allow them to stop spending money on fixing up the plant, if they agreed to decommission it at some later point. DEQ staff turned down that proposal, but says if PGE decides to shut down Boardman it can always file for a rule change.
While $470 million sounds costly, DEQ estimates it will only increase electricity bills for PGE customers by 3.5%, or about $3 a month for the average household. If the rules are approved, the first phase of pollution controls would have to be installed starting in 2011.
Portland General Electric says it’s the #1 utility in the country for how much renewable energy it sells to residential customers.
PGE says it sold almost 530 million kilowatt hours of renewable power to residential customers in 2008, an 18% increase over 2007. According to Department of Energy statistics, that’s more than any other utility in the nation. PGE has held this top spot for four years running.
Here’s another milestone. The number of renewable energy customers, both residential and commercial, is closing in on 70,000. That’s up 12% from 2007 and puts PGE in the #2 spot on that list. Percentage wise, 9.7% of PGE customers are buying renewable power. That’s also up from 2007 and the 4th highest participation rate in the nation.
PGE and PacificCorp offer customers a renewable energy option. These programs can raise your bills, how much depends on how much renewable power you buy.
We’re watching today’s hearing on Senate Bill 80, legislation that will put Oregon on a path to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the state.
The bill tells agencies and industry to develop plans that will meet goals of reducing emissions at least 10% below 1990 levels by the year 2020, and at least 75% below 1990 levels by 2050.
Part of the discussion includes an ongoing argument over whether mandating these goals is a “hard cap” (a term used by opponents) or something else.
Here’s what witnesses are telling the Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee.
Andrea Durbin, Oregon Environmental Council, Supporter:
Dave Robertson, Portland General Electric, Opponent:
Tim Miller, Green Lite Motors, Supporter:
Jennifer Hudson, Ash Grove Cement, Opponent:
To leave comments, please click on the “Continue reading” link.
