Americans overwhelmingly want to see a significant shift away from reliance on oil- and coal-based energy supplies to cleaner sources that don’t spew greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
They’re concerned about the effects of global warming and have an appetite for change, according to a myriad of polls.
But the choices that must be made to achieve that goal present questions that frequently have imperfect answers.
Such is the case with Tri-State Generation and Transmission’s plan to meet energy demand over the next five years. The Westminster-based energy wholesaler is the second-largest supplier of electricity in Colorado, behind Xcel Energy.
The not-for-profit supplier, owned by 44 member cooperatives in four states, expects significant demand increases from large commercial customers on Colorado’s Eastern Plains and the Western Slope. Tri-State had planned to build three traditional coal-fired units to meet demand but has scaled that back, at least for the time being, to one in western Kansas, named the Holcomb plant.
Earlier this month, Tri-State officials announced they would pursue energy efficiency and demand-side management programs in an effort to cut back the amount of power they’ll need to provide. They’re planning to add natural gas generation capacity to provide backup energy as renewables are integrated into the system.
And they’re continuing development of 1,000 miles of transmission lines that would provide massive capacity to move power from the Eastern Plains to the Front Range and other metro areas in the region. The Eastern Plains Transmission Project, expected to cost an estimated $1.2 billion, would help transport power generated from wind and other renewable sources. Entrepreneurs in the wind power industry have cited the lack of transmission lines as a barrier to expansion.
So, the transmission lines project, which Tri-State is calling a “super highway” would seem to be a good thing, right? But here comes the difficult choice. Tri-State executives say they cannot afford to build the transmission system without the 700-megawatt coal-fired Kansas plant as an “anchor tenant” to pay off loans needed to build the lines.
At this point, renewables are too expensive to incorporate into their system on a large-scale basis. Even another coal-fired plant poses financial risk because of the possibility of federal legislation imposing carbon emissions caps. Tri-State already has raised rates more than 40 percent over the last five years and expects a 9 to 12 percent increase in 2008 as it turns to the open market to buy energy it doesn’t have the capacity to produce.
Tri-State’s dilemma is illustrative of the choices that will have to be made. Whether it’s Tri-State thinking about how to meet demand, or a homeowner pondering whether to use air conditioning on a hot day, Americans are going to face difficult decisions in the coming decades as we try to reduce the threat of climate change.
