Being an ardent opponent of the Keystone XL project in rural Colorado isn’t a popular position. The vision for this 21st century pipeline has been sold as a necessary component of our energy challenges and a massive job creator. Unfortunately, the pipeline is neither, and would be better characterized through the lens of American rural landscapes as an assault as opposed to an asset.
Giving credit where credit is due, Keystone XL is someone’s vision. When political will combined with that vision, the opportunity moved from paper to pipeline. This grand scheme dictates the destruction of the boreal forest, extracting hydrocarbons formed millions of years ago, forced in a pipeline and moved thousands of miles to Gulf refineries, where the final product will be shipped to foreign lands.
It promises thousands of temporary construction jobs and a handful of permanent jobs. It holds the possibility of polluting the nation’s largest underground fresh water supply, the Ogallala Aquifer, and most economists predict the pipeline will increase the cost of gasoline in the Rocky Mountain region 10 to 20 cents per gallon.
From a Colorado perspective, there seems to be little upside, and the proposed pipeline project only magnifies our own lack of commitment to a vision of a robust and resilient 21st century American economy. In the absence of our own vision, the void is being filled by someone else’s.
But let’s envision the foundation of the Canadian project: the 1,379 miles of pipe laid horizontal and pointing toward Texas. Let’s turn it 90 degrees vertical and apply an American idea to the proposal. Slicing the pipeline into 212-foot segments (the average height of a wind turbine tower). Turning the pipe upward gives us 34,337 opportunities for wind development across our Midwestern landscape. Using a Colorado-made Vestas product, those sticks transform themselves into 72 gigawatts of wind-energy potential, nearly enough generation capacity to displace the 329 coal plants in the United States that face retirement from age or inability to meet new air standards. Instead of creating a carbon bomb, we’ve created the infrastructure to displace hundreds of millions of tons of carbon dioxide annually.
From a fresh water perspective, something important to each and every one of us in the West, displacing 72 megawatts of U.S. coal generation could save over 1 million acre-feet of fresh water annually. Through the lens of job creation, converting Keystone to kilowatts is the real job creator. Using industry statistics of an average, 250-megawatt wind farm, simply turning the horizontal pipe upward would create 150,336 construction jobs, 124,416 positions in manufacturing, 23,040 jobs for planning and development and 7,776 permanent jobs in operations. From an rural economic perspective, having this scale of infrastructure investment from North Dakota to Texas would give us the platform to create a real, lasting rural renaissance across the Great Plains.
As a part-time creature of Washington, D.C., mired in rural policy issues, I have little faith that grand visions are possible in today’s poisoned political well. My example of slicing the pipeline into wind towers was merely illustrative, but proves a point on how my personal perspective judges the Keystone plan quite differently from my neighbors. The structural challenges in today’s money-soaked, two-party system are daunting.
January will bring us a new majority in Congress that conventional wisdom instructs us will be antagonistic towards alternative forms of energy. For now, I’ll hold that criticism until it is earned: Teddy Roosevelt gave us the National Park System; Richard Nixon the EPA, George H.W. Bush the nation’s first cap-and-trade program (acid rain); and George W. Bush our nation’s Renewable Fuel Standard after putting in place, as Texas governor, one of the most aggressive wind-energy portfolios in the nation.
Unconventional wisdom might better instruct us that new opportunities are just around the corner.
I will remain the optimist.
Michael Bowman is a fifth-generation rural Coloradan from Wray and a founding member of the national 25x’25 alliance.
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