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Our View: West's Energy Promise Demands Forward Look

Posted on: Saturday, 29 October 2005, 18:00 CDT

Last week in Bozeman, political leaders, environmentalists and energy experts convened for an attempt at a regional approach toward helping resolve the energy crisis.

That's because we can't count on the federal government, declared Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer. The Democratic governor took a swipe at the energy bill passed by Congress this summer, saying "If Washington, D.C., is not going to think big, if they're not going to bring us any grand new ideas on energy independence and security, then it falls on the shoulders of the states and private industry."

To which University of New Mexico law professor Suedeen Kelly, now serving on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, responded that the energy bill carries all kinds of incentives and loans -- not just for energy development, but for clean energy.

The West, she noted, is in the best position to ease skyrocketing energy prices through its vast supply of coal, natural gas, wind and other resources.

But this conjures up images of a rush into the badlands with stripping and drilling machines; of a cartoon-like proliferation of windmills as far as the eye can see. It also plays into the century- old scheme of long, expensive, power-wasting transmission lines -- when the West, and the rest of the country, might better be served by microgenerators and other products of fresh technology.

Maybe the slight attention to such concepts as co-generation and close-at-hand power supply was because the conference was sponsored largely by the big utilities, and no one wanted to upset the hosts.

But the power companies, with their highly paid executives, should face the discordant music of facts: They haven't generated enough energy to keep up with demand in the West, said a courageous Stephen Wright, administrator of the Bonneville Power Administration.

And, he might have added, they've done all they can to discourage the notion of neighborhood generators, with their bonus capability of heating and air-conditioning homes. The technology to do that is here; has been for more than a decade, and getting better all the time. But that would cost the utilities some of their customers, don'cha know?

Thus the conference had little in common with Avery Lovins' Rocky Mountain Institute, where visionary thinking -- of the practical kind as well as the dreamy variety -- takes place.

To be sure, our country has immediate energy needs, many of which must be met the old-fashioned way -- by wasteful burning of hydrocarbons and boiling of scarce water to spin generators, then shipping the juice along high-resistance cable.

But the old ways can't go on forever; the energy sources are finite. Microgeneration can make the supplies last, while we start up a hydrogen economy or find even more advanced energy sources.

If today's preoccupation with energy finally gets our country and the rest of the world off their collective duff and onto sustainable energy supplies, then today's crisis, contrived as it appears, might not be all bad.

Source: The Santa Fe New Mexican

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