This story by Allen Best appeared on Colorado Newsline on December 29, 2022.
Colorado’s largest electrical utility this week announced it’ll begin construction of 300 miles of major latest transmission next yr to reap wind from the state’s eastern plains. In Wyoming, though, a wind farm proposed 15 years ago still needs crucial permits.
The difference? Land ownership, no less than partially. The 345-kV transmission line that Xcel Energy plans to string between Brush and Lamar, connecting latest wind farms along the way in which, won’t cross federal land. In Wyoming, the wind farm lies on a checkerboard of personal and federal lands.
Projects involving federal lands trigger reviews mandated by a 1969 law, the National Environmental Policy Act. NEPA merely requires disclosure of impacts. In practice, say authors of a latest book, The Big Fix, the method is itself the end result. The review should be accelerated to realize net-zero emissions by mid-century.
The Big Fix, written by Aspen native Hal Harvey and former Recent York Times reporter Justin Gillis, paints an in depth but still accessible picture of learn how to decarbonize our economy. For instance, we will create comfortable buildings without burning fossil fuels. Harvey has experience on this going back to the Seventies, when he built and designed passive-solar homes.
After studying engineering at Stanford University, he now runs a 36-person think tank in San Francisco. Gillis was writing in regards to the intersection of climate and energy from a base in Recent York City when he became aware of Harvey. As he consulted experts from across the country, he says, Harvey’s thoughts impressed him as essentially the most practical.
Within the book, the authors break down the challenges of our energy transition into seven sections, including transportation and carbon-intensive industries comparable to steel and concrete. Every page sparkles with insights and absorbing statistics. For instance, the world annually produces 5 tons of concrete products for each man, woman, and child. Concrete causes 7% of all greenhouse gas emissions.
In a single chapter, they tackle forestry and food. To resolve our climate threat, we must eat less meat, especially beef. Chicken comes out on top for those of us who can’t quite determine vegetarian meals.
In addition they discuss electricity. We are going to need more of it in buildings and transportation. Existing technology — especially wind and solar — can take us a great distance, probably 70% to 90% in Colorado.
To advance even deeper, we’d like other technologies and business models. It will require major government support on par with and even greater than the support that resulted in dramatic reductions in wind and solar prices. They call for a similar support for hydrogen, carbon capture, and geothermal technologies, all of them promising but still costly. The important thing can be scaling up production to lower costs, as has occurred with every thing from Model Ts to solar panels to smartphones.
This includes nuclear, which Harvey and Gillis call a “vexed and vexing technology.” It delivers 20% of emissions-free energy now, but latest plants have had humongous cost overruns. As a substitute of massive plants, they see a possible path of smaller modular units using factory-produced components.
For the subsequent decade, though, they hope to see far less expensive no-emission technologies, chiefly wind and solar. And this may require more transmission and, in Wyoming, permits for the wind farm that Phil Anschutz wants to construct for the export of electricity to balance the solar energy of Arizona and California.
“They’re attempting to put up this truly colossal wind farm on this superb spot in Wyoming, considered one of the windiest places within the country, and it has taken them well over 15 years to get the permits that they need under NEPA,” Gillis said once I interviewed the authors several weeks ago.
They see the necessity to reform, not gut, NEPA and other environmental reviews to create hard deadlines and speed up the pace.
Without reform, said Gillis, “it’ll take us 30 to 40 years to do this which really must be done over the subsequent 10 years.” He hopes for leadership from left-leaning leaders in Congress, perhaps within the Senate. And he also says the environmental movement, so long focused on saying ‘no’, must determine ways to say ‘yes’.
There are nuances. The authors readily admit there are places we must always not construct solar and wind farms. And there may be also a vigorous debate in regards to the balance between big and distant renewables versus local sources.
As for Colorado, they see us as being a step or two ahead of much of the remaining of america. And america, they are saying, can grow to be a model for the world… even those countries whose economies today depend heavily on burning coal.
Colorado continues to shut its coal plants. One other unit, Comanche 1, positioned at Pueblo, will stop operations before the champagne gets hoisted to have fun 2023.
Allen Best
Allen Best publishes the e-journal Big Pivots, which chronicles the energy transition in Colorado and beyond.