1/18/08 Public Utilities & Renewable Energy

Public Utilities and Renewable Energy. I'm Greg Martin as Line On Agriculture presents the Harvest Clean Energy Report. The public utilities have been working hard for years to provide clean and consistent power. Now of course that focus has turned to doing that in as earth friendly a manner as possible according to Steve Johnson, Executive Director of the Washington Public Utility District Association. JOHNSON: PUD's have a great record on renewables you know. We're all about renewables. The 22 PUD's I work for serve a little less than a third of the population in the State of Washington and the carbon footprint which is the term that talks to how renewable and how clean you are is one of the smallest of any of the utilities in the United States. He says they not only talk the talk. JOHNSON: Our new headquarters building here in Olympia has got a 34 kilowatt solar system that is the largest solar system in western Washington so we are really proud of that. So we've done a lot with renewables and we know a lot about it and we know that we are facing some new challenges that are going to require that even more be done Johnson will be moderating a panel discussion at the upcoming Harvesting Clean Energy Conference on how the utilities will fit into the renewable picture and they are looking at the challenges ahead. JOHNSON: I think the challenge is to be able to manage these new types of resources and develop them and perhaps the biggest challenge is the new renewables predominately are intermittent in some fashion, they're not constant such as the power from a nuclear plant or even a dam on the Columbia River or a fossil fuel fired plant. They don't run day and night, the wind doesn't always blow, the sun doesn't always shine. But as we develop these renewable energy sources, how cost effective are they realistically going to be? JOHNSON: So in the near term, the cost of the power out of a system here unsubsidized is many, many times the cost of a new combustion turbine which is sort of the least cost alternate resource. On the other hand there's no fuel cost for solar energy and so the work we've done says if you have a long enough horizon this becomes a cost effective resource. This is why public power is particularly amenable I think to developing renewable resources because we're used to having a very long term payback on the things we do. For additional information on clean energy or the Harvesting Clean Energy Conference in Portland, visit harvestcleanenergy.org. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network. www.harvestcleanenergy.org