By Henry Robertson
It was a long shot. We could get a renewable energy initiative on the November ballot if we could collect 150,000 signatures in a little over two months. We got 170,000. The campaign had to rely on paid signature gatherers, but 28,000 signatures were collected by volunteers, many of them Sierra Club members—a very impressive achievement in such a short time. It’s 99.9% certain the Renewable Energy Standard will be on the ballot although the official certification from the Secretary of State won’t come until early August.
Renewable energy comes from sources that are naturally replenished, like wind, sun, water and plants (if they’re sustainably harvested). Fossil fuels pollute, and their supply is finite, but they’ve fueled this country for over a century. An industry that’s been entrenched for that long doesn’t give up easily. Renewable energy is expensive and unreliable, they say. We’ll do a little bit of it if it makes you happy; just leave it to us.
The answer is a Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) that requires utilities to generate an increasing portion of their power from renewable sources. In our case, that will be 2% of their retail sales by 2011, 5% by 2014, 10% by 2018, and 15% by the end of 2020. The RES will build the market, achieving economies of scale that will bring down the price of renewables. Half the states have already adopted this strategy in one form or another. Missouri will be the third state, after Colorado and Washington, to bypass a reluctant legislature and go straight to the people.
The time has come. Economics and the environment are in alignment. People are beginning to pick up on the fact that the Era of Cheap Fossil Energy is well and truly over. It’s not just the price of gasoline. The Missouri Public Service Commission has warned us to expect record high natural gas bills next winter, and natural gas is also used to generate electricity at times of peak summer demand for air conditioning. By the time you read this, Kansas City Power and Light will have announced substantial cost overruns for the construction of their new coal-fired plant in Platte County. And AmerenUE expects to spend $6 billion on a new nuclear plant. I guarantee you it will cost a lot more than that.
There wasn’t much time to sit back and relax after the successful signature campaign. “Renewable energy” has a good, friendly vibe, but the general public is not well informed about it. The “Vote Yes” campaign will have to educate the electorate and dispel misconceptions.
Passing the RES is the most important thing we can do for clean energy in Missouri. I urge all Sierra Club members to get involved.
Who’s who?
From the start the RES has had the support of the Sierra Club and a wide coalition of environmental groups all over the state, as well as Missouri’s small renewable energy industry, the handful of companies that install solar and wind devices at homes and businesses. The push really began with the 2006 Environmental Summit organized by Missouri Votes Conservation (MVC) to bring the state’s green groups together around a common set of legislative priorities.
Renew Missouri spearheaded the petition drive. As the campaign gathered momentum, national organizations got interested and started kicking in money, notably the Sierra Club, the League of Conservation Voters, and the American Wind Energy Association. All these groups have a local presence: Sierra’s Missouri Chapter and five groups, MVC, and Wind Capital Group (developer of the first wind farms in Missouri) respectively.
Obviously this effort is important beyond Missouri, but we want to see our strong home state support continue both financially and in the form of citizen action.
What you can do?
A new, temporary organization, Missourians for Cleaner Cheaper Energy, has formed to run the “Vote Yes” campaign. Go to their website, www.missouricleanenergy.org. Click on “Get involved” to sign up. You can do something as simple as get a yard sign or make a donation. Click on “Send a message” and you can send an e-mail to people you know. Or you can do much more.
We don’t have to worry about getting out the vote; the presidential campaign will take care of that. We need to educate the vote. MCCE plans to hold forums around the state to tell people about renewable energy.
Tax-exempt 501(c)3 groups like the Sierra Club aren’t allowed to spend much time or money directly lobbying for a ballot measure to pass, but we can always educate. The Sierra Club has similar plans to get the message out to citizens and media in the communities where we’re active.
What the RES will do?
When I was out collecting signatures I heard a number of questions about the RES. Now is a good time to clarify some things.
A lot of questions concern the definition of “renewable energy resources.” Basically, these are:
- Wind, both large (utility scale) and small.
- Solar. Don’t expect the utilities to build central station solar power plants. Solar will come from customers generating their own electricity and feeding the excess onto the utility grid. In fact, 2% of the RES goal must be met by solar. This is known as a “solar carve-out” and is meant to build the solar industry, which is still hampered by high costs in the absence of technological breakthroughs. The RES also requires the utilities to offer rebates of $2 per watt to help customers finance their solar installations.
- Dedicated energy crops. This means plants grown solely for use in generating electricity, like switchgrass, not food crops like corn. Corn ethanol would not be used for electricity anyway.
- Plant residues. This means mainly the leftovers from logging or harvesting crops. These must be harvested sustainably, and the Department of Natural Resources is charged with making regulations to ensure this.
- Hydropower up to 10 megawatts not involving new diversions or impoundments of water. This is “run of the river” hydro—no new dams.
It’s also important to know what’s not considered renewable: nuclear power, pumped storage facilities like the collapsed Taum Sauk reservoir, animal waste like manure from factory farms, chemically treated wood, old tires or municipal solid waste. If it’s not on the list of renewable energy resources, then it can’t be used to meet the targets.
What will it cost?
The RES guarantees that it will not increase rates more than 1% over what they would otherwise be. Based on experience in other states, the rate impact should be no more than a fraction of 1%. Rates may even decrease.
Who’s covered?
The RES applies to Missouri’s four investor-owned utilities (IOUs)—AmerenUE, KCPL, Aquila and Empire District Electric. It doesn’t apply to rural electric cooperatives or municipal utilities.
Renewable Energy Credits (REC): The utilities won’t have to build their own renewable generating facilities. We’d like them to, and the RES encourages economic development and job creation in Missouri by allowing 25% extra credit towards the goal for in-state generation. However, the targets can also be met by purchasing RECs.
When, say, a wind farm anywhere in the country generates power, that power is the same as any other—it’s just electrons. But it has additional value because it came from a clean, renewable source, and that extra value can be sold on the market as a Renewable Energy Credit . So if AmereUE decides that the wind in its service territory doesn’t make a wind farm economical, it can buy RECs from a wind farm somewhere else. But the electricity must still be delivered to customers in Missouri. It could come from a Kansas or Illinois wind farm but probably not one in California.
People sometimes asked me if the RES is like AmerenUE’s “Pure Power” program. Pure Power is a “green pricing” program; customers volunteer to pay a premium as a way of investing in renewable energy somewhere in the country. AmerenUE buys RECs with the Pure Power premiums; in that way it’s similar. When people asked me about this, I told them that with the RES they wouldn’t have to pay extra for renewable electricity (beyond that maximum 1%).
The RES should unite environmentalists, nsumer advocates, labor and everyone concerned about energy and the future of our planet.
To volunteer contact Melissa Hope: 816.806.6965 or melissa.hope@sierraclub.org.