by Henry Robertson
When you get your ballot on November 4, don’t stop at the top. Go down past the candidates to where the issues are and vote “Yes” for renewable energy. The Clean Energy Initiative will enact a Renewable Energy Standard (RES) — a requirement that electric utilities get an increasing percentage of their sales from renewable sources like wind, solar, biomass and small hydro. This is a tried and tested method that is already in place in half the states.
In Missouri the four investor-owned utilities (AmerenUE, KCPL, Aquila and Empire District Electric) will have to reach 2% renewable electricity by 2011, 4% by 2014, 10% by 2018 and 15% beginning in 2021.
The RES will displace coal-fired generation that is the biggest single contributor to global warming. Missouri now gets 85% of its electricity from coal, compared to the national average of 50%. Coal is twice as bad as oil or natural gas at releasing heat-trapping carbon-dioxide when burned; coal is nearly all carbon, except for impurities which are themselves pollutants, like mercury. Combustion produces sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides that cause smog and acid rain.
The RES will also give a boost to the renewable energy industries, helping them achieve economies of scale and bringing down their prices.
Colorado passed an RES in 2004 with a modest goal of 10% renewable electricity. In 2006 the legislature doubled the goal to 20%. Now there are two factories in Colorado making blades for wind turbines. That’s the kind of economic development we like to see.
The cost of fossil fuel and nuclear generation is going up (see “This CWIP isn’t funny,” this issue) while renewables are becoming more competitive all the time. The RES pays special attention to solar power. The utilities are otherwise free to choose whatever mix of renewables is cheapest, but 2% of the goal must be met with solar. They must also offer a $2 per watt rebate to customers who want help installing their own solar panels. Solar is the most promising form of electric generation but still prohibitively expensive for most companies and individuals. We’d love to see the day when every building is equipped with solar panels.
Missouri’s RES also comes with a guarantee that it will never increase your bills more than 1% on average over what they would be with all-nonrenewable generation. This will be the strongest consumer protection of any RES in the nation. Indeed, the RES campaign, of which the Sierra Club is a part, commissioned a Rate Impact Study. It found that over the first decade 2011–2020 the extra cost of the RES to the average residential customer would be 36¢ a month, while over the second decade the typical household would save 86¢ per month with the RES. Over the entire 20-year study period the average net savings would be 25¢ a month.
The study used conservative assumptions: it included only the operating and maintenance costs of fossil fuel generation, not capital costs; it did not include the cost of installing new pollution controls on fossil power plants; it allowed a 20-year lifetime for wind turbines, which may prove to be too short. Voting “Yes” for the RES is the best thing you can do this election day to advance the cause of clean energy and the fight against global warming.