REPORT: OPPD Could Save Customers $300 Million By Moving Away From Fossil Fuels

Omaha, Nebraska - Today the Sierra Club released a report of independent modeling and analysis of decarbonization pathways for the Omaha Public Power District (OPPD). The report, titled Coal-Free at OPPD [LINK HERE] and co-authored by Rachel Wilson and Iain Addleton of Synapse Energy Economics (Synapse), focuses on near-term actions available to OPPD that will enable the power district’s long term decarbonization.

The report includes analyses that result in significant financial savings to OPPD customers, including as much as $298 million savings from 2021 to 2035 under a scenario that includes no new gas and retires all coal generation by 2030.

OPPD is one of many electric utilities in the U.S. that has committed to reducing carbon dioxide emissions in the coming decades. Like many of these utilities, OPPD has set a target of net-zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 and is currently exploring scenarios that examine economy-wide decarbonization through the company’s Pathways to Decarbonization initiative. 

“The climate crisis calls for bold action,” said John Crabtree, Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaign Representative for Nebraska. “The bold actions described in Synapse’s report are technologically sound and operationally feasible, and they are the wisest course of action economically for OPPD’s customer-owners. We urge OPPD leadership to choose wisely and act boldly.”

As part of OPPD’s initiative, the utility is conducting modeling and stakeholder engagement that will lay the foundation for achieving its 2050 target and held public workshops over the last nine months. OPPD presented its initial results on October 27, 2021 and plans to present its final results on December 9, 2021. In early 2022, OPPD will also release an Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) that provides the utility’s generation changes intended to meet customer demands over the next twenty years, as required by the Western Area Power Association. 

OPPD expects that both the stakeholder process and the results of its decarbonization study will inform its 2022 IRP submission. Synapse was retained by Sierra Club to participate in the stakeholder workshops and to conduct simultaneous modeling that examined additional alternative resource portfolios. Synapse used state-of-the-art electric simulation software to compare the relative cost to ratepayers of continuing OPPD’s investments in existing and new fossil-fueled resources versus scenarios that retired coal, reduced reliance on new gas, and developed portfolios of renewables,storage and energy efficiency.

The Synapse modeling resulted in the following overarching findings:

• First, early investment in energy efficiency is a vital and cost-effective way of mitigating forecasted increases in peak load and annual energy demand.
• Second, early investments that allow OPPD clean energy development partners to capture the economic benefits of the production tax credit and investment tax credit will also allow OPPD to pass the associated cost savings on to customers.
• Third, the two Nebraska City coal units can be retired by 2030 in a way that reduces the overall cost and greenhouse gas emissions associated with OPPD’s portfolio.
• Fourth, approaches to decarbonization that include the above factors and eschew investments in new gas generation where possible result in financial savings to OPPD customers, including as much as $298 million savings from 2021 to 2035 under a scenario that includes no new gas and retires all coal generation by 2030.

“We are encouraged by initial comparisons of Synapse’s findings and the interim findings reported by OPPD in October,” added Crabtree. “In particular, OPPD’s findings relating to their accelerated decarbonization scenarios have many striking similarities to the findings in this report.”