By Cyrus Reed
In a packed late night session on December 15, dozens of citizens of Denton told their Mayor and City Council they loved Denton Municipal Electric’s plan to go big on renewables – getting to 70 percent by 2019 – but were against the plan to add 220 MW of natural gas power plants next year. In response, Council agreed to delay a decision on the “Denton Renewable Plan” at least until January to gather additional information.
The original Renewable Denton plan
Denton Municipal Electric (DME) announced its plan back in October, and has held a variety of public meetings, work sessions, and press conferences since then. Under the plan, DME would end its association with the Gibbons Creek Coal Plant (where it is one of four municipal utility owners) by 2018, and instead increase its contract with renewable energy sources, from 40 percent to 70 percent. Essentially, Denton would go from 40 percent renewables and 30 percent coal to 70 percent renewables. In practical terms, DME would contract another 200 MW of wind power as well as approximately 100 MW of solar power to get to approximately 70 percent.
What about the remaining 30 percent?
The controversial part of the plan involves what’s in the remaining 30 percent. DME has already issued a Request for Proposal (RFP) for 220 MW of quick-start gas plants, essentially 12 single natural gas engines each of which could generate about 20 MWs. DME argues that the quick-start units – estimated to cost $220 million – are needed to balance the wind and solar resources it doesn't operate, as well as helping provide ancillary services – essentially operating reserves – and avoid congestion charges when transmission lines become over-used. In its plan, DME estimates that by 2019 it would depend on the ERCOT market 15 percent of the time, the natural gas plants 15 percent of the time, and its wind and solar resources 70 percent of the time. Denton has stated that it believes it could commit to 100 percent renewables by 2030 when it believes improvements in energy storage, solar, and wind technology will allow it to get off fossil fuels.
As part of a presentation to the public and City Council, DME’s General Manager Phil Williams argued that its 70 percent renewable plan would be the most cost-effective, assuming the natural gas plants operated about 40 percent of the year, since generally the units could run at costs lower than average ERCOT peak prices.
Most Citizens Disagreed
While a few citizens, mainly representing business interests, found the utility plan to be reasonable, most did not. Instead, they urged the City Council either to go to 100 percent renewable energy, or go to 70 percent and do further analysis on both the natural gas plants and alternatives to new natural gas, such as battery storage or more investment in local solar, energy efficiency, and demand response (shifting energy use from peak times to other times of the year).
Roughly 40 citizens spoke from roughly 9:15pm to 12:30am. They continually stressed that with the recent Paris Accord on Climate, Denton’s history of the struggle with urban fracking, and the problems with urban ozone pollution in the Dallas-Fort Worth area moving toward the use of natural gas, was not the right way to go.
One by one, young and old, Dentonites argued that turning to natural gas was the wrong way to go. Lone Star Sierra Club Executive Committee member Brandon Morton suggested that DME look seriously at battery storage and utilize the great universities in North Texas to look at best practices, such as adding batteries to wind power plants. He cited a wind power plant in Minnesota that had added batteries and turned it into a “dispatchable power plant.” He added that with wind facilities right up the road in Muenster, research could be done easily. Morton asked City Council to consider going for a higher amount of renewables – such as 80 or even 100 percent – and match it with battery storage, while looking at other options. Morton also reminded Denton Mayor Chris Watts that going 100 percent renewable would be a great marketing tool to attract businesses to the area, and suggested that Watts had the right last name to do so, bringing a chuckle from the Mayor.
Two of Denton’s City Councilmembers – Keely Briggs and Kathleen Wazny – argued against investing in the natural gas plants, while others viewed it as a good insurance policy to protect against price spikes. Briggs and Wazny suggested that rather than adopting the plan, they should consider hiring a third party to do an independent review of the plan and look at alternatives.
After some back and forth, City Council unanimously asked DME to come back for a future work session for further discussion, at which time City Council could decide how to proceed, including potentially hiring outside consultants.
As Councilmember Wazny stated, “The worst decision we can take is to be in a hurry.”
What Sierra Club and its members suggest
The Sierra Club’s Lone Star Chapter has been consulting with our members in Denton, as well as allied organizations, and would urge the Denton City Council to proceed carefully and look at alternatives to the proposed gas plants including battery storage, demand response, community solar, compressed air energy storage, and more investments in energy efficiency.
In addition, as Denton Municipal Electric divests itself of its coal plant, it should consult with the other three owners – the cities of Garland, Greenville, and Bryan – of the Gibbons Creek coal plant and look at the potential not just to divest itself but to work toward a just retirement of the old coal plant.
Potential ways to move forward would be for City Council to name a citizen advisory committee to assess the alternatives, along with the utility’s plan, issue a Request for Information for energy storage to see if it could provide some or part of a cost-effective alternative to quick-start natural gas units, and hire a consultant to perform a third-party study to look at the DME plan and alternatives.
With the prices and efficiencies of new technologies like battery storage coming down each year, Denton should take its time and carefully assess all options before investing more than $200 million in new natural gas plants. While the new plants will generally be cleaner than many existing natural gas plants, they still will spew air pollution in a non-attainment area for ozone pollution, rely on fracked gas from Texas, and add to our carbon pollution burden.
Photo: RenewableDenton.com