Renewable energy revolution.

Byline: David Steves The Register-Guard

SEEKING NEW SOURCES OF POWER

The days of guilt-free electricity in the Northwest are long gone.

Those hydro dams lauded by folk balladeer Woody Guthrie may have put Depression-era laborers to work and electrified the rural West, but they also turned out to be salmon killers.

Not that the dams power Oregon like they used to. Nowadays, fossil fuels produce almost half the state's electricity.

But a push is on to give Oregonians more electricity they can feel good about again.

Gov. Ted Kulongoski wants to require by 2025 that 25 percent of Oregon's power comes from pollution-free, environmentally friendly and inexhaustible sources. They could include the wind sweeping across Eastern Oregon, the debris from logging and forest-thinning sites up and down the Cascades, and the waves surging relentlessly toward Oregon's coast.

If Kulongoski's plan is adopted, it would make Oregon the 21st state with a "Renewable Portfolio Standard," or RPS. Washington voters will make a similar choice, with an initiative on their state ballot proposing a 15-percent-by-2020 RPS.

Advocates come to the debate armed with several arguments for using the government to impose a forced march toward renewable energy.

According to the Oregon State Public Interest Research Group, the state would reduce global-warming pollution by 7 million tons by adopting a renewable portfolio standard.

Even without state-adopted renewable standards, the region is on a pace - thanks to its current rate of expansion into wind and its conservation efforts - to meet its energy needs for the next decade without adding new carbon-emitting plants that burn coal or natural gas, according to the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.

Adopting an RPS would only add years to Oregon's ability to steer clear of environmentally unfriendly energy, said J. Rachel Shimshak, director of the Renewable Northwest Project.

She said big utilities have for years talked about their commitment to wind and other "green" energy resources, but their business plans and past practices suggest they're more committed to coal- and natural gas-fired plants.

A state-enforced renewable portfolio standard, Shimshak said, "would assure they do what they've said they were going to do, but so far haven't."

Stan Watters - a top executive with one of the region's biggest utility companies, PacifiCorp - said recently that he wasn't opposed to an RPS outright.

But rather than a mandatory target, with the threat of penalties for utilities that fall short, Watters said an Oregon RPS should set long-range goals supported by "reasonable incentives.''

"If we are going to have an RPS, it should be one that will benefit our customers, and not overly burdensome to the system with too high a cost," said Watters, the six-state utility's senior vice president.

Michael Early of the Industrial Customers of Northwest Utilities voiced a concern that costs would go up once suppliers of wind turbines and other sources of renewable energy generation knew that utilities had no choice but to add them.

"If there's a mandated requirement for someone to buy your turbines, you can charge more," he said.

The Eugene Water & Electric Board became the first public utility to use and sell wind power when it partnered with PacifiCorp in the late 1990s on a wind farm in Wyoming. Today, its gets about 7 percent of its electricity from resources that would likely be deemed renewable under Kulongoski's plan - a figure that could reach 15 percent if EWEB follows through on its intent to contract for geo-thermal power from an Idaho producer, said spokesman Lance Robertson.

He acknowledged that as a consumer-owned utility, altruism is a part of the mix, as well as business savvy.

"It's a little of both. Our customers definitely want and have asked for renewable power," he said, noting that EWEB's "green power" option, with higher rates, is just about at full capacity, and that the elected board has opted to put 1 percent of paid rates into renewable energy acquisition.

But all the same, EWEB has been relatively cautious about venturing into renewable energy, buying it in small enough quantities that it can hedge against upswings in the price of conventional electricity, but not so much that it proves a poor choice should those energy costs drop.

That's a big concern for consumer-owned utilities, which get preferential status when lining up for the Bonneville Power Administration's low-cost hydroelectricity. For those that get most or all of their electricity this way, a mandate to provide 25 percent of their electricity from more costly renewables would mean turning away low-cost BPA electricity, Robertson said.

Shimshak, the renewable energy advocate, said she doesn't agree with the industry point of view that "green" alternatives to coal, natural gas and hydro are necessarily more costly. She said that's the conclusion when you simply compare the per-kilowatt hour price - but not if you look at the bigger picture.

The same could have been said about wind in 1980, when it was in its infancy as an electricity-generating resource. But since then, its cost has dropped by 80 percent, thanks to refinements of technology, economies of scale and federal tax incentives that made the cost more comparable to conventional power generation.

"We think the same is true of a lot of other resources," Shimshak said.

And once the typically higher up-front construction costs are paid, these renewable sources are free from price fluctuations that can result from shortages or toughened environmental regulations.

`You have to look beyond the `sticks and bricks' costs of these resources and think through the benefits, like stability of prices over the life of the projects,' she said. "That's something you can't say about coal or natural gas."

INSIDE Candidates: Renewable views differ / A7