Officials study environmentally friendly energy sources

Officials study environmentally friendly energy sources

By Jerry Dean
News-Sentinel business writer

How do we keep our air clean, electricity cheap, employment full and our economy booming? Is heightened reliance on green power a realistic solution?

Such questions led experts recently to spend an evening debating how increased reliance on green power - electricity from environmentally friendly sources - might help enhance Tennessee Valley air and water quality and its quality of life as well. The Great Smoky Mountains National Park's 6.8 million visitors a year now see a smokiness few expect - pollution damaging air and water quality. Some blame TVA fossil power plants.

Stephen Smith, who directs the Tennessee Valley Energy Reform Coalition, said park visitors breathed unhealthy air 52 days last summer - a health cost seldom factored in to costs of producing electricity at TVA's 11 fossil plants. One such plant, he said, emits pollutants comparable to those of 7.3 million cars - more than in Tennessee.

"Renewable (green) power is actually cheaper" than electricity from fossil-fueled plants, Smith said. But it seems costlier, he said, because "our economy is not assessing true costs."

Ron Loving said TVA has spent $2 billion cleaning its air emissions and is researching use of hydrogen fuel cells and other cleaner technology at its Environmental Research Center in Muscle Shoals, Ala. But he said growing electric demand, partly to power information technology, requires continued reliance on fossil plants.

"We must meet demand for supplying power to our customers," Loving said, "while being conscious of the environment. Electric utilities must do more than generate power. Conservation of resources is never out of fashion. It's all about balance."

Smith said some of the Smokies' pollution comes from other sources, including automotive exhaust emissions. But the Tennessee Clean Air Task Force, he said, is looking at the largest single-source polluters, including TVA's seven Tennessee fossil plants. TVA recently held public hearings seeking public views on green power, which could be offered TVA system wide as soon as 2003.

Panelists, including Smith, lauded green power plans to let TVA consumers pay more for solar or wind power. But Smith said, at most, six "green" megawatts - among TVA's 28,000 - are possible. Green power options would add $5 a month to an average home's 1,400-kilowatt-hour bill, he said.

"If we wait until global climate change is a reality," said Mary Liz Knish of the Tennessee Environmental Council, "we've waited too late to turn away from fossil fuel dependency." In Tennessee, she said, hard-line thinking says development is key to the economy. That means cheap power from coal which provides 61 percent of TVA power.

"We have to start thinking outside our region," she said, adding that in a session sponsored at the University of Tennessee by TVA, Public Power Institute and Outlook Policy Forum, a solution-focused policy institute in Alexandria, Va. The session, attended by 65, often threatened to become a verbal sparring between Smith and TVA's Loving.

Loving said TVA works hard to generate 1,000 added megawatts a year.

But Smith said TVA lacks incentive to curb such demand because it needs to retire a $26 billion dollar debt.

Loving said TVA burns 43.5 million tons of coal a year to meet demand. He added: "We must balance environment, economics and energy production and keep costs competitive."

Other panelists, who kept debate on track, were Lee Baker of Newport Utilities and Tennessee Valley Public Power Association; George Godwin, Association of Valley Industries; Kerry Kelly, research associate in UT's Energy, Environment and Resources Center; Umoja Abdul-Ahad of Project 2000; Chuck Price of UT Students Promoting Environmental Action, Knoxville, and Anda Ray of Public Power Institute.

One listener urged that utilities, rather than charge a premium for green power options, discount them as energy conservation incentives.

That won't happen, Smith said, until TVA prices power based on generation costs. Fossil plants, he said, exact huge costs in terms of environmental damage or human health costs like those for treating asthma or emphysema. Smith said even hydropower harms aquatic life. But green power, if compared to actual fossil, nuclear or hydro costs, would seem a bargain, he said.

One listener said even green power has its own costs. Solar arrays require huge spaces; wind turbines need treeless hills, he said. Power lines of both harm wildlife.

Audience member J.R. Gillum, executive vice president of Kentucky Cumberland Coal Co. in LaFollette, said few realize Appalachian coal, with 300 years in recoverable reserves, still keys low Tennessee Valley electric rates. TVA does a great job buying coal, he said. But low coal prices also can mean economic impact of mines closed and jobs lost.

Loving said TVA must burn 43.5 million tons of coal a year to meet demand, so fossil plants remain a backbone of TVA's system.

Lee Baker of Newport, speaking for 159 TVA wholesalers, said: "We give our customers what they want... cheap, reliable power. We focus on cost because that's what deregulation focuses on."

Abdul-Ahad, speaking for his 20-year-old nonprofit organization, said public housing residents too long have been invisible to the environmental movement. "Among lower-income energy users," he said, "lack of information's a major problem."

Baker said conservation should focus on energy-efficient technology like that used in heat pumps and geothermal energy systems. Godwin said deregulation will make electric utilities better stewards of energy.

But Knish said, "We got rich in this country based on burning fossil fuel. Now we export dirty coal technology while the U.S., with 4 percent of world population, generates 25 percent of greenhouse gases. What kind of country do we leave future generations?"

Price, a UT biochemistry major and Smokies resident, said he sees daily environmental damage done there. Utilities' rate structure, he said, often rewards waste and penalizes conservation. Kelly, a UT environmental researcher, called for a cradle-to-grave view of energy use, including costs to extract, use and dispose of energy resources.

Forum Chief Executive Elliott Laws said OPF's National Advisory Panel will use local responses to draft energy proposals. For details, see www.outlookpolicyforum.org.

Jerry Dean may be reached at 865-342-6317 or dean@knews.com.

"If we wait until global climate change is a reality we've waited too late."
— Mary Liz Knish of the Tennessee Environmental Council