Two engines drive the slow but steady conversion to alternative energy sources in Clark County and around the state: voter mandates and voluntary contributions.
That first engine was manifested in Initiative 937, the 2006 ballot measure that was approved by voters (51.7 percent both locally and statewide). I-937 requires large utilities to obtain 15 percent of their power from renewable sources by 2020.
That second engine is exemplified by the Green Lights program of Clark Public Utilities. Customers are allowed to pay — at their option — a premium of $1.50 per block of 100 kilowatt-hours (homes average about 1,200 kilowatt-hours per month) to be used as seed money for renewable energy projects.
Call it voluntary taxation. If you want to expedite progress in energy production, you’re welcome to pay extra, and more than 1,100 Clark customers have signed up. That’s a small fraction of Clark’s 180,000 business and residential customers, but Green Lights is yielding about $350,000 a year. Packaged with similar programs from other power producers, the money goes to the Bonneville Environmental Foundation.
This might sound like just a bunch of paperwork supporting a pipe dream, but last Friday the Green Lights program started showing visible, meaningful progress. As The Columbian’s Erik Robinson reported, the Combine Hills wind farm in eastern Oregon started producing electricity, a first for Clark Public Utilities. The 63 wind turbines are turning near Milton-Freewater, Ore., about 11 miles south of Walla Walla.
Yes, producing energy from renewable resources still is more expensive than burning fossil fuels, but if that fact was all that mattered, cars would’ve never replaced horses. And trends indicate that the cost is coming down, as explained by Angus Duncan, president of the Bonneville Environmental Foundation. “When I started in the wind business in the 1980s in California, it cost 25 cents per kilowatt-hour,” Duncan was quoted in the Robinson story. “Today, wind costs 6 or 7 cents per kilowatt-hour. Solar today costs 25 cents per kilowatt-hour, but there is every indication that its cost-curve will follow the same downward trajectory that wind has.”
Combine Hills has a 63-megawatts capacity, and Clark Public Utilities plans on using the entire output of the $150 million wind farm, paying $338 million for the energy over the next two decades.
It’s good to see voter mandates and voluntary contributions stoking the commendable conversion to renewable energy sources. The conventional method of generating power — burning fossil fuels — is antiquated and environmentally harmful. Renewable energy sources (wind, sun, geothermal) are essentially free and will never be used up. But for now, they’re much more expensive to harness.
This change in energy production might seem painfully slow in developing, but already it is impressively impacting many segments of society. Take the local and regional economy, for example, and specifically, jobs. Recently at the Northwest Renewable Energy Institute in Vancouver, 40 wind turbine technicians graduated from a six-month training program. The institute is a division of the International Air and Hospitality Academy. Even as devastating as the recession has become, these graduates are embarking on cutting-edge careers.
Of course, 40 graduates might not seem like a lot. Neither did the first 40 cars that were made.
