Energy Cooperatives Planning for the Future

Clean power plants have to be planned now, or utilities across the country may not have enough power generation capacity within a few years. That was the sentiment at a national meeting of cooperative utilities that I attended that was held this week in Portland.

The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA), a group of more than 900 member-owned utilities that serves more than 40 million consumers, believes that climate change must be counteracted by producing clean power. You may be as surprised as I was that power companies that have long lived on coal -- although not for profit like their investor-owned brethren -- are so committed to cleaning up their act today. They are asking members to call the members of congress that they are lobbying to create legislation that will encourage investment in wind, hydro, clean coal and even nuclear power.

Power is going to get "far more expensive than it is today," according to NRECA CEO Glenn English. That's a tough message to deliver to rural Americans, many of whom are on fixed incomes. English says generation capacity is being exhausted, and because of climate change, clean energy is the only choice.

English urged congress to speed up technology development in clean power, saying an investment of $2 billion annually for the next 8-10 years is needed to meet future demand. English says meeting the increased demand for power "will determine the economic growth of our nation," an ominous but on target statement.

You may be hearing more about this as the group has launched a marketing campaign titled "Our Energy, Our Future," that asks the public -- who will ultimately bear the cost of any rate increases from both member and investor-owned utilities -- to contact their political leaders and get them onboard.

I sat down with Patrick Lavigne, NRECA's Media Relations Director for about an hour and talked about cooperative utilities and their vision of the future. He said more investment must be made in wind energy components, citing a 2 year wait for wind turbines from GE.

To meet the expected demand, his association would support either nuclear power plants (which would have to be financed in conjunction with other power companies because of their high cost) or clean coal that captures the CO2 emissions.

Lavigne says the federal government should take the lead in overseeing the re-processing of nuclear fuel at power plants. He said 80 percent of the nuclear waste is reprocessed in France, while it's not done at all here. That seems like an obvious place to start and could calm some of the concerns about nuclear plants.

If congress passes carbon cap legislation -- something very likely to happen in the near future -- the cost of buying extra carbon credits or capturing emissions would be borne by consumers, Lavigne says. "It's like a tax on consumers to reach a policy goal."

But congress has to be very careful in crafting legislation that limits emissions or tries to decide for industry how it generates power. Bad legislation "could make energy unaffordable for many consumers," Lavigne says.

Unlike investor-owned utilities, coops are more democratic because the members (consumers) determine the board members, and if they don't like their decisions, they get voted out. On the other hand, any rate increases that they approve directly affect their neighbors, which can make for some awkward conversations while leaning on the fence post.

It's comforting to know that utility coops are trying to address these issues before any crisis from insufficient capacity or drastically rising prices occurs. Let's see if the public and Congress will listen.