The president’s climate plan: cleaner, reliable electricity

Not so long ago, folks in Des Moines, Iowa, got their electricity the old-fashioned way, from a combination of coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear.  In 2004 the state’s main utility, MidAmerican Energy Co., installed a wind farm among the corn fields in the northwest part of the state– 107 turbines, each about 260 feet high.

The company calculated that so abundant are the winds blowing across the verdant landscape that the Hawkeye State had enough wind energy potential to meet its entire electricity demand—44 times over. So they built another wind farm north of Des Moines, with 100 turbines.   And they kept building.

{mosads}Today, MidAmerican Energy has some 1,200 wind turbines at 14 locations throughout the central and western parts of Iowa, which account for nearly 30 percent of its generating capacity, some 2,285 megawatts, enough to power more than 600,000 homes.

When a current $1.9 billion investment in additional wind power installations is completed, the folks in Des Moines and other Iowa cities and towns will have seen a major shift in their energy mix—wind will account for nearly as much capacity (39 percent) as coal.  What’s remarkable about this transition is that for homeowners and businessmen, it has been largely unremarkable. The lights have stayed on, the air conditioners have continued to churn in the summer, and there have been no outages or blackouts because of growing wind capacity.

The only thing locals may have noticed is that their electric rates haven’t gone up in a decade and their air is cleaner—the state’s wind energy plants will avoid more than 8.7 million tons of dangerous carbon dioxide pollution every year, according to the American Wind Energy Association, the equivalent of taking 1.55 million cars off the road.

It’s an important lesson from Iowa, and from other states that have shifted toward cleaner electricity with wind, solar, and other renewable energy —our nation’s robust and flexible electric grid can adjust to changes in the mix of energy sources with no loss in the reliability of supply.

In the coming days and months you’ll hear opponents of President Obama’s Clean Power Plan say just the opposite: that the country would suffer debilitating blackouts and electricity shortages if we proceed with the plan’s modest and achievable cuts in carbon pollution from power plants.  The government is now holding a series of public meetings on the issue.  

The plan, proposed last year and now being finalized by the EPA, is the most important step we can take now to cut the dangerous carbon pollution that is contributing to climate change.  Under the plan, utilities would cut back on using power from the dirtiest coal-fired power plants and make up the difference with cleaner energy sources, like wind and solar, and also cut energy waste.

It promises to reduce carbon pollution from electric power plants, the nation’s single biggest source, by 26 percent by 2020 and 30 percent by 2030.  We’ll have cleaner air, a healthier planet, lower electricity bills, and hundreds of thousands of new clean-energy jobs.

Contrary to the doomsayers, renewable energy has a proven track record for reliability. To date, including Iowa we’ve added 75,000 megawatts of wind and solar to the system—that’s the equivalent of about 135 conventional coal plants, enough to supply 17.9 million homes—from California to Texas to New York with no reliability issues. Wind power has contributed up to 25 percent of total electricity demand in the Midwest with no reliability problems. Solar power also is reliable – it now routinely contributes 10 to 15 percent of California’s mid-day electricity demand. 

The critics, which include coal and some utility executives and those who deny climate change science and oppose all efforts to reduce carbon pollution, ignore the success that utilities and grid operators have already shown in adopting to these and other changes, such as the influx of large nuclear power plants in the 1970s and 1980s and the recent wave of coal plant closures due to competition from cheap natural gas.

In other words, we can do this, especially considering the EPA’s long timetable and the flexibility it has given states to meet carbon reduction targets with whatever combination of measures makes sense.  Of course, it won’t happen by accident, utilities and grid operators will have to conduct thorough planning and coordination—just as they’ve been doing for years. 

The fact is, environmental policy changes have never caused a blackout or power outage. The Clean Power Plan will maintain that record.

Moore is a senior attorney with the Natural Resource Defense Council’s Sustainable FERC Project.