Members of the Spokane City Council are considering a new climate ordinance that would require Spokane residents to use 100 percent renewable energy in the city by 2030.  The proposed ordinance would also require that at least ten percent of the electricity used by residents of the state’s second largest city be produced within the city or in the local area.

The proposed ordinance would be extremely costly, promises huge new infrastructure costs without saying how taxpayers will fund them, and wastes vast amounts of money on projects that do little to help the environment.

Last week, we examined the first portion of the proposal. Today, we continue examining the mistakes inherent in the proposal

“Whereas, renewable energy must also be sustainable, both in terms of the conservation of fish and wildlife habitat…and therefore reliance on existing hydroelectric power requires special consideration to reduce negative ecological impacts to biological systems dependent on the affected watersheds.”

Despite the fact that the resolution later counts “existing” hydroelectric power, this clause clearly indicates a bias against hydro power and, at the very least, would increase the cost of the existing energy sources.

Further, this wording is extremely vague and sets no clear policy goal for fish passage or other impacts. As we have seen with the Snake river dams, even if dam operation meets environmental targets, many in the environmental community still demand destruction of the dams and the loss of the carbon-free energy.

The ordinance could eliminate up to 87 percent of existing generation in Spokane County. This would leave Spokane County with only 61,000 megawatt hours (MWh) of electrical generation annually. The city of Spokane accounts for about 35 percent of Avista’s current residential population. Assuming a third of its commercial sales are also within city limits (a low estimate), the total annual demand for electricity in the city of Spokane was about 4.1 million MWh annually in 2015. This number is probably higher today.

Given the bias against large hydro-electric generation, under the ordinance Spokane may have to replace 98.5 percent of its electricity sources by 2030. Even if the city decided to keep all existing local hydropower, it would have to replace 90 percent of its existing energy supply by 2030, using only wind, solar, and selected biomass generation. If that were not burdensome enough, the next clause makes achieving these policy goals even more ridiculous.

“…identify opportunities and advocate for the development of community-based renewable energy infrastructure to achieve a goal of meeting at least 10 percent of overall community-wide energy needs (including transportation, heating, and electricity) via such infrastructure by 2035.”

The ordinance sponsors define community-based as energy created “within the community or nearby region.” Setting aside transportation and heating – which use more energy than electricity – this could require the construction of 400,000 MWh worth of power generation by 2035, assuming community demand does not increase.

Currently, the largest non-hydro source of energy in Spokane County is the waste-to-energy plant, which creates about 61,000 MWh of non-fossil electrical generation. Spokane would need to build about seven of these plants to meet the existing demand, building a new plant every two years until 2032 to meet the goal.

There are no wind farms currently in Spokane County because the county is unsuited for efficient wind energy production.

The ordinance text mentions increasing “rooftop solar,” but it ignores the reality that solar energy represents a tiny amount of energy generation in Washington. Statewide, Washington’s total solar production amounts to 727 MWh. If rooftop solar were used to meet just one-quarter of Spokane’s community-based energy, it would amount to 137 times as much solar generation as currently exists in the entire state of Washington.

Further, rooftop solar is the most expensive source of non-carbon energy production. The energy cost analysis most often cited by the environmental community, from Lazard, shows rooftop solar generation costs between $187 and $319 per MWh.

As noted, Washington has the worst level of solar irradiance in the lower-48 states. Choosing a point toward the higher cost end of $275 per MWh (still not the highest), would be more than four times as expensive as the highest-cost wind energy and natural gas generation. Generating 100,000 MWh of rooftop solar electricity would cost $27.5 million a year, or $126 for every Spokane resident per year for what would amount to less than three percent of the total electrical demand in the city.

As Lazard notes, rooftop solar also has the highest cost of any energy source to reduce carbon emissions. Compared to natural gas, rooftop solar costs $284 to reduce one metric ton of CO2. Compare that to the current cost in California under its cap-and-trade system, where it costs $15 to reduce one metric ton of CO2.

Worse, this is the average cost for the country, but solar generation in Spokane is much less effective than the national average. At best, rooftop solar generation wastes 95 percent of the funding spent on it, receiving only one metric ton of CO2 reduction for every 20 metric tons of reduction we could otherwise receive. Those who actually believe that climate change is a serious environmental problem would not waste 95 percent of funding in ineffective efforts to reduce CO2 emissions.

Wind and solar generation must also be backed up by reliable energy sources that can be turned on whenever the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow. The ordinance would only allow Spokane to use new “low-impact” hydro or biomass to meet that demand. Storage batteries could also be used, but they are extremely expensive and have not been used to provide power in any meaningful way. Those costs to back up solar would be imposed on ratepayers on top of the already high cost of the panels, wasting more money that could have gone to reducing CO2 emissions.

Conclusion

The Spokane ordinance as proposed is a very poor policy approach to cutting carbon emissions. Without addressing all the problems proposed in the ordinance text, if enacted it:

·        Would impose huge increases in energy costs for Spokane residents, and promises of additional, but unquantified, government spending with no source of revenue to back up those promises;

·        Contains false and unquantified claims about energy markets and climate change to justify those costs;

·        Provides no estimate of how much climate change impacts would be reduced or how Spokane residents would benefit from the taxes and money spent on the plan;

·        Contains language that denigrates Washington’s largest sources of carbon-free energy – hydro and nuclear power – while promoting the most expensive and least effective alternatives;

·        Would waste of millions of dollars on costly and ineffective energy sources like rooftop solar panels instead of focusing on technologies that yield significant reductions in CO2 emissions for low cost