The phrase means to disregard the danger, cast aside hesitation, and charge ahead despite the obvious risks. It is usually invoked to celebrate bold and heroic action.

And for those determined to degrade and breach the Northwest’s federal hydroelectric dams, the heroes now helping lead that charge are Governors Bob Ferguson of Washington and Tina Kotek of Oregon.

Building on the unprecedented assault on federal hydropower during the Biden administration, Ferguson and Kotek have climbed aboard with heavily funded nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Endangered Species Act (ESA) litigation aimed at diminishing the value of federal hydroelectric dams as a precursor to breaching them in the long-term.

The irony is difficult to miss given Washington and Oregon 100% carbon-free electricity mandates and “climate crisis” dogma regurgitated by Ferguson and Kotek every time they brag about their state’s bold “clean energy” leadership and how much they care about the affordability of electricity.

Some of my colleagues representing 35 not-for-profit electric utilities in Oregon are fed up with Governor Kotek and have joined forces to call her out. Check out the Oregonians for Affordable Hydropower website to get the facts and see why their homepage headline reads “Oregon’s hydropower is under attack - and you’re footing the bill.” My focus will be on Governor Ferguson and Washington state.

FEDERAL DAMS IN THE CROSSHAIRS

Hydropower in the Northwest is like nowhere else in the United States. While the country overall derives less than 6% of electricity from hydroelectric dams, the Northwest and Washington state count on hydro for about 50% and 60% of annual electricity supply respectively.

In an average water year about 50% of the blue slice of the annual energy pie shown in the previous chart is supplied by 31 federal dams owned and operated by the Corps of Engineers and Bureau of Reclamation.

These dams along with the Columbia Generating Station (CGS) nuclear plant are the foundation of the power supply portfolio of the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), a federal power marketing agency that supplies wholesale electricity to over 130 “preference customers” who are mostly not-for-profit public, municipal and cooperative utilities located throughout the Northwest.

The federal dams being targeted through ESA litigation are the four lower Columbia River (LCR) and four lower Snake River (LSR) dams shown inside the red area of the following map.

As shown in the following pie chart, the average annual generation in recent years derived from the LCR and LSR dams has been 2,535 and 686 average megawatts (aMW) respectively. The combined 3,200 aMW from the eight dams represents 44% of total Northwest federal hydropower production.

When it comes to dam breaching advocates, they love to downplay the average annual energy produced by the LSR dams which has dropped from a little over 1,000 aMW forecasted for operating year 2020 to around 680 aMW for 2026 driven largely by forced increases in the amount of water being routed over spillways at the dams, rather than through turbine-generators.

But anytime dam breachers who are often big fans of part-time electricity from wind and solar farms bring up the “insignificant” average energy from the LSR dams, I’m always reminded of an impactful quote I heard from former BPA Administrator and consultant Randy Hardy who said “averages are the enemy of reliability planning.”

And I love to bring up a graph like the following which highlights the flexibility of the LSR dams and how their output can be increased or decreased to help maintain the minute-by-minute supply and demand balance of the Northwest power grid. I like to refer to this wide range of controllable generation as “blackout insurance.”

So, when you hear the LSR dams represent a small or insignificant percentage of the regions power supply and can easily be replaced, always remember the 1,500 to 2,500 megawatts of reliable power these dams provide just when the grid needs it most.

Speaking of LSR dams which are all located within Washington state. Earlier this year the state’s legislature inexplicably appropriated $800,000 to once again study replacing the “electricity and energy services” they provide, which Governor Ferguson happily approved.

And what account will the funds for this study be drawn from? Well, the Climate Commitment Act (CCA) account of course. Because non carbon-emitting hydroelectric power with up to 2,500 megawatts of flexible peaking capacity should definitely be eliminated by the same people who claim to be saving the planet from an existential “climate crisis.” Yes, I know it’s hard to believe so check it out for yourself.

Unfortunately, it’s too late to provide input. But trust me, Commerce doesn’t really want to hear from anyone who thinks this is a bad idea. Why do I say this? Because when completed, this will be at least the sixth significant study of the consequences of breaching the LSR dams since 2020.

But if you think the goal is just about breaching the four LSR dams, think again. Washington state’s NGO allies also have the four LCR dams in their crosshairs as well. And these dams have twice the nameplate capacity and produce nearly four times the annual energy of the LSR dams.

LET’S GET A JUDGE TO HELP US

In a notable change from its posture in earlier phases of the litigation, including its former role as an intervenor-defendant opposing a 2017 spill injunction, the State of Washington appeared as a “friend of the court” in 2025 to support preliminary-injunction motions filed by the plaintiffs and the State of Oregon in the long-running Columbia River System Operations (CRSO) litigation.

The case, filed in 2001 and involving claims under the Endangered Species Act and related federal environmental law, is before Judge Michael H. Simon in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon. Judge Simon partially granted the requested preliminary relief in an amended order issued March 2, 2026.

There’s a lot more to it, but basically Judge Simon’s order requires spill levels at the LCR and LSR dams to be significantly increased, with summer spill extended through the entire month of August rather than part way as in prior years. And the increased spill was effective immediately, beginning in April.

This meant an unexpected reduction in federal hydropower generation which is particularly concerning in the months of August and September when river flows have petered out and the potential for extremely hot summer temperatures and critically high demand for electricity is still in play.

As shown in the following table, the difference (Delta) in megawatts between previous hydropower operations (RCBA) and those under the preliminary injunction (PI) is a loss of more than 1,000 megawatts (MW) of power generation in August and a loss of 700 MW in September during the six hours of peak electricity demand each weekday of the month.

Not only does high spill reduce power generation, but continuous spill at total dissolved gas (TDG) levels of 125%, as prescribed by Judge Simon, may also harm juvenile salmon through gas bubble trauma and adult salmon through fish-ladder confusion and fallback.

In other words, juvenile salmon can suffer something akin to “the bends” during their migration to the Pacific Ocean, while returning adults may struggle to locate fish ladders as they migrate upstream to spawn. Even adults that successfully pass a dam face an increased risk of falling back over the spillway when spill volumes are high.

The concern is that delays in adult salmon migration and repeated passage attempts increase the risk of prespawn mortality or reduced reproductive success.

Overall, it is important to understand that increasing spill to the point where dams are operated more like waterfalls remains largely experimental. The jury is still out on whether flushing juvenile salmon downriver as quickly as possible produces benefits sufficient to justify the risks.

To be fair Judge Simon pushed back against the plaintiff’s radical request to lower the operating pools above the eight dams to minimum levels which would have been highly impactful to irrigated agriculture, opting instead for minimum irrigation pool levels. In addition, Judge Simon’s order preserves emergency and operational-flexibility protocols that allow high spill to be temporarily suspended under certain conditions.

That said, electricity customers across the Northwest need to understand that the firm capability of the federal hydropower system is already fully committed. In fact, BPA preference customers’ total annual demand is projected to exceed the firm capability of BPA’s power-supply portfolio by 542 average megawatts during operating years 2026 through 2028. Firm capability represents the generation that can be reliably expected during a low-water year corresponding to a one-in-ten, or P10, probability of occurrence.

The following graph of BPA’s forecast deficit or surplus position by month during P10 water conditions is a case study in why averages don’t get the job done when it comes to grid reliability, and is illustrative of how highly variable hydropower can be.

What the previous graph shows is that BPA’s monthly deficit over all hours (AVG) can be as much as 1,000 aMW during December and April but surplus by the same amount or more in May and June when mountain snowpack is melting rapidly.

Yes, if median water conditions show up, there can be a surplus of annual energy as shown in Table 2-13 of BPA’s forecast for 2027 and beyond. But in a drought year, annual energy deficits can be large with BPA counting on power market purchases to cover deficits under firm water conditions.

Up to this point, BPA has done a good job of hedging the financial and physical risks of power supply deficits and incorporating the planned and unplanned costs of market purchases into their wholesale rates and financial policies.

But Judge Simon’s order for high spill came without meaningful time for planning which means BPA will be rolling the dice, particularly in August and September when a western U.S. heat event could create power market scarcity and big spikes in prices.

To allow for this possibility and cover other monthly deficits, BPA has announced the need for as much as $85 million worth of power market purchases per year in order to mitigate the impacts of Judge Simon’s spill order.

BPA is currently operating in a three-year rate period so the cumulative impact is $255 million of added costs through 2028 which directly translates to rate increases for BPA’s preference customers. For my utility the expected rate increase is on the order of 3.5%.

WASHINGTON’S INCOHERRENT ENERGY STRATEGY & FINAL THOUGHTS

Thanks to hydropower, electricity prices in Washington have historically been some of the lowest in the United States and have provided an economic development advantage for decades.

Now, in large part due to draconian clean energy policies that are force feeding unreliable wind and solar farms into utility portfolios, the price of electricity in Washington is on the rise and has increased 54% since 2019.

Electricity price increases have been highest for investor-owned utilities (IOUs) in Washington who are not preference customers of the BPA and do not have contractual rights to firm electricity from federal dams.

Under Washington’s Clean Energy Transformation Act (CETA), all utilities must supply 80% carbon-free electricity by 2030 on their way to 100% by 2045. So recent big jumps in retail electricity rates are largely about hydropower “haves” and “have-nots” with BPA preference customers already over 90% carbon-free and IOUs lagging significantly behind and needing to turn to large acquisitions of wind, solar and batteries to meet CETA’s 2030 deadline.

It’s really not that hard to understand. Electricity supply and demand must be perfectly balanced minute-by-minute. Wind and solar are variable and intermittent. So, even if individual wind and solar farms produce “cheap” electricity they must be overbuilt across a large geographical area to increase the odds that the wind is blowing somewhere or the sun is shining.

The need for geographical diversity of wind and solar farms means the need for costly and hard to build high-voltage transmission lines increases significantly. And in the end, wind and solar can still come up short which means you have to pay the cost for backup generation. So here’s the math.

(Wind & Solar Overbuild) + (Transmission Lines) + (Backup Generation) = (Higher Costs)

And now, the same people who promised we could have it all; clean, reliable and affordable electricity are actually taking actions to hobble the federal hydropower system which has been the low-cost electricity “golden goose” in Washington for decades.

Of the BPA’s 133 preference customers, 65 are located in Washington representing 44% of statewide electricity demand. In addition, 61% of BPA’s annual energy supply is to fulfill the needs of entities in Washington. So, if any state should tread lightly on federal dams, it’s Washington.

Washington’s Net Zero by 2050 energy strategy (which in my view is an act of economic suicide), envisions doubling annual electricity demand through the electrification of the transportation sector and natural gas end uses.

This means another 10,000 aMW of annual electricity generation equivalent to the output of ten CGS nuclear plants will have to be developed over the next 25 years. Of course we’re not allowed to discuss the possibility of adding carbon-free and reliable “big nuclear,” it’s all going to come from unreliable wind and solar farms.

It took Washington over 100 years to get to the level of electricity consumption we are at today. So in an anti-development era, how long do you think it will take to add another 10,000 aMW of power generation assets? And if you have to overbuild for reliability, how many acres of land do you think it will take if you insist wind and solar will be your primary technologies?

To add to the absurdity, Washington’s adopted State Energy Strategy for meeting its mandate of 100% carbon-free electricity by 2045 assumes the state will import 43% of its electricity, about 9,000 aMW, from states with more productive wind and solar resources. And that assumption depends on the federal dams continuing to generate electricity at today’s levels.

Suffice it to say, replacing the output of degraded or breached federal dams would amount largely to an out-of-state “green energy” jobs program.

In the Northwest, hydropower is the best friend of wind and solar. Elsewhere in the United States, balancing and backing up variable wind and solar generation depends heavily on natural gas, which now supplies about 43% of the nation’s electricity and growing.

So, if you are pro dam breaching, you need to be pro natural gas power as well. And you certainly should not be trying to tax it out of existence.

By the way, hydropower can vary significantly with seasonal and annual water conditions. So what do you think the most reliable back up for hydropower might be? Here is a hint: It’s not intermittent and variable wind and solar.

Unfortunately, Washington’s political leaders are so busy moralizing about energy policy and crowing about their environmental and social virtue that they fail to recognize the collision between their so-called clean-energy ambitions and the misguided belief that dam breaching is the single best answer to salmon recovery.

I wish I could say education is the answer, but so far ideology is continuing to override rational, balanced approaches to energy policy.

I love Washington state and it saddens and worries me to see the fiscal mess we are in and how delusional energy policies are unnecessarily compounding the problems. I’m not giving up, but perhaps consequences will have to become so severe that a disillusioned and disgruntled electorate finally forces Washington’s elected officials to recalibrate.

It turns out, not even Washington’s officially adopted Energy Strategy can quite pin it down.

“Many definitions of equity exist, and no single definition can perfectly capture the expectations and goals of all communities and populations.”

But one thing is for sure, the state’s Energy Strategy will “ensure public participation and inclusion of historically marginalized voices”.

And as part of the new way of doing the energy business, Washington’s agencies and policy leaders are committed to putting the interests of Tribal governments at the forefront of energy facility siting decisions.

“In addition, state and local governments must continue intentional and thoughtful engagement with Tribal governments to understand the different ways Tribes approach their relationship with energy. Steps must be taken to ensure meaningful outreach and opportunity for participation by all of Washington’s Tribes.”

There’s only one problem. Washington’s critically flawed energy strategy is foundationally based on energy-dilute land-intensive wind and solar farms, and the thoughtful Tribal engagement isn’t going so well.

Who could have guessed a Washington Tribe would object to the industrialization of tens of thousands of acres of iconic hillsides, natural landscapes, and open spaces?

Here is how Yakama Nation Tribal Council Chairman Gerald Lewis responded to Governor Bob Ferguson’s decision to approve the 160-megawatt Carriger Solar farm:

“It is alarming and bitterly discouraging to see that Governor Ferguson is continuing former Governor Inslee’s approach to championing new industrial-scale alternative energy development at the expense of our land, our water, our wildlife, and our sacred places – instead of taking Yakama Nation up on our multiple requests to discuss how we can work together toward a more just energy transition.”

I share Chairman Lewis’ frustration. But if he’s bitterly discouraged over a 160 megawatt (MW) solar farm with a project footprint of 1,326 acres (2 square miles), he and other Tribal leaders throughout the Northwest need to take a closer look at the officially adopted Washington Energy Strategy which envisions 39,300 MW of solar farms across the region, including 11,250 MW in Washington.

Using the Carriger Solar farm as a basis, Washington’s vision for electric capacity additions from utility-scale solar would impact 325,000 acres (+500 square miles) in the Northwest and 93,000 acres (+145 square miles) within state borders.

So Carriger only represents 0.4% of what Washington policy makers believe should be built across the Northwest and 1.4% of what is hoped for within the state. Pretty safe to say, they haven’t even gotten started.

But wait, there’s more. If you think 500 square miles of solar farms is a big number, Washington’s Energy Strategy also dreams of more than 100 Seattle-sized onshore wind farms impacting over 8,400 square miles.

Scroll back up to the previous graphic and take a closer look at the bar graph on the right which shows new electric capacity envisioned within Washington state borders. Yes, I know, between 2020 and 2040 the bars are barely visible. And even when they start showing up in 2045 and 2050, Washington’s plan for hosting on-shore wind farms is truly unimpressive, with just over 2,100 MW or 3.3% of the more than 62,000 MW envisioned throughout the Northwest.

To be clear, Washington’s Energy Strategy relies almost entirely on plastering wind and solar farms across the landscapes of other states, with Montana and Wyoming wind representing 36% of electricity imports hoped for by 2050.

Afterall, nothing screams energy equity more than expecting citizens in other states bear the majority of land-use burdens and ecological impacts of your clean energy dreams.

So, why would Washington’s Energy Strategy through 2040 call for a nearly undiscernible amount of wind and solar farms be built inside state borders?

It’s simple for solar. Other factors being equal, the closer you are to the equator, the more direct sunlight reaches the ground, which means you get more bang for the buck from solar panels located at latitudes south of Washington.

As for wind, there are very few locations inside Washington borders with average annual wind speeds that make wind farms commercially viable. And for the handful of sites that make the cut, even these are cursed by high atmospheric pressure and stagnant air that routinely sets in over Washington during winter cold snaps. This means little-to-no electricity will be produced by in-state wind farms just when it is critically needed.

At bottom, power generating facilities are monetized on their energy production over time and the capacity that shows up when demand for electricity is the greatest. This is why Washington wind farms are real dogs on cold days, and the state Energy Strategy confirms it.

Pesky wind and solar farm physical realities are why the electricity production cost models used to inform the Washington Energy Strategy doesn’t call for building significant solar or on-shore wind farms inside state borders until after 2040, at which point the best locations outside of Washington are presumed to have been developed. Only then do the inferior solar and wind sites inside state borders make their way into the timeline of the optimal Energy Strategy.

Washington State’s Energy Transition Delusion

In January of 2023, staff representing the Washington Department of Commerce (WDC) Energy Policy Office included the following slide in a work session they had with the Senate Environment, Energy & Technology Committee.

In case you missed it, WASHINGTON LEADS ON CLIMATE. And the evidence provided by the WDC to support this bold claim are the numerous top-down draconian first-of-a-kind energy policies passed by the state legislature, all of which will of course be equitable. Not exactly how the WDC wrote it, but you get my point.

Later in the year, the WDC released their 2023 Biennial Energy Report which inspired the following headline.

According to the WDC, their report documents numerous accomplishments in the clean energy transition and climate policies, and references key strategies such as clean energy equity and how the state is utilizing federal and state funding to “build an equitable and inclusive clean energy economy”.

Ok, we got it. The energy will be clean, affordable and reliable, and whatever we build will be equitable and inclusive. Everybody wins!

Now checkout this headline from May 2025 by Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB).

It turns out Washington energy policy makers and the state agency in charge of implementing them were so busy virtue signaling and patting each other on the back, they didn’t notice their top-down policies weren’t actually building much of anything.

In fact, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, at the time the OPB article was written, Washington state ranked 50th in the nation for growth in average annual production of power from wind, solar, hydroelectric and geothermal between the decades of 2005-2014 and 2015-2024.

While this inauspicious ranking has elicited much shame and panic among Washington legislators, I just made the case that not building wind and solar farms within Washington borders until after 2040 is the official Energy Strategy most of them adopted in 2021. Clearly, they need to do a little homework. Or, if they can live with the cognitive dissonance, just read my Substack posts.

While I definitely do not agree with some of their claims, OPB gets most things correct, including pointing out the ignorance of Washington (and Oregon) policy makers when it comes to how the power grid in the Northwest actually works.

And I couldn’t agree more with the closing paragraph attributed to David Brown of Obsidian Renewables.

“We don’t have a prayer of meeting our heralded, flag-waving renewable energy goals,” he said. “The dialogue will be to blame Trump; it won’t be to blame ourselves for poor planning and extremely low expectations.”

As I see it, legislators in Washington have been so busy hyperventilating over the climate crisis and elevating themselves to global saviors, they failed to do the homework necessary to truly understand the scope, scale and land-use impacts of the physical infrastructure their Energy Strategy is calling for.

One major blind spot pointed out by OPB, and a similarly themed article written by the Seattle Times editorial board, is how ignorant policy makers are of the role high-voltage transmission lines have in operating an affordable and reliable power grid, and how critical upgrades and additions to these lines would be for realizing their green dreams.

While I am not normally a fan of the Seattle Times editorial board, on this issue, the conclusion of their article was spot on.

“Either legislators must confront the barriers keeping us from a decarbonized future — or admit it’s a dream that must be deferred. Washington consumers, businesses, utility operators and environmental leaders must hold them accountable.”

Seattle Times editorial board, “WA isn’t building the clean energy transformation lawmakers demand”, January 4, 2026

Among many critical failures, legislators did not adequately engage with electric utilities or the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) which owns and operates 75% of Northwest transmission lines. And instead of admitting they blew it, many legislators and renewable energy advocates are deflecting blame to BPA and publicly throwing them under the bus at every opportunity.

BPA is a federal agency within the U.S. Department of Energy and has been a major player in the Northwest power grid since the first hydroelectric dams were constructed on the Columbia River beginning in the 1930s. BPA is not exactly an unknown entity.

And it wasn’t BPA that passed unnecessary, unrealistic and panicked carbon-free electricity policies that created a feeding frenzy of transmission line interconnection requests precipitated by the Biden Administration’s Green New Deal; aka the Inflation Reduction Act.

Yes, BPA has stopped processing transmission service requests. They had to when the magnitude of requests increased exponentially from an already historically high level of 10,000 megawatts (MW) in 2022 to 65,000 MW in 2025.

I agree BPA business processes need some serious attention, and they must improve on their outward facing performance metrics and transparency. But I don’t see how they could have readied themselves for the tidal wave of wind and solar farm developers who rushed into the Northwest to take advantage of overly generous federal tax credits, burying BPA in generator interconnection requests that swelled to 116,000 MW in 2024.

This level of requests represents generating capacity equivalent to nearly 3.5 times the maximum demand for electricity in the entire Northwest which peaks at about 34,000 MW in winter. Do you see the real cause of the problem here?

Northwest Transmission Lines - What Policy Makers & Citizens Must Know

In addition to functioning as the wholesale power marketer for 31 federal hydroelectric dams and the Columbia Generating Station nuclear plant, BPA’s transmission business portfolio includes more than 15,000 circuit miles of high-voltage lines.

While utilities other than BPA own and operate transmission lines in the Northwest, all utilities, whether they are not-for-profit (public) or investor-owned, rely on BPA to transmit all or some of the electricity generated at power plants scattered throughout the Northwest to their customers in both rural and urban areas.

Another important Northwest grid fact is that more than 60% of the demand for electricity in the region can be attributed to the people and businesses located west of the Cascade Mountain Range (CMR), as illustrated by the dashed-lines on the following map.

Additionally, about 75% of the over 21,000 megawatts of winter electricity demand west of the CMR is met by electricity supply that flows from east-to-west through a collection of high-voltage transmission lines identified as the Cross Cascades North and Cross Cascades South “Flowgates” (see previous map).

Why does transmission line geography matter? Because the the massive dependency “west siders” already have on power generation facilities located east of the CMR would increase exponentially under Washington and Oregon carbon-free electricity strategies which aim to double electricity demand supplied from wind and solar farms east of the CMR, while shutting down nearly 5,000 megawatts of natural-gas-fired power generators currently located along the Interstate-5 corridor (west of the CMR).

So, if this is the strategy, wouldn’t it be helpful for Washington and Oregon legislators and citizens to contemplate what it would look like in the Cascade Mountain Range and the Columbia River Gorge if the lion’s share of another 26,000 MW of winter electricity demand will need to flow from wind and solar farms located to the east.

And isn’t it worth considering the wisdom of energy strategies that publicly shame, and are designed to financially bankrupt, the only reliable power generation plants located close to where people west of the CMR live and engage in business?

Do west side citizens really understand that current state laws are betting their health, safety and wellbeing on intermittent and variable wind and solar farms located hundreds of miles from where they live, and in states without carbon-free electricity mandates (Montana, Wyoming and Idaho)?

To help with understanding, here is a picture of a collection of existing BPA transmission lines running through the Cascade Mountain Range. How much clear cutting of the forest will be required to double electricity demand on the west side? And is there even room for more transmission lines along rugged mountainous corridors that are accessible for maintenance and repair?

An equally important consideration is what it will look like when transmission lines are built in the backyards of people living on the west side? Because we know how much people love having high voltage power lines running through their communities.

The following picture is from the last time BPA attempted to permit and build a new 79-mile 500-kilovolt transmission line in the Interstate-5 corridor. The Interstate 5 Corridor Reinforcement Project was kicked off in 2009 and was under consideration for nearly nine years before it was ultimately canceled in 2017 because BPA “found a better solution”.

So here’s a question for Washington (and Oregon) legislators. Are you ready to engage with your constituents and make the case for exercising eminent domain when BPA announces the need for extensive new transmission lines in their backyards? Or will you sit on the sidelines and expect BPA to do the dirty work in pursuit of your utopian clean energy dreams?

And don’t forget about the transmission lines Washington’s Energy Strategy says will be needed to tap wind farms in Montana and Wyoming. Do you think there might be mountainous terrain to cross? And what about property owners and interest groups in states to the east and south of Washington. How do you think they’ll take it when the transmission lines being built in their backyards are to serve demand for carbon-free electricity in Seattle?

Conclusions

I have been in the utility and power business for nearly 40 years and am fully aware of how hard it can be to site, permit and construct power generation facilities and power lines. And yes, sometimes you have to build infrastructure in locations opposed by local property owners and interest groups.

But before you engage in the dirty business of acquiring property and right-of-way against the will of local NIMBYs, you must make the case the sacrifices of a relative few is justified by the greater public good, and that all feasible alternatives have been considered.

It is not a secret that wind and solar farms are land intensive, and that they must be overbuilt across a massive geographical area to increase the chances the wind is blowing and the sun is shining somewhere. It’s also not a secret that extensive numbers of transmission lines will be needed to move electricity from remotely located and widely disbursed wind and solar farms to where people live and work.

Washington’s Energy Strategy which claims to “prioritize equity and environmental justice in the clean energy transition” is blind to the physical realities of energy-dilute wind and solar technologies. And it is abundantly clear the only thing Washington energy policies are leading on is environmental virtue signaling, false promises and high ecological and financial costs.

Former Washington Governor Jay Inslee was the chief architect and cheerleader for the Clean Energy Transformation Act (CETA) and the Climate Commitment Act (CCA), which are the centerpiece policies now being confronted by development realities and power grid physics.

While Washington is dead last in so-called renewable energy development, the evidence is clear that both CETA and the CCA are draconian energy policies that have already begun taking an axe to the pillar of affordable and reliable electricity that historically made Washington a great place to live, work, and raise a family.

So, given the all-hands-on-deck critical need for more wind and solar farms, and extensive new transmission lines required to double electricity demand in Washington, it is only appropriate Inslee be brought out of retirement to wield the axe that clear cuts thousands of trees in the Cascade Mountain Range and backyards of his neighbors on the west side. And why stop there. Inslee should also lead the charge to establish the transmission line corridors needed through the mountain ranges of Montana, Wyoming and Idaho as his beloved Energy Strategy calls for.

Clearcutting is just one of many dimensions of the dirty business of clean energy yet to come in Washington and beyond. But before you can clear cut trees, the land will have to be acquired or taken. And I nominate Jay Inslee to head the new Washington State Transmission Authority which was recently established by the state legislature (SB 6355) to “improve the reliability and capacity of the electric transmission system” through the exercise of the power of eminent domain when necessary.

Inslee is just the guy to make the case for taking people’s land for “green” transmission lines since he was also a big supporter of Washington’s Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council’s preemption authority which allows wind and solar developers to bypass local zoning and land-use rules that would otherwise block their project, and replaces local permitting processes with state certification.

Everything we are living with and learning about today that makes CETA and the CCA broken, ineffective, and expensive were known, or could have been known in 2019 when then Governor Jay Inslee was championing the policies.

Washington has barely begun to execute on it’s Energy Strategy and it is already abundantly clear the promise of energy equity is hollow virtue signaling that is blind to the physics and tradeoffs of utility-scale energy production. Legislators must come to terms with the consequences of their singular fixation on eliminating carbon-dioxide from Washington’s energy sector which represents 0.2% of global annual emissions. Is this really a greater public good worth the many costs of a wind and solar centric Energy Strategy.

And how about legislators actually read what their adopted Energy Strategy says, and be willing to speak up and moderate state laws to find common ground, rather than pitting neighbors against neighbors and inflaming the urban-rural divide through excessive land grabs.

Small-footprint power-dense and reliable natural-gas power plants built on a dozen acres, closer to where people benefit from the plants, must be a big part of Washington’s Energy Strategy, and now.

Natural-gas-to-Nuclear (N2N) is a superior long-term energy vision and would minimize inequitable and disproportionate land-use impacts that are inherent in a wind and solar based energy strategy. And yes, we can build wind and solar farms along the way. But how about we build them where the locals actually want them.

To this end, I am calling for an interstate trade mission led by Washington legislators who are willing to pull out a map of the best wind and solar sites in the Northwest, locate the counties where these sites exist, and then meet with the locals in Washington, Oregon, Montana, Wyoming and Idaho to actually find out whether Washington’s Clean Energy strategy has a prayer of working, or if it needs to be recalibrated and seriously down sized.

It seems pretty clear the latter will be the case, but how will you know if you refuse to leave the Olympia echo chamber and make your case to the people you will be impacting.

As for my backyard in eastern Washington where the controversial 112 square mile Horse Heaven Wind Farm is being force fed through EFSEC preemption authority despite overwhelming opposition from the more than 300,000 citizens of the Tri-Cities area and the Yakama Nation — EFSEC has not held a single in-person public meeting. All meetings have been via Zoom.

Is this really what it looks like to “prioritize equity and environmental justice in the clean energy transition”. It looks more like Green Tyranny to me.

Consequently, carbon-dioxide (CO₂) emissions from Washington’s electricity sector have recently averaged 0.7% of the U.S. annual inventory. Additionally, on a per capita basis, total energy sector CO₂ emissions for the last 25 years attributable to each Washington citizen have only been 50% of the U.S. average.

And on top of being a “clean energy” leader, Washington has for decades enjoyed some of the lowest retail electricity prices in the nation, by far.

Washington’s top-tier electricity supply status and its long-coveted economic development advantage made possible by uniquely low-cost hydropower remind me of when I took over as general manager of an exceptionally well-run utility. As he handed over the reins, the outgoing GM shared the same advice his predecessor had given him: “Good luck—and don’t screw it up.”

If only Washington State legislators had taken this simple advice.

Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory

Enter Washington’s Clean Energy Transformation Act (CETA) which became law in 2019. Built on the “climate crisis” narrative evangelized by former three-term Governor Jay Inslee, CETA requires Washington utilities supply 100% carbon-free electricity to their customers by 2045. It just wasn’t enough that Washington’s electricity-sector fuel mix was already 70% non-CO₂ emitting.

And in their climb to the mountaintop of environmental virtue, utilities are required to reach 80% carbon-free power by 2030 and to pay penance for the remaining “dirty” 20% through purchases of renewable energy certificates or other state-approved investments signaling sufficient devotion to ridding the planet of life-giving, odorless, tasteless, and invisible CO₂. Now officially rebranded “carbon pollution” as illustrated in the following graphic.

Yes, CO₂ exerts a warming influence on global climate. But calling it pollution and portraying it as a black, sooty substance (carbon) with nothing but negative effects, is at best, propaganda-adjacent. Afterall, didn’t we learn in elementary school that CO₂ is plant food?

No matter. Whether it’s global greening, protection from extreme cold and heat, or increased quality of life or life expectancy, when it comes to the seven climate policies adopted by Washington state there can be no upside to CO₂ or the hydrocarbons (fossil fuels) from which it comes. We must set aside comprehensive costs versus benefits, and cradle-to-grave ecological impacts analysis. There is only “clean” and “dirty” energy — it’s just that simple.

And while “following the science” is claimed to be a pillar of Washington’s energy policies, one important way to keep things simple is to ignore inconvenient realities and by all means never put Washington CO₂ emissions in a national or global context.

Evidence of this coordinated navel-gazing is easy to find in Washington’s officially adopted Clean Energy Strategy and in the Findings sections of both CETA and the Climate Commitment Act (CCA), which, beginning in January 2023 imposed a price on CO₂ emissions; effectively a carbon tax.

In each case, the language amplifies state-approved climate-crisis talking points and advances a carefully curated set of indisputable “facts” designed to rally fellow climate crusaders while setting the stage for a planetary rescue mission, and promises of a utopian future in which everyone’s interests are served. We will abandon evil fossil fuels, electrify everything; and of course, it will all be affordable.

But before we talk economics, let’s do something no Washington clean-energy law, report, or taxpayer-funded grant program ever does: put Washington’s CO₂ emissions in perspective.

Washington CO₂ Emissions Reality Check

According to U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates, for the past 20 years energy sector CO₂ emissions in Washington have been relatively flat averaging 76 million metric tons (MMT).

While millions of tons of “carbon pollution” may sound alarming, placing Washington’s emissions in a global context tells a very different story. On the same scale used for global totals, Washington’s annual emissions amount to roughly 0.076 billion tons, compared with 38.6 billion tons of global emissions in 2024, as shown in the graphic below.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Washington emissions register two decimal places to the right of the global total and are barely perceivable in the grand scheme of things. What is perceivable however is the relentless and steady increase in global emissions. And if you look closely, you will see that U.S. emissions in recent years are decreasing and bucking the global trend.

A closer look at the data reveals that U.S. emissions peaked in 2007 at 6.12 billion tons and have decreased 20% since then to 4.9 billion tons in 2024. Furthermore, over 72% of the 1.22-billion-ton reduction was the result of fuel switching in the electricity sector from coal to natural gas. Yes, that’s correct: a fossil fuel has been the single largest contributor to “cleaning up” the U.S. energy sector to date.

Which raises an obvious question: if emissions in the U.S. as well as those in the European Union are falling, why do global emissions keep rising? The short answer is that prosperous Western civilizations are not convincing poor people to stay poor, despite the “good example” they claim to be setting with their war on CO₂; and their growing willingness to commit economic suicide.

Developing countries on the other hand are prioritizing increased human flourishing through rapid development of abundant, affordable and reliable energy, primarily based on hydrocarbons. Nowhere is the contrast clearer than in China, which by many accounts has built nearly 300 coal-fired power plants since 2019.

As data from the previous graphic reveals, China’s annual energy sector emissions in 2024 were 12.29 billion tons representing an eye popping 76% increase since the U.S. decline began in 2007.

Bringing the focus back to Washington State. Just since the passage of CETA in 2019, annual CO₂ emissions in the developing world represented by Asia, China and India have increased by 2.47 billion tons; an incremental amount which is more than 32 times Washington’s entire energy sector. Baseline the comparison to 2007, and the incremental change in the developing world’s emissions grows to 122 times Washington’s total emissions.

Yes, I know, it’s unfair to compare Washington’s emissions attributable to a population of roughly eight million to that of nations representing billions. But I’m not the one crowing about how the state is “leading on climate” or promising our bold policies will beat back “the worst impacts of climate change”.

Further, I didn’t write the Findings section of Washington’s CETA which states:

With our wealth of carbon-free hydropower, Washington has some of the cleanest electricity in the United States. But electricity remains a large source of emissions in our state. (emphasis added)

I suppose when you live daily with existential guilt over your carbon footprint, large comes to mean something different.

To be clear, Washington’s electricity sector annual emissions have averaged 0.011 billion tons for the past decade, and as noted earlier, account for less than 0.7% of U.S. electricity sector emissions. Neither figure strikes me as large.

The Data is In

What the data clearly shows is that Washington State could fall off the planet tomorrow and it would make virtually no difference to the future concentration of CO₂ in the global atmosphere, which today stands at about 0.042%; up from an estimated 0.028% prior to the Industrial Revolution.

If in fact CO₂ emissions are a global climate-catastrophe control knob as claimed by Jay Inslee and the majority of Washington legislators who crafted CETA and CCA language, what the world needs most is massively more nuclear power, not another “‘good example” set by a state with a carbon-free electricity mandate built on a foundation of hydropower that doesn’t scale anywhere else in the U.S., or most of the world for that matter.

To be fair, CETA does recognize nuclear power as a qualifying non-emitting source of electricity, but it receives scant attention in Washington’s Energy Strategy. Instead, the strategy goes all-in on wind and solar projects largely built in other states, paired with a vision of importing 43% of Washington’s electricity by 2050 over vast new high-voltage interstate transmission lines. Experience shows such lines can take 15 to 20 years, or more, to plan, permit, and construct. And last time I checked, we just ended 2025, and CETA’s mandate for 100% carbon-free electricity takes effect in 2045.

Washington legislators need to take a breath, stop with the carbon-free moralizing, and get outside the Olympia climate-crisis echo chamber. In addition to engaging more with experienced utility professionals who are living with Washington’s energy policies every day, I recommend reading some alternative reports and studies from highly credible centrists like Roger Pielke Jr., who has warned that symbolic targets like Net Zero 2050 can justify policies that sacrifice human welfare for unattainable goals. Pielke was quoted as saying:

“The greatest risk to climate policy is that it promises what it cannot deliver—and then imposes enormous costs on society when it fails.”

How about listening to Washington’s own Bill Gates, who sparked significant debate with his October 28, 2025, blog post “Three Tough Truths About Climate.”

In it, Gates argues that while climate change remains a serious challenge, it “will not lead to humanity’s demise,” and that policy responses must extend beyond emissions reductions to include improving quality of life, fostering innovation, and strengthening adaptation.

And the early results underscore that point. CETA and CCA have barely been implemented, yet energy costs across the board are already climbing steeply, raising serious questions about the balance between climate goals and affordability.

Rising Natural Gas Prices

After reaching a 15-year low of $9.82 per Mcf in 2019, Washington’s residential natural gas prices ended 2024 at $16.66, representing a nearly 70% increase in 5 years.

Taxing CO₂ emissions from natural gas under the Climate Commitment Act is also driving up electricity rates, including for utilities with hydro-dominated power supply portfolios.

Water availability for hydroelectric generation can vary significantly from year to year, which means dependable natural gas plants are essential as a hedge against blackout risks and extreme price volatility during low-water conditions. I plan to write more about this in a future post.

Rising Electricity Prices

Despite constant assurances that rapidly implementing CETA’s 100% carbon-free electricity mandate, while attempting to tax fossil fuels out of existence will be affordable, there is little evidence this holds true globally, nationally, or even in hydro-dominated Washington State.

To further illustrate the point that carbon-free constraints are a guaranteed cost-increase driver, the following graph includes Oregon, which adopted a 100% carbon-free mandate for investor-owned utilities by 2040.

While both Washington and Oregon residential electricity rates are still 28% and 11% lower than the U.S. average respectively, the trend is changing, and not in a good direction. What the graph shows is that residential electricity rates in both Washington and Oregon when indexed to rates in October 2020 have risen by more than 40%.

And no, recent electricity rate increases in Washington and Oregon were not caused by Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill or Big Tech’s data centers. They are primarily the result of investor-owned utilities scrambling to acquire scarce wind, solar and battery power to meet carbon-free mandates while keeping the grid reliable. More on this in a future post as well.

As I detailed in my last post, real-world experience over the past 20 years shows that retail electricity rates tend to rise by roughly 5 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) for every 10% increase in wind and solar penetration on the power grid.

Washington’s electricity fuel mix is about 12% wind and solar (mostly wind) today, and average residential rates are about 12 cents per kWh. So increasing wind and solar to just 22% can be expected to raise average residential rates by another 40% on top of what has already occurred.

Rising Gasoline Prices

If you’re wondering how high Washington lawmakers are willing to let natural gas and electricity prices rise in the name of fighting the “climate crisis,” just look at gasoline prices. By December 2025, they had been driven to nearly the highest level in the nation under the strong influence of the state’s Climate Commitment Act.

Conclusions

Washington’s CETA language includes energy burden as a defined term, and mandates all electric utilities search out the afflicted souls who are paying too high a share of annual household income on home energy bills, so other utility rate payers can subsidize them through state-forced expansion of low-income assistance programs.

Yes, you heard me right: Washington’s CETA is being used as an instrument of wealth redistribution.

It is a sad irony that Washington energy policies, which proclaim the greatest concern for underrepresented and historically marginalized communities and champion “energy justice,” are the very policies now rapidly increasing the cost of living and placing the heaviest burden on those least able to afford it.

Demonizing fossil fuels and taxing them out of existence sit at the core of the state’s current energy policies. And I fear if we don’t moderate them soon, we could be entering an era of lost economic development opportunities, rising living costs, and an outflow of businesses and residents.

And if legislators think high prices make for an unruly electorate, imagine how unhappy voters will be if they are paying significantly more for electricity and the lights go out during a deep freeze or heat wave.

Wake up Washingtonians! As the following article warns, we are already walking the northwest power grid closer and closer to a blackout cliff under the constraints of draconian carbon-free electricity mandates in Washington and Oregon, and attempts to break the backs of the natural gas and petroleum industries.

The 2026 Washington State legislative session begins on Monday, January 12, and lawmakers need to hear loud and clear that we do not accept the energy burden they are imposing on households and businesses across the state.

Links to Substack posts like mine are easy to text, email or share on social media, and mine are free. So have at it, and stay tuned for more in the coming weeks.

“Kiddo, I want you to just take a look, okay? You don't have to agree, but I want you to look in my eyes. I guarantee you, I guarantee you we're going to end fossil fuels.”

After a bit of backlash, Biden clarified that he was not calling for an immediate ban on fossil fuels but instead for a “gradual shift” toward cleaner energy sources. You know, gradual, as in achieving a “carbon pollution-free” power sector by 2035 through replacement of 100% of the network of “dirty” power plants that took more than 100 years to develop.

To put his gradual plan in place, Biden orchestrated passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022 which was characterized as the largest climate investment in U.S. history, authorizing potentially trillions of dollars to address climate change and promote clean energy.

Zero House and Senate Republicans voted yes on the IRA. And in the wake of its passage, many Republicans, including my own Congressman Dan Newhouse representing central Washington, began to publicly proclaim their support for a common-sense “All of the Above” energy strategy. Congressman Newhouse had this to say about the IRA:

“It is inconceivable that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle can stand behind a package that is so clearly detrimental to the American people while lying about the climate and economic benefits it will provide.”

Finally, Republicans who haven’t bought into the wind and solar energy transition delusion and are unashamed and willing to acknowledge the critical importance of hydrocarbons (aka fossil fuels) for keeping the power grid affordable and reliable. But wait, not so fast. Is Newhouse’s All of the Above vision about “energy realism” and restoring America’s energy dominance as the highest priorities, or is their something else we need to know?

To my disappointment, I recently learned Newhouse apparently had a hidden agenda when it comes to the IRA as he is now among a group of 21 House Republicans who are publicly advocating to preserve the futile and destructive IRA clean energy tax credits.

Well sure, I voted against the IRA and the ridiculous Green New Deal. My no vote made me sound so reasonable, courageous and principled. And yes, I know Republicans ran—and won—on a promise to completely dismantle the IRA. But lets be reasonable, it’s just not that simple. After all, I have other priorities, like bringing home the pork for wind and solar developers and of course getting reelected.

Never mind over the coming decade Investment and Production Tax Credits (ITC, PTC) will deliver 18 times more cash to the “alt-energy sector” than the entire hydrocarbon sector — which now provides about 81% of all US primary energy. And never mind that outsized subsidies of part-time wind and solar are eroding energy security and undermining reliable, affordable and environmentally responsible electricity.

In his Substack post “Here's The Real Hockey Stick”, Robert Bryce provides the following graphic that puts the ITC and PTC into perspective.

What Bryce’s graph illustrates is the scale of the federal trough feeding relative to historical levels, and the massive increase in the cash transfer from taxpayers to private firms being driven by the IRA’s Green New Deal. And if you think the hundreds of billions of subsidies spent on wind and solar to get them to less than 3% of US primary energy and 14% of electricity is a lot of money, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

You see, rather than acknowledging the inherent deficiencies of weather-dependent and part-time wind and solar power that can’t be fixed with more money, the IRA promotes them as foundational technologies and doubles down on overly generous tax credits through 2032. But wait, there’s more. If the US doesn’t achieve a 75% reduction in electricity sector emissions, the ITC and PTC will in theory continue in perpetuity.

And while Robert Bryce’s chart shows over $400 billion going to ITC and PTC, credible estimates including all of the Green New Deal energy tax credits put the IRA price tag at over $2 trillion in just ten years, and as much as $4.7 trillion by 2050.

So now you know why in 2024, solar and wind power accounted for 58% and 13% of new utility-scale generating capacity additions. Additionally, battery storage, which can easily add hundreds of millions in costs to try and mitigate the inherent deficiencies of wind and solar projects, made up 23% of new capacity. Combined, the wind, solar, and battery grift represented 94% of new capacity additions in 2024.

Looking ahead, projections for 2025 indicate solar and batteries will continue to dominate, comprising 81% of new utility-scale electric-generating capacity.

And while the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) sounds the alarm about impending blackouts driven by the growing reliance on weather-dependent generating capacity, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) confirms that we’re not investing in the kind of “other energy sources” that actually keep the lights on — you know, the reliable kind.

“In contrast to solar and wind, generating capacity for most other energy sources will remain mostly unchanged in 2025 and 2026. Natural gas-fired capacity growth slowed in 2024, with only 1 GW of capacity added to the power mix, but natural gas remains the largest source of U.S. power generation.”

To add insult to injury, notwithstanding the current Tariff Wars, the bloated clean energy tax credits in the IRA are helping fund China’s absolute dominance of the solar panel supply chain. Think about it, China permitted 162 new coal-fired power plants in 2022 alone. Where do you think they are getting the electricity to make the solar modules? Quite the irony, isn’t it?

Wrecking the Grid

This past March I was honored to be on stage as a panelist with Jim Robb, President & CEO of NERC talking about the increasing risk of power grid blackouts.

Jim is a great guy and he and his team at NERC are smart and working hard to try and make sure the lights stay on. For those who don’t know NERC develops and enforces standards to ensure the reliability and security of the bulk power system in the U.S., Canada, and part of Mexico.

NERC made headlines last December when they issued the following infographic which indicates about half the U.S. is at risk of power shortfalls in the next decade.

While the infographic is impactful and eye opening, there is evidence it may actually be understating the problem by declaring there are large regions, including the Northwest where I live, with “Normal Risk” of blackouts.

Believe me, nobody working at a Northwest electric or gas utility thinks there was anything normal about the following headline.

And it’s certainly not normal for the post mortem analysis of this close call to reveal the Northwest electric grid and natural gas pipeline systems are at immediate risk with no margin for the unexpected.

Of course I shared my concerns with Jim and suggested the don’t worry be happy blue shaded normal regions on the NERC infographic may need another look. Jim acknowledged it wasn’t the first time he had heard the concern I expressed, and that perhaps an update to the infographic and color scheme is warranted.

So, what is NERC saying about the reasons for growing blackout risks? Scroll back to the infographic and you will see the biggest problem identified in the various regions:

1. Demand Growth

2. Generator Retirements

3. Limited Dispatchable Generation

4. Limited Imports in Extreme Weather.

NERC explains in their Reliability Assessment summary that “peak demand and energy forecasts have jumped and are at their highest levels in decades” and that “resource needs to meet escalating demand growth are threatened by the current pace of generator retirements”. NERC goes on to say “replacement resources projected over the next decade are more weather dependent and lack key reliability attributes” (emphasis mine).

You know, the “attributes” known as predictable fuel supply and controllable output that can be used to balance supply and demand on a minute-by-minute basis, day and night, across all hours of every day, no matter what the weather. NERC is an apolitical organization, so you won’t hear Jim Robb or his staff take sides publicly on the increasingly heated debate over energy policies.

So let me be blunt and say what NERC won’t or can’t. Many reliable generating plants are being prematurely shut down in large part because they are being driven out of business by the uneven economic playing field being precipitated by outsized ITC and PTC which have been almost exclusively dished out to unreliable wind and solar power.

Yes, you heard that right — the growing risk of power grid blackouts is largely a crisis of our own making, fueled by absurd energy policy choices and now being actively perpetuated by elected officials like Congressman Dan Newhouse and the gang of 21 House Republicans.

As if the self-inflicted wounds to power grid reliability from political cronyism weren’t enough to make your head spin, there’s also mounting evidence that some investor-owned utilities (IOUs) are retiring reliable coal and, in some cases, natural gas plants earlier than planned — partly to cash in on favorable financial incentives, including guaranteed returns on equity investments in new generating assets.

Raising Costs

IOUs operate under a regulated monopoly model in many U.S. states with regulators allowing them to recover costs plus a guaranteed return on equity (ROE)—often around 9–10%—for capital investments (e.g., new power plants, transmission lines).

Fuel and operating costs (from coal or gas plants) are passed through without profit, and depreciated assets (older plants) generate less or no new equity return. This creates an incentive to “build new” and replace older, fully depreciated coal or gas plants with new assets, such as solar, wind, and battery storage, which provides an opportunity to earn new ROE on the new capital base.

So in the end there is a financial motive to retire older, still-operational fossil fuel plants, especially if they no longer offer cost advantages, have rising maintenance costs and are facing emissions compliance expenses.

The IOU business model isn’t inherently flawed, and I have no issue with maximizing shareholder value as a core objective. But I do take issue when state governors and regulatory agencies use their power to push ideologically driven energy policies at the expense of the health, safety, and well-being of the citizens they are supposed to represent.

This is both a blue and red state phenomenon, but it’s especially pronounced in states with 100% carbon-free electricity mandates, where IOUs can easily get their federally subsidized wind, solar, and battery overbuild plans rubber-stamped by regulators. And if retail rates have to climb by double digits to make it happen — well, so be it. After all, there’s apparently no price too high for “saving the planet” while delivering maximum shareholder value.

Approximately 70% of U.S. retail electricity sales come from IOUs, with the remainder supplied by not-for-profit cooperatives and public power utilities. And as the chart below illustrates, residential IOU customers are beginning to experience the true cost of “green electricity”, as their rates trend sharply upward.

But what we’ve seen in the U.S. so far is nothing compared to what has transpired in Europe over the last couple of decades. As the following chart reveals, the data is in, and the cost of overbuilding wind and solar to compensate for their inherently unreliable generating capabilities, combined with the cost to provide reliable backup generation, means we can count on the cost of electricity to go up more than 5 cents a kilowatt-hour for every 10% increase in solar and wind on the power grid.

In the U.S., where average electricity rates are still relatively low, and wind and solar make up about 14% of our power mix, we can expect average industrial and household electricity costs to rise by over 70% once our grid hits a 34% penetration level — roughly where Spain stands today.

And of course, we all aspire to a Spanish-style power grid, like the one that blacked out on April 28th. After all, what’s a little catastrophic power loss every now and then, right?

And yes, in spite of what you are hearing from politicians in Spain and the synchronized media in the U.S., I do think Michael Shellenberger may be onto the root cause of the blackouts. Like continuous supply and demand balance, grid inertia is another unforgiving reality of power grid physics, and a topic for another day.

But like Britain, Germany and other European countries committing acts of national economic suicide in the name of Net Zero, Spain's electricity prices are more than double U.S. rates. Yes, you can add "synthetic inertia" to the grid using batteries and synchronous condensers but that will add even more costs. Just more lipstick on a pig.

The U.S. power grid is clearly much larger than Spain’s, so state and regional outcomes will vary. But to give you a flavor of what could be coming to your 100% carbon-free electricity state, just look at California’s Spanish-style grid, where residential customers are now paying an average of 32 cents per kilowatt-hour — a staggering 93% higher than the U.S. average.

Trashing the Planet

Today, wind and solar account for less than 3% of primary energy globally and nationally, yet we are already witnessing growing backlash in rural America against the energy sprawl that pits neighbor against neighbor and deepens the rural-urban divide.

I have a front row seat to the backlash, as the community where I live has become a case study in what I refer to as “Green Tyranny”, and what happens when you replace environmentalism with climatism.

What you get is the preemption of local land-use planning by a Washington state agency and governor who, despite majority opposition, are pushing through a project to install 244 wind turbines, covering 112 square miles and stretching 24 miles across scenic hillsides — habitat for an endangered hawk already on the ropes, in part due to collisions with existing wind turbines that have been spinning in the region for 20 years.

The last thing our community needs is “help” from Congressman Dan Newhouse and the Inflation Reduction Act pork he’s looking to dish out to Canadian-based Brookfield Renewable Partners and other developers eager to blanket our county and eastern Washington with wind turbines and solar panels.

Conclusions

As far as I am concerned, there is no such thing as clean energy, only tradeoffs. And as for energy security and reliability, people’s lives depend on it — literally.

I believe there is an opportunity to find common ground in the ironclad law of power density. Producing the maximum amount of electricity on the smallest possible footprint, as close as possible to where it is consumed, must be central to the conversation.

In the long term, I believe nuclear power is the solution but it has a long way to go, and the only technology that provides comparable power densities on the order of 100 to 1,000 times greater than wind and solar is natural gas.

Here’s a quiz for you. Which of the following are a consequence of continuing outsized U.S. federal tax subsidies for wind and solar power?

A) Wrecking the grid by undermining the economics of reliable generating technologies, pushing power grids to the brink of blackouts.

B) Raising costs for electricity, eroding the quality of life for average citizens and hitting the poor and energy-intensive industries the hardest.

C) Trashing the planet due to low power density and the industrialization of rural and natural landscapes.

D) All of the Above

You nailed it. And now you know — “All of the Above” isn’t a bold, rational energy vision. It’s low-resolution thinking, political pandering, and the very definition of crony capitalism.

In a letter to House Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith, a gang of 21 House Republicans, including Congressman Dan Newhouse signed off on a letter which stated the following:

“As Members of the House Republican Conference, we write to emphasize the importance of prioritizing energy affordability for American families and keeping on our current path to energy dominance amid efforts to repeal or reform current energy tax credits.”

Here’s a news flash for the gang: a deepening dependence on wind and solar power is pushing the U.S. power grid ever closer to blackouts.

And let’s be clear — there is zero evidence that these technologies will lower energy costs for American families or provide a foundation for “energy dominance.”

In fact, it’s just the opposite. Wake up and learn from the deindustrialization already well underway in Europe.

Another consequence of the IRA fueled ITC and PTC feeding frenzy is the clogging of transmission line interconnection queues across the U.S. resulting in analysis paralysis and significant generation resource development friction.

And here’s another news flash, the queueing process itself isn’t the problem. The real issue is the absurd clean energy policies that in spite of evidence keep force-feeding the myth that energy-dilute wind and solar are foundational technologies of an urgent “energy transition” that isn’t actually happening, but will, if we just try harder.

Dan Newhouse and his colleagues in the House can’t have it both ways. America’s intellectual and financial capital is finite, and outsized wind and solar subsidies are draining resources that could be invested in power-dense, reliable technologies — the kind that can actually make a national and global impact for both people and the environment.

So please, drop the bumper sticker slogans and replace them with a vision that makes sense for a modern civilization — one that has a real shot at delivering affordable, reliable, and environmentally responsible electricity.

But if you insist, try this one on for size.

There is just so much that needs to be said about the absurdity of an "energy transition" reliant on energy-dilute, unreliable, land-intensive, and costly wind and solar power. Yes, I am clearly an outlier at best and a "denier" at worst. But I digress.

Having worked in the electric utility and power industry for more than 38 years gives me a leg up when it comes to understanding the fundamentals of energy policies. However, like everyone else, I rely on information from other sources to gain a broader perspective.

One source I have come to trust is the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). Of the dozens of charts and graphs included in my rapid-fire presentation slide decks, the following EIA pie chart is a real stunner given the non-stop news reports of the “climate crisis” and claims that a dogmatic devotion to wind and solar technologies is our only hope.

Contrary to the popular narrative, beloved wind and solar only represented 2.6% of total U.S. primary energy consumption in 2023, and ‘evil’ fossil fuels (hydrocarbons) represented 83%.

To help digest the stunningly low numbers for wind and solar it is important to keep in mind that energy represents the capacity to do work and that direct use of combustible fuels in residential, commercial, industrial and transportation sectors is where the vast majority of work on the planet is being done today.

Electricity generation which represents an indirect use of fossil-fuels accounts for only 34% of U.S. and 19% of global primary energy consumption.

Understanding this point is critical, as conflating electricity generation with energy production in general is a common misunderstanding frequently perpetuated by politicians, academics and journalists when reciting the mantra of the wind and solar energy-transition.

With this said, it is important to point out that energy losses in the fuel combustion process leading to the production of electricity from natural gas and coal are significant and in the range of 40% to 60% . So understanding the impact of wind and solar electricity generation on primary energy consumption can be confusing.

While not their preferred approach, EIA addresses the apples-to-oranges issue by providing a conceptual measure using what is called the Fossil Fuel Equivalency Approach which credits the energy produced by wind and solar power as if it perfectly displaces fossil fuels. In this generous assessment, wind and solar represented 5.8% of U.S. primary energy consumption in 2023.

Whether the number is 2.6% or 5.8%, wind and solar are clearly struggling to move the needle in the often-hyped rapid energy transition supposedly underway in the United States. But what about the rest of the globe?

According to Our World in Data, the global energy transition isn’t showing much progress either, with wind and solar representing 2.4% and fossil-fuels at 85% of global direct primary energy consumption in 2023. And when you add firewood and charcoal to the mix, 92% of global energy consumption involves carbon-dioxide (CO₂) emitting sources.

A key point being, a real energy transition is a massively bigger lift than ‘simply’ converting electricity generation to so-called emissions free technologies. This is only baby-step one. And don’t forget the nearly 3 billion souls on the planet who use almost no energy, including 1.18 billion who have no access to electricity. Should they just be left at home and sitting in the dark?

It seems reasonable to assert energy poverty is human poverty and that the world needs more access to abundant, affordable and reliable energy, not less. And Western Civilization is not going to convince poor people in other countries to stay poor, nor should we.

Like other developing nations, China and India are digging their citizens out of poverty, and their primary tool continues to be ever expanding use of coal and natural gas. This trend is reflected in the previous chart and confirms the physical, engineering, and economic realities of energy systems. There is simply no denying, reality does not support a wind- and solar-fueled energy transition.

Energy-dense fuels and the ability to reliably produce a whole lot of affordable electricity on a small footprint matters more than ever before. And if we are going to insist on dramatically lowering CO₂ emissions, then we are going to need more time and the only energy transition that makes sense is natural-gas-to-nuclear (N2N).

Like Alex Epstein, I am bullish on nuclear energy over the long term, but the U.S. largely abandoned nuclear decades ago, and it will take a monumental effort to recover lost ground.

“There is currently only one energy technology that can match (actually exceed) fossil fuels’ combination of naturally stored, concentrated, abundant energy: nuclear. Nuclear may one day outcompete all uses of fossil fuels, but this will take radical policy reform and generations of innovation and work.”

Alex Epstein, Energy Talking Points, “The 7 most important truths about our energy future”

How is the U.S. doing with Baby-Step One of the Energy Transition?

According to EIA data, wind and solar supplied 14% of U.S. electricity in 2023. If our energy transition is urgent, then the next obvious question is how long it took to get to this point.

A good place to start is 2009 when the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) was enacted. This federal legislation cranked up production and investment tax credits (PTC & ITC) for wind and solar which began driving huge annual investments in these technologies, reaching an estimated $93 billion for calendar year 2023.

EIA data also reveals wind and solar broke through the 1% of U.S. electricity supply threshold in 2008 and then increased to 1.9% in 2009. So it took fourteen years for wind and solar to gain an additional 12% share of the U.S. electricity supply stack.

But what about the supply stack, is it growing as well? After all, if wind and solar are driving an energy transition through large-scale electrification of all sectors of the economy, surely the amount of electricity generated in the U.S. must be increasing substantially.

Not so according to the following graphic from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) which shows electric power generation has been relatively flat since 2007, even declining in some years. EIA data also confirms demand for electricity has been flat for most of the last 15 years with 2023 registering a 2.8% increase in demand over the level recorded in 2007.

Another important insight on the previous graphic is provided by the dark-line (and right-side y-axis) which shows a 36% reduction in electric power generation CO₂ emissions since 2007.

What is surprising to many people I’ve talked to is about 65% of the decline in emissions is attributable to “fuel switching” from coal to natural gas plants and about 30% of the decline is attributable to increased wind and solar generation.

So, after fourteen years and hundreds of billions of dollars invested in wind and solar power, the U.S. has increased the share of electricity supplied by these technologies by 12%, with relatively modest contributions toward CO₂ emission reductions, and little evidence of electrification.

This raises a question. What does growing the share of wind and solar generated electricity by less than an average of 1% per year so far tell us about the odds the U.S. is going to meet the 100% carbon-free electricity by 2035 goal set by outgoing President Joe Biden?

And when you add the emerging and significant incremental demand for electricity required for data centers (and artificial intelligence) which the U.S. Department of Energy expects could triple by 2028 from 4% of total electricity to 12%, carbon-free electricity visions based on wind and solar power are becoming more detached from reality than ever before.

Worse, in light of the recent announcement by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) that about half of the United States is at increased risk of power supply shortfalls in the next decade, one could argue U.S. energy policies are now becoming dangerously delusional.

The bottom line is that overly subsidized, intermittent wind and solar are artificially undermining power grid reliability by rendering dependable (controllable) technologies economically unviable. But politicians on both sides of the aisle are loathe to put an end to the high-stakes grift.

Think about it. The so-called energy transition has barely begun, yet it is already pushing the power grid in some regions of the U.S. to the edge of a blackout cliff.

Yes, I know—batteries and breakthroughs in long-term energy storage are expected to provide the solution. But I’m not convinced. I remain skeptical that an affordable, reliable, and ecologically responsible energy transition is possible with inherently deficient wind and solar, regardless of advancements in energy storage technology.

In addition to their weather-dependent and part-time operating characteristics, wind and solar technologies are also energy-dilute. This means they are material intensive and require vast land areas in their inefficient attempt to replace hydrocarbon-based technologies.

In my view, regardless of technology, energy storage props up critically flawed wind and solar farms at a high financial cost while further driving the excessive expansion of land-intensive infrastructure. And where there is overbuilding, the resulting ecological costs cannot be ignored.

Are we Wrecking the Planet to Save It?

Take a look at the following map of U.S. wind farms and consider where our current clean energy policies have led us—and where they are taking us in terms of their ecological impact on various regions of the country.

What the circles on the map represent are nearly 75,000 individual industrial wind turbines, which as I stated earlier accounted for only 1.6% of U.S. total primary energy consumption in 2023.

And when you consider utility-scale wind farms typically become economically viable at average annual wind speeds of 6.5 to 8.0 meters per second (m/s) or higher, you have to question whether people (and animals) living in and near the areas represented by the brown to purple coloration on the following map will have an unending appetite for more-and-more industrial wind farms.

Robert Bryce has been writing for years about the growing Not-In-Our-Backyard movement which since 2015 has spawned 735 rejections or restrictions of wind and solar energy in the US.

What Robert had to say in 2021 was true then, but even more so today.

“Land-use conflicts are a key issue today and those conflicts are already proving to be the limiting factor in the growth of renewables”.

Robert Bryce, Center of the American Experiment, Not In Our Backyard, April 24, 2021

You don’t have to look far to find articles like the one below, which highlights Robert’s point and the clash between the fanatical pursuit of CO₂ reduction at any cost and long-standing conservation policies aimed at preventing or limiting the industrialization of rural and natural landscapes.

Is Solar the Lesser of Two Evils?

While it is clear in my research that wind farms are facing increasing development friction, it is also clear solar power is emerging as the perceived lesser of two evils.

As reported by the American Public Power Association (APPA) in April 2024, 51% of all new generating capacity under development at that time was for solar, followed by wind (33%) and natural gas (7%). APPA also reported “three-quarters of the wind capacity is in the “proposed” stage, which is the earliest and most uncertain stage of development and includes units that are least likely to be built.”

The following map illustrates the states and regions most committed to solar power, which according to EIA data reached a combined 91.3 gigawatts (GW) of nameplate generating capacity in the U.S. at the end of 2023.

For perspective, solar power increased to 7.6% of the 1,190 GW of nameplate generating capacity represented by all technologies in the US. But remember, daytime-only solar panels produced just 3.9% of total U.S. electricity and represented only 1% of primary energy consumption.

In spite of solar power’s nighttime problem, thanks to state carbon-free energy mandates and federal tax-payer subsidies included in the so-called Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), 2024 was a banner year for new project development.

As of August, U.S. utility-scale solar power had grown to 107.4 GW of nameplate capacity with another 24 GW expected to come on line by the end of December.

Additionally, the EIA estimates small-scale solar capacity in the U.S. reached 47 GW in 2023 which is not accounted for in total electricity generation data. These “behind-the-meter” non-utility installations include familiar rooftop technology representing a total estimated energy contribution equivalent to 1.7% of U.S. total electricity generated in 2023.

Clearly small-scale solar, along with increased utility conservation measures and improved efficiencies have contributed to the flattening of utility electricity demand I mentioned earlier.

While solar farms may seem less intrusive than the unsettling sight of hundreds of 600-foot industrial wind turbines stretching to the horizon, the widely embraced solar panel—often seen as the poster child of "green" and "sustainable" energy—loses some of its luster when considering the ecological challenges emerging as deployment scales up.

ChatGPT acquired data indicates it would be reasonable to assume 385 watts per panel for utility-scale solar farms and 325 watts per panel for small-scale solar, which based on end-of-year installed-capacity projections for 2024 means there are more than 485 million individual solar panels installed in the United States today.

I asked ChatGPT to run the numbers for itself, and it indicated my math may be on the low end, and that the number could be over 600 million panels. Maybe that doesn’t get your attention.

But consider this. If utility-scale solar farm development in the U.S. continues to grow at the rate experienced in 2024, we will exceed 1 billion installed solar panels over the next 3 to 5 years.

So, it’s important to keep the following in mind as you consider the legacy we could be leaving for the next generation:

• It required hundreds of millions of individual panels to get to the point where solar provides 1% of primary energy consumed in the United States, and it will require many billions more just to get to double digit percentages.

• The U.S. does not have a federal recycling mandate for solar panels.

• While it is technically feasible to recycle solar panels, recycling costs $30–$40 per panel, while landfilling costs $1–$20 per panel.

Closing Thoughts

Currently wind and solar represent 84% of new electricity generation being developed in the U.S. today. Under the Inflation Reduction Act, Treasury Department numbers reveal wind and solar tax subsidies dwarf all other energy-related provisions in the federal tax code. And as documented by Robert Bryce will cost taxpayers $421 billion by 2034.

Bryce had this to say about wind and solar subsidies:

“[O]ver the coming decade, thanks to the ITC+PTC, the alt-energy sector will get nearly 18 times more in federal tax credits than the entire hydrocarbon sector — which now provides about 81% of all US primary energy — and nine times more than the nuclear sector.”

Wind and solar technologies are not only expensive, energy-dilute and unreliable, they are also far more mineral intensive than hydrocarbon based machines, requiring an estimated increase in mining of between 900% and 1,800% per watt of electricity generated.

After much research and consideration, it seems to me what Mark Mills had to say in an eye opening report published in 2022 makes a lot of sense and should be required reading for elected officials and utility leaders.

“Despite ever-escalating rhetoric, an “energy transition” away from society’s dependence on hydrocarbons is not feasible in any meaningful time frame, and it is a dangerous delusion to base policies on the idea that such a transition is possible.”

Mark P. Mills, Senior Fellow Manhattan Institute: “The “Energy Transition” Delusion: A Reality Reset”, August 2022

Bipartisan support for new nuclear power is encouraging, but it will be at least a decade before nuclear gains a meaningful foothold and recovers from severely depleted—or even non-existent—supply chains and technical resources.

In the meantime, we must make room for more natural gas power plants and a more rational energy transition. Doubling down on fatally flawed wind and solar technologies as the backbone of energy policy is clearly delusional—not just for the United States, but on a global scale.

Dogma has replaced physics, engineering, and economics in shaping energy policies. Citizens must demand far more from their elected officials and utility leaders.

If we don’t act, I fear the current clean energy vision could turn into a nightmare for future generations. On top of being expensive and unreliable, wind and solar could turn out to be far more ecologically destructive than supporters are willing to acknowledge. We can and must do better.

While creating a power supply portfolio involves consideration of many factors, providing affordable, environmentally-responsible, and reliable electricity is the balancing act demanded of all utilities.

Unfortunately, out-of-balance energy policies in Washington and Oregon are on the verge of sacrificing affordable and reliable electricity on the altar of fractional CO2 reductions with little regard for the environmental sacrifices required by land-intensive wind and solar farms.

Doesn’t it seem reasonable to suggest states with existing nation-leading low-emissions electricity could lighten up on the 100% carbon-free mantra and take a more measured and balanced approach?

While some may believe a few extra bucks toward electricity bills is a small price to pay to ‘save the planet’, the fact Washington and Oregon electricity sector CO2 emissions only represent 0.6% and 0.5% of the U.S. inventory is never mentioned by climate catastrophizing politicians or state bureaucrats, who continue to falsely promote a utopian low-cost energy future built on a foundation of part-time, land-intensive, and unreliable wind and solar power.

Also, when you hear we must rapidly ‘electrify’ everything as part of our planetary rescue mission, keep the following in mind.

Washington and Oregon total annual energy sector CO2 emissions have recently averaged 77 and 39 million metric tons (MMT) respectively, which combined represents just 2% of the 5,000 MMT of U.S. annual emissions.

And while U.S. annual emissions have decreased more than 1,000 MMT since 2007, China’s emissions have increased by more than 4,000 MMT to over 11,000 MMT.

An inconvenient truth we should all be discussing is that global annual CO2 emissions have increased almost every year since 2000 and now exceed 37,000 MMT per year. And it is abundantly clear we are not going to convince poor people in developing nations like China and India to stay poor.

There is an alternative strategy for Washington and Oregon, but we must stop shaming utilities and citizens into silence based on demonstrably false rhetoric coming from moral high ground staked out by ‘climatists’ and their CO2 is poison dogma.

Natural gas can and should be a part of a balanced approach to a real energy transition that keeps Northwest electricity prices low, grid reliability high, and embraces nuclear power as the ultimate common ground we can all live and prosper with in the long term.

Subscribe now

AFFORDABLE ELECTRICITY

Despite suffering through a $2 billion municipal bond default in 1983 and the California electricity crisis of 2000-2001, Northwest utilities have managed the affordability leg of the three-legged stool quite nicely for the past 20 years.

This is easily seen in the following graph with plenty of white space between the blue line representing the monthly average retail price of electricity in the U.S. and the other lines representing prices in four Northwest states.

Washington for example had electricity rates nearly 25% lower than the national average in 2018. Of course when you get 60% of your electricity from low-cost hydroelectric dams, it’s no mystery why affordable electricity has provided Washington with significant economic advantage for decades.

But as I have written previously, the glory days of hydro are over, with the low-cost firm energy capability of Northwest dams fully allocated and spoken for. This fact coupled with the high cost of complying with 100% carbon-free electricity mandates is beginning to take a toll on historically low electricity rates, which are now following a significant upward trend across the Northwest.

Expressed as a percentage of the May 2019 average price, the following chart shows Washington and Oregon residential customers are paying 22% and 33% more than they were just five years ago. The U.S. average is also up over 23%.

But no state compares to California with an 82% increase over the same time frame. I mention California since Washington and Oregon policy makers seem hell-bent on following their lead. And boy is California leading when it comes to high prices for electricity.

As shown in the following chart, the average price of electricity for residential customers in California reached 34 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in May of this year which is 2.8 times what Washingtonians are currently paying.

While California’s ridiculously high-priced electricity coupled with increasing risk of blackouts doesn’t seem like results any state should strive for, don’t tell that to Washington and Oregon policy makers who continue to promote California style carbon taxes and daytime-only solar power, backed up by batteries, as essential to the power grid of the future.

As for electricity prices in Washington and Oregon, recent double-digit percentage rate increases by investor-owned utilities Puget Sound Energy (PSE) and Portland General Electric (PGE) look to be the ‘canary in the coalmine’ when it comes to their respective home states.

My ‘pun intended’ observation was confirmed by Seattle-based energy and Northwest grid expert Randy Hardy who recently wrote the following.

“PSE/PGE will likely need annual double-digit retail rate increases for the next 5-7 years. This trend will probably double their rates (from present 11-13 cents/kWh levels) by the early 2030s –and will likely produce a significant political reaction.”

Randy Hardy, August 9, 2024, The Friday Burrito

And even as the oft-mentioned ‘low-cost’ wind and solar clean energy vision is revealed to be the bait-and-switch it’s always been, there’s no indication policy makers in Washington or Oregon are ready to let up on their myopic and costly focus on rapidly eliminating paltry inventories of CO2; in spite of the growing evidence the Northwest grid appears to be getting closer-and-closer to the edge of a blackout cliff.

RELIABLE ELECTRICITY

It appears no amount of math or lived experience will deter the breathless and panicked calls from Olympia and Salem for the elimination of any trace of CO2 from virtually every sector of state economies; whatever the cost to citizens or ecosystems.

Take Glenn Blackmon for example who is the director of the Energy Policy Office at the Washington State Department of Commerce. Here’s part of what he had to say in a July 16, 2024 opinion piece published in the Seattle Times (emphasis added):

Experts who monitor the reliability of our power system urge action to keep supply and demand in balance, but they are not pulling any emergency alarms. We have plenty of options to maintain reliability as we transform our energy system.

The long-term needs for more electricity are unprecedented. As first outlined in the 2021 State Energy Strategy, we expect to double our use of electricity as we transform our energy systems — replacing gasoline, diesel and natural gas with clean electricity from wind, solar, other renewables and perhaps nuclear.

I have to give Blackmon credit for his mention of nuclear, in spite of his less than enthusiastic endorsement of the only source of abundant and reliable CO2-free electricity capable of making a dent in Washington’s goal to double usage.

And of course Blackmon provides no numbers to back up his claims or help readers understand the math involved in achieving the State Energy Strategy. So, let me help him out with the following chart from a January 13, 2023 presentation he gave to the Washington State Senate.

As I have written previously, of the more than 100 Seattle-sized wind farms Blackmon’s Department of Commerce envisions will be built across the Northwest, it is important to note that only 2,000 megawatts (MW) of the 63,000 MW (3%) of regional onshore wind farms are expected to be built inside Washington state borders.

And don’t miss the math when it comes to the life-cycle ecological and land-use impacts of 38,000 MW of solar farms, with more than 116 million individual solar panels Blackmon believes we should leave for our kids and grandkids.

As for doubling Washington’s use of electricity, the math on that works out to more than 10,000 average MW annually, which is equivalent to the constant output of ten Columbia Generating Station nuclear plants.

And while Blackmon believes domestically produced electricity from nuclear is more of a plan B, his primary plan for Washington is to import 43% of electricity by 2050 with 36% being supplied by Wyoming and Montana wind farms.

While importing and exporting electricity across a multi-state power grid is common practice, does anybody else see the irony in the state “Commerce” department promoting a clean energy vision that offloads almost a majority of electricity generation to other states without blinking an eye.

Speaking of vision and eye blinking. Is it possible Blackmon didn’t see the following headline I shared in previous posts?

I’m not sure what “Experts” Blackmon is consulting, but based on my own utility experience trying to secure affordable and dependable generating capacity in recent years, and what I regularly hear from my colleagues across the Northwest, utilities in the region are most definitely pulling emergency alarms.

Here is some of what electric and natural gas utilities concluded in the aftermath of the Northwest January 2024 winter-weather event:

1. Four Northwest balancing area authorities plus the Alberta, Canada grid operator declared energy emergencies. The only thing that saved the day was access to over 5,000 average MW of imported electricity provided mostly by thermal generating plants (nuclear, natural gas and coal) located in the desert southwest and western Rockies; not wind and solar power.

2. The 5,241 MW of continuously imported electricity across all 120 hours of the event (day and night) is equivalent to the output of nearly five Columbia Generating Station nuclear plants which was continuously cranking out 1,100 MW during the cold snap.

3. Peak demand for electricity in the Northwest increased between 2% and 6% over what was experienced during a December 2022 cold snap in spite of the temperatures being comparable, indicating growth in electricity demand is outpacing existing models.

4. “Fuel” for hydroelectric dams, a.k.a. water, was in very short supply. A problem compounded by the fact Washington and Oregon wind generation collapsed to zero during critically cold temperatures. And there was little-to-no surplus wind power to be had from neighboring regions to the east, including Montana and Wyoming, as they were experiencing the same extremely cold temperatures and low wind speeds.

5. California which is rich in solar power offered little help and was a net importer of electricity during the Northwest crisis.

6. Energy innovation timelines do not match compliance timelines for clean energy policies. Both the electric grid and natural gas pipeline systems in the Northwest are at immediate risk with no margin for the unexpected.

Clearly, Glenn Blackmon and utilities are seeing things quite differently when it comes to the reliability of the Northwest electric grid and natural gas systems.

Keep in mind, Washington and Oregon have really just begun implementing carbon-free electricity policies with only 2,000 MW of coal plants removed from the Northwest grid so far.

Next up is Centralia Unit #2 which will be shut down at the end of 2025, removing an additional 730 MW of dependable generating capacity from Washington’s Interstate-5 corridor where the highest electricity demand occurs. Doesn’t this seem like a really bad idea at this point?

The Unsung Heroes of Northwest Grid Reliability

As the beneficiaries of hydropower like nowhere else in the country, many Washington and Oregon residents may not realize when it comes to grid reliability; coal and natural-gas power plants have been critical to keeping the lights on in the greater Northwest for many years.

While representing only one-third of nameplate generating capacity, fossil-fueled generators have historically provided about 50% of the regions effective-capacity as illustrated in the lower left pie-chart of the following graphic.

Simply put, the nearly 11,000 MW of coal power and more than 12,000 MW of natural gas generation existing inside the red-line area of the previous map represents controllable and dependable technologies that historically supplied about 50% of peak demand on the coldest and hottest days of the year when reliable electricity is critical.

While most citizens likely support eliminating coal from utility portfolios by 2025 as mandated by Washington’s Clean Energy Transformation Act (CETA), what may have been lost in the carbon-reduction focus and long-term commitment to 100% non-emitting electricity by 2045, is how big an impact eliminating coal power from the hydro-rich Northwest would have on grid reliability in the near term.

While Glenn Blackmon says don’t worry, we have “plenty of options”, that is clearly not what utilities are saying. And the question citizens should be asking is who do you believe and why?

By establishing CO2 reduction as the preeminent factor in what it means for utilities to be environmentally responsible, state policy makers have boxed utilities into a corner when it comes to keeping the grid reliable.

And while there is common ground to be found when it comes to reducing and possibly eliminating CO2 from Washington’s electricity sector over the long term, you have to be realistic about how fast this can, or should happen, given the operating limits and environmental impacts of currently available technologies.

As much as coal is out of favor, replacing controllable and dependable technologies with intermittent and variable wind and solar comes at a significant cost to reliability. The minute-by-minute supply and demand balance required by power grid physics is simply unforgiving and must be satisfied no matter what the weather.

While I acknowledge some regional analysis of the Northwest grid indicates blackout risk is being managed, one has to question why there seems to be a significant disconnect between computer models and real life.

With credible forecasts suggesting demand for electricity in the northwest could grow by as much as 30% over the next decade, it just doesn’t make common sense we can grow winter and summer firm (guaranteed) electric-service needs by as much as 10,000 MW in ten years without the help of new natural gas to meet increased baseload and dramatically higher peak-demand requirements.

Additionally, it seems reasonable to be concerned with the ability of variable hydropower to take up more slack when Washington, Oregon and the Federal government continue to coordinated with dam-breaching interests to further constrain Northwest hydropower.

Variable and intermittent wind and solar must be backed up, and in many cases for several days. So if it’s not natural gas and hydro, then what? How many four-hour discharge limited lithium-ion batteries do you think it will take?

Recent real-world power-grid emergencies in both winter and summer have utilities spooked. And citizens should not forget who has the most skin in the game when it comes to keeping the lights on. Hint, it’s not state bureaucrats or environmental virtue-signaling politicians.

While I wish Washington Governor Jay Inslee well in his next life adventure, his draconian clean energy policies and attacks on hydropower have taken a wrecking ball to the once solid foundation of the Northwest grid.

The utility balancing act has always been challenging, but more than just about anyone, Inslee has helped tie one arm behind the backs of utilities, and the plates are wobbling more every day. I hope Jay’s next gig keeps him close to home, so he can enjoy the fruits of his labor firsthand.

ENVIRONMENTALLY RESPONSIBLE ELECTRICITY

It's common knowledge that over the years it has become more-and-more difficult to site, permit, and construct large infrastructure projects, mostly driven by increasingly restrictive environmental regulations.

Driven by good intentions and the desire to limit industrialization of natural landscapes, federal and state planning and permitting processes have increased stakeholder involvement and influence in determining what infrastructure gets built and where. Consequently, infrastructure projects require a lot of time, are increasingly complex, and carry a tremendous amount of financial risk.

Once again, the narrow focus on CO2 reduction in Washington and Oregon clean energy laws appears to have significantly underestimated a major utility balancing problem.

In this case, how to balance affordability and reliability with being environmentally responsible when non-CO2-emitting technology is limited to land-intensive wind and solar, which must be overbuilt to increase the odds they will generate enough electricity during hours of maximum demand on the grid.

Take a look at the following map from a 2019 study by E3 Consulting in which they assumed 100% of Northwest electricity in 2050 is derived from existing hydro and nuclear power, with only wind and solar farms added to the grid going forward.

While this is an impractical and unlikely scenario, it provides an eye-opening perspective on land-use impacts, which in the worst case would result in the industrialization of an area equivalent to as much as 100 times the area of Portland and Seattle combined. Even an 80% CO2-free scenario would involve millions of acres of land.

Further complicating matters, wind and solar farms are almost exclusively built in rural areas where local citizens are asked to sacrifice open spaces and natural landscapes for the benefit of people living in far away urban areas.

And when you add the need for countless new high-voltage power lines constructed across a patchwork of private, public, and tribal land, the development friction goes up exponentially.

Additionally, transmission line owners are facing the prospect of increased financial and legal liabilities due to wildfire risk which must be factored into current wind and solar centric energy strategies.

Wildfire risks which first made headlines when California’s Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) was sued into bankruptcy are now becoming a huge factor in the Northwest as well.

PacifiCorp which operates in both Washington and Oregon is facing billions of dollars in potential liabilities from wildfires, and has even stated wildfire insurance costs pose a material threat to their financial stability. Other Northwest utilities have been named in lawsuits as well.

Transmission-line wildfire risk is one of several reasons why I continue to be amazed when utilities go along with the narrative that weather-dependent wind and solar farms spread across God’s creation represents a modernized and more resilient grid.

And why is covering millions of acres of land with energy-dilute industrial wind and solar farms considered environmentally responsible and ‘green’? Particularly when you take into account the lifecycle ecological impacts of the vast mineral-extraction and processing required to manufacture energy-dilute wind and solar power components.

Clearly, all energy conversion technologies have ecological impacts and involve environmental tradeoffs. So, after decades of working to constrain industrial development, why are policy makers okay with mostly ignoring land-use impacts when it comes to wind and solar farms?

It seems a reasonable argument can be made that a modernized, resilient, and environmentally responsible grid should be based on proven and dependable technologies with small physical footprints that are also scalable and can be constructed as close to the point of electricity use as possible.

While it’s intuitive wind and solar farms impact relatively large land areas, the following chart of surface power density in watts per square meter shows natural gas can be in the ballpark of 100 to more than 1,000 times more power dense than wind and solar. And of course, it’s far more reliable.

Modern civilizations should be progressing up the power and energy-density scale, not down as required by backward looking wind and solar technologies.

Natural gas is unbelievably energy dense and emits as much as 60% less CO2 than some coal plants. And if we are going to insist on 100% CO2-free electricity, then nuclear with year’s worth of energy-dense and reliable fuel on board is the next logical choice over the long term.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Only time will tell how long Washington and Oregon utilities can keep the power grid balancing act going without suffering a fate similar to California. But time is short and the evidence is mounting that a serious reality check is beginning to build.

How close we were to blackouts during the extremely cold temperatures in January was a big wake-up call. And we haven’t even begun the electrify everything strategy being driven by Washington and Oregon’s aggressive carbon-free energy policies. Not to mention the expected growth in electricity-intensive data centers.

Natural gas provides 43% of U.S. electricity and has replaced coal as the dominant fuel for good reasons; it’s abundant, affordable, reliable and much cleaner.

I know it might seem like a long shot, but we must create a “safe space” for natural gas to be put back on the table in Washington and Oregon. And this will only happen if the electorate demands more from their elected officials.

Policy makers must be forced to confront the reality that clean energy policies with strong preferences for wind and solar power are likely to face land-use conflicts as a significant limiting factor. And that project development uncertainty is contributing to the fragility of the Northwest grid as the scheduled retirement of coal-fired power plants proceeds mostly as planned, and the strategy to overbuild wind and solar faces the prospect of project development gridlock in some areas.

Do Washington and Oregon policy makers really believe citizens and agencies representing Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming will eagerly accept the industrialization of millions of acres of their ‘backyards’ to meet aggressive so-called clean energy strategies on the west coast?

How about instead of rolling the dice on uncertain development of massive and intrusive wind and solar farms in other states, we get serious about developing domestic sources of electricity in Washington and Oregon.

We can start with natural gas technology which our kids and grandkids can replace some day with next generation nuclear power.

The kind of nuclear power being envisioned by Energy Northwest featuring meltdown-proof, walkaway-safe, and small-footprint technology that requires no safety setbacks beyond the fence-line of the generation complex.

Additionally, small modular reactor (SMR) technology like the Xenergy XE-100 offers something weather-dependent and land-hungry wind and solar cannot provide, baseload power that is also flexible and scales close to where people live and work. And it offers the possibility of mitigating the need for extensive and very-expensive interstate high-voltage transmission lines.

Yes, it is going to take some time before new nuclear can gain momentum. In the meantime, we know how to build and operate big and small natural-gas combustion turbine power plants. And natural gas fuel supplies are abundant and affordable if Washington and Oregon politicians would stop trying to bankrupt the industry.

A natural-gas-to-nuclear (N2N) energy vision would help keep prices in check, keep the grid reliable, and allow time for new modular-nuclear plants to be developed and for prices to come down.

N2N, which has been promoted by one of my favorite journalists and energy experts Robert Bryce, is a clean energy bumper sticker I’ll make an exception for, and one we should all be able to get behind.

The title of my first ever Substack post speaks for itself and reveals why I wasn’t surprised by the arrogant tone and selective facts of Washington Governor Jay Inslee’s May 23, 2024 letter to his Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council (EFSEC) regarding the highly controversial Horse Heaven Wind Farm (HHWF).

In summary, Inslee’s letter directs the Council to do whatever it takes to keep as many of the more than 200 Space-Needle-sized wind turbines spread across 25 miles of the iconic Horse Heaven Hills just where Colorado-based-developer Scout Clean Energy wants them.

As for 300,000 Tri-Cities area residents who are already served by better than 95% carbon-free electricity, Yakama tribal members, and the endangered ferruginous hawk, you are nothing more than NIMBYs, and you need to get over it.

The governor who was made king by an equally delusional state legislature has spoken, and he knows best.

And what’s best includes subjugating the interests of Washington citizens to Canadian financial interests. As it turns out, Scout Clean Energy is owned by Brookfield Renewable Partners with corporate headquarters in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Generally speaking, I wouldn’t have a beef with foreign investments in industrial development, as long as it’s in response to an invitation from the local community. In the case of Scout, they came to town unsolicited and operated covertly to lay the groundwork for their project.

And then when they went public with their plans for the largest Washington wind farm in history, they seemed surprised to learn Benton County planning authorities and an overwhelming majority of local economic development interests rejected their proposal.

You would think a company planning to spend nearly $2 billion would have had the common sense to check the temperature of local interest groups before sinking millions of dollars into initial planning and engineering of such an obviously impactful project.

Fear not; Scout knew they had another option. And that’s when they ran to Jay Inslee and his biased EFSEC process to begin force-feeding the HHWF against the will of ‘locals’, and in contradiction to what was promised in Washington’s 2021 State Energy Strategy which declares:

1. “public and community participation is important to ensure energy policy is informed by local knowledge, meets local needs and is viewed as legitimate by the local community”

2. “communities and community members must have a seat at the table in designing programs and selecting projects.”

As I have been warning for many years, Washington’s ‘clean energy’ strategy based on a cult-like belief in land-intensive and unreliable wind and solar is fatally flawed, and can never deliver on the utopian promises of energy equity or environmental and social justice.

What is transpiring with the proposed development of the HHWF is precisely the opposite of these promises. And Tri-Cities residents and the Confederated Tribes of the Yakama Nation are experiencing firsthand what happens when all power is in the hands of a single ruler.

This is the definition of tyranny and is precisely what Jay Inslee has been orchestrating for years in his unwarranted and frenzied call for rapid and large-scale development of so-called ‘green’ energy.

In the balance of this post, I make the case for how the HHWF development process represents a text-book case of what I have observed are the four steps to ‘green’ tyranny.

I hope to spark a wake-up call. But my growing cynicism tells me the HHWF is likely to represent a spark that could inflame the urban-rural political divide in Washington State more than ever before.

Subscribe now

Step 1 to Green Tyranny - Replace Environmentalism with Climatism

Jay Inslee like countless other climate catastrophizers has convinced the Washington legislature, and apparently the majority of the state’s electorate, that earth’s complex climate systems can be reduced to a single variable; atmospheric CO2 concentrations.

And that there is no price too high to pay to eliminate even a fractional amount of this ‘deadly poison’. Even if the price includes driving an endangered species to extinction.

It’s abundantly clear the self proclaimed “lifelong birder” has lost that loving feeling for the ferruginous hawk.

“The record shows that substantial disturbance from agricultural and residential land use has caused a significant decline in the ferruginous hawk population at the Project site and calls into question whether the ferruginous hawks will return given the considerable, permanent changes to their habitat.”

Jay Inslee, May 23, 2024 EFSEC Letter

What Inslee fails to mention in his EFSEC letter is that his own Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife (WDFW) has identified “collision with wind turbines” as one of several direct sources of mortality which has and will continue contributing to the potential demise of the ferruginous hawk.

It’s one thing for Inslee to suggest we should give up on the idea ferruginous hawks will ever flourish in Benton County, but what about the rest of its nesting and migratory range?

In WDFW’s “Periodic Status Review for the Ferruginous Hawk” published in August 2021, they included the following map of the hawk’s breeding and seasonal-migration ranges.

In a quick look at the map, it is clear ferruginous hawk breeding range (shown in red) is highly concentrated in central and south-central Washington as well as northeastern Oregon.

It certainly makes one question, if collisions with wind turbines are already a concerning cause of hawk mortality given the concentration of wind farms in their breeding range today, what will life be like for the hawks if Washington and Oregon policy makers continue to push for more-and more bird killing turbines as critical to meeting clean energy mandates.

Additionally, if you look more closely at the ferruginous hawk’s migratory routes and ranges, and then consider that Inslee and his Department of Commerce (DOC) are proudly proclaiming Washington is expecting to import 36% of its electricity from Montana and Wyoming wind farms by 2050, it is clear the ferruginous hawk (and many other bird species) will have no place to live that is safe from wind turbines.

For those who proclaim a deep concern and passion for protecting and preserving the natural environment, you need to fully grasp what Washington policy makers have established as their clean energy vision of the future.

Without blinking, Inslee, Washington’s legislature and the DOC have shared their dystopian vision for the northwest includes 63,000 megawatts of wind farms which conservatively would cover a land area equivalent to more than 100 times that of Seattle.

So you can see why, rather than accepting EFSEC’s recommendation for 2-mile set backs between HHWF turbines and historical ferruginous hawk nesting sites, Inslee is doubling down on his ‘green energy’ mania and attempting to strong-arm his Department of Fish & Wildlife through the EFSEC proceedings to effectively declare the endangered ferruginous hawk a lost cause.

And all so Washington state can use the HHWF and it’s monstrously sized wind turbines as a giant environmental virtue signal that under ideal conditions might reduce the rate of electricity emissions by 1 million metric tons (MMT) on an annual basis.

While a million of anything normally represents something quite large, don’t be fooled. 1 MMT of CO2 emissions represents 0.019% of the 5,060 MMT of total U.S. annual energy sector emissions in 2022 and only 1.3% of Washington’s emissions.

Sorry ferruginous hawks, environmentalism appears to be dead. It’s being replaced by climatism. And King Inslee has decreed you are just another NIMBY.

Step 2 to Green Tyranny - Regulatory Reforms

While attending a United Nations climate conference in Egypt in November 2022, Jay Inslee was quoted as saying governments will have to overcome “nimbyism,” including in Washington, to achieve clean-energy goals. 

He went on to say regulatory reforms are needed to prevent local opponents from delaying projects. “We’ve got to make decisions, and this will be controversial,” he said. “We have to confront it. We have to succeed.”

And regulatory reform is exactly what Inslee and his supporters arranged. For those who are not aware, EFSEC became an independent Washington state agency on June 30, 2022, after the legislature passed a bill authorizing the change “as an important step to achieve Governor Inslee’s carbon neutral goals by 2045”. 

Additionally, it’s important to point out the EFSEC council body consists of a governor-appointed Chair along with state agency representatives from the Departments of Commerce, Ecology, Fish and Wildlife, and Natural Resources (Commissioner of Public Lands), and a representative with the Utilities and Transportation Commission.  Optional membership on the Council is extended to local governments, the Military Department and the Departments of Agriculture, Health, and Transportation on a project-by-project basis.

Clearly, Inslee’s direct control over the Council, combined with his expressed bias and uncompromising belief that rapid and massive wind and solar farm development represents the foundation of Washington’s energy future undermines the legitimacy of the EFSEC process.

And anyone living under the naive belief EFSEC proceedings can ever truly be an impartial adjudicative process with a sincere goal of balancing the ecological impacts of land-hungry wind farms with those of local citizens and interest groups, you need to get over it as well.

Step 3 to Green Tyranny - Push the Grid to a Reliability Cliff

It turns out if you prematurely shut down dependable coal-fired power plants and demonize 60% cleaner-burning natural gas as a logical replacement, while falsely promoting unreliable wind and solar farms as the primary fix, the risk of power grid blackouts increases dramatically.

By now, most people in the northwest are aware of the close call our power grid experienced this past January, as overnight temperatures plummeted to near or below zero across the region for just over a week.

Relevant key takeaways from this close call are:

1. Wind power generation across the northwest plummeted just as the coldest temperatures set in. And in some utility balancing areas, wind farms were producing zero electricity all hours of the day.

2. Blackout risk was not just during peak demand hours. What the previous map from the sourced Powerex report revealed is the northwest imported an average of 5,241 megawatts of electricity from outside the region for all hours (day and night) for five consecutive days of the crisis. This is equivalent to the energy production capability of more than five Columbia Generation Station nuclear plants.

3. The majority of imported electricity came from dependable and reliable thermal generating plants located in the desert southwest and Rocky Mountain west regions. While California provided a path on it’s grid for electricity to flow from the southwest to the northwest, California generators provided no net energy generation to help rescue the northwest.

After years of ignoring utility warnings and force feeding draconian energy policies pushed by wind and solar lobbyists, Jay Inslee is now feigning great concern over the reliability of the northwest grid.

“Washington state faces the stark reality that without a rapid buildout of new clean energy generation and transmission, the dependability of our electricity grid is at risk. We must come to grips with the fact that we will need to adapt and accept relatively moderate changes to our physical landscape, in order to ensure continued, reliable electricity service.”

Jay Inslee, May 23, 2024 EFSEC Letter

The “stark reality” is that Jay Inslee’s climate catastrophizing and panicked clean energy policies based on ‘CO2 is pollution’ dogma are a major contributor to the recent and unprecedented increase in northwest power grid blackout risk.

And to anyone with common sense, Inslee’s claim the HHWF and a rapid and extensive buildout of “new clean energy generation” is critical to ensuring power grid reliability is utter nonsense.

As I have covered in previous Substack posts, grid reliability is about power generation that is highly controllable and can be counted on to match supply with demand on a minute-by-minute basis. This is an unforgiving law of power grid physics.

But rather than operate in the theoretical realm of how much generation we could expect from Inslee’s beloved HHWF during a future polar vortex impacting Washington, lets take a look at the actual generation from the Nine Canyon Wind Farm during the coldest days of the January event.

For those who don’t know, Nine Canyon is located south of Kennewick in Benton County, and is immediately adjacent to the proposed HHWF development area.

Yes, you are seeing it correctly. The Nine Canyon Wind Farm was producing below or near zero megawatts for nearly four-and-a-half days of the five coldest days. And the generation levels before and after the cold snap were far below the nameplate generating capacity, and of course was intermittent and variable.

And it wasn’t just Nine Canyon that zeroed out. If you want to take a deeper dive into how poorly wind farms across the northwest and middle of the U.S. performed during the January event, check out my Substack post from January 21st.

Washington Wind Farms are Uniquely Deficient When it Comes to Reliable Generating Capacity

Yes, we can sacrifice vast land areas to wind farms and can get a lot of average energy as a result. But averages do not get the job done when it comes to power grid reliability on critically cold and hot days.

What happened to the wind generation at the Nine Canyon Wind Farm during the deeply cold days in January was not a surprise to anyone who has lived a few years in eastern Washington and/or is intellectually honest. Low or no winds during deeply cold temperature inversions is always what happens.

Poor performance by wind farms located in Washington is also not something that surprises utilities who are working through the Western Resource Adequacy Program (WRAP) to try and make sure the lights stay on during extreme cold and hot temperatures in the future.

WRAP has ranked Washington wind as having the lowest dependable winter generating capacity of any other geographical region they are evaluating, with only 8% of combined nameplate capacity expected to show up during the coldest hours of winter. Of course the January 2024 cold snap showed it can actually be near 0%.

You can read more about WRAP’s reliability assessment of Washington-based wind farms and things I had to say about the HHWF back in November 2023 by clicking on the graphic below.

So what Jay Inslee wants you to believe is that a rapid and massive overbuild of wind farms requiring the sacrifice of vast natural and open landscapes is the answer to grid reliability. A claim, in spite of the evidence, that he and so many wind power supporters and zealots continue to make.

As their basic logic goes, the wind is always blowing somewhere. Until it isn’t. And if we bet grid reliability on Washington wind farms, it’s abundantly clear it will be a losing one.

Step 4 to Green Tyranny - Propaganda

One definition of propaganda is “information, ideas, opinions, or images, often only giving one part of an argument, that are broadcast, published, or in some other way spread with the intention of influencing people's opinions.”

Earlier this year, Kathleen Drew, EFSEC Chair, revealed the Council was leaning toward recommending a large number of the proposed HHWF turbine locations be eliminated from consideration due to multiple negative ecological impacts, and that EFSEC would be holding firm on a recommendation for a 2-mile setback between wind turbines and ferruginous hawk historical nesting sights.

Once EFSEC tipped their hand, Scout Clean Energy’s President and CEO Michael Rucker publicly complained that reductions of the turbine count inside the 113 square-mile HHWF project boundary would make the project infeasible.

“If applied to future projects, (these standards) would restrict renewable energy siting on nearly a fifth of the state’s Columbia Plateau Ecoregion,” Rucker wrote.

It’s sure warms the heart to know Mr. Rucker from Colorado has such deep concern for the Columbia Plateau Ecoregion.

Here is what former Washington Democrat Norm Dicks who represented Washington's 6th Congressional District from 1977-2013 had to say once Rucker publicly complained, and mobilized his lobbyists.

Unfortunately, for the Horse Heaven Clean Energy Center — the largest renewable project in state history and actively covered by The Seattle Times — EFSEC is making poor decisions that will jeopardize project viability and set dangerous precedent for additional clean energy projects that our future depends upon.

Beyond EFSEC’s flawed process for this vital project, I am alarmed by the council’s seeming inaction toward the imminent impact of climate change to our world and state. The council’s decisions show little consideration that we must quickly build a remarkable amount of renewable projects to meet our energy needs and reduce our dependence on carbon-based sources.

March 18, 2024 Norm Dicks, The Seattle Times Opinion

And to nobody’s surprise, here’s what the Seattle Times Editorial Board had to say.

Washington state is taking pains and bold steps to cut carbon emissions, as climate change accelerates. Those laudable goals are now challenged as new demands for electricity are surging. That growing paradox — a higher load with a lower supply to meet it — will send energy costs higher for residents around the state, and worse, holds the potential for blackouts if the electricity grid is overwhelmed. Leaders must double down on development of green energy sources to maintain grid reliability.

State leaders, including Inslee and his successor, must act urgently to approve clean energy projects that meet the needs of surging load growth. The choices those leaders make today will determine whether Washington leads on green energy, or if its efforts on climate are merely virtue signaling at a great cost to the state’s residents.

May 3, 2024 The Seattle Times Editorial Board

You will notice the Seattle Times uses the words “boldly pursue” and “bold steps” in what appears to be an attempt to redefine what it means for Jay Inslee to use the EFSEC process to steamroll the interest of ‘locals’, aka NIMBYs.

Of course I would never expect the Seattle Times to carry water for Jay Inslee, but it’s almost like he coordinated with someone before crafting his letter to EFSEC.

“In short, the statute directs the Council to balance the environmental impacts with bold action to meet our state’s pressing energy needs.”

Jay Inslee, May 23, 2024 Letter to EFSEC

So, I have a question for west-side citizens, ‘journalists’ and politicians. What “bold actions” are you ready to take? More solar panels in sunny Seattle. Or maybe learning to live with rolling blackouts is what you have in mind.

FINAL THOUGHTS

What Democrat Party operatives, the Seattle Times and fellow Inslee environmental virtue signalers from the Capitol call “bold actions”, to us living in what feels like Panem District 5 from the Hunger Games, it's ‘green’ tyranny plain and simple.

And for the record, EFSEC has not had a single in-person meeting in Benton County or the Tri-Cities involving the public. All “public meetings” have been conducted over Zoom.

Maybe the 2021 State Energy Strategy promise that “communities and community members must have a seat at the table in designing programs and selecting projects” needs to be updated to make sure there is no misunderstanding.

Of course state officials couldn’t possibly have meant EFSEC members would actually sit at the same table with NIMBYs. What they meant to say is the Council’s table will be located in Olympia, and the community members tables will be in their dining rooms or home offices.

Besides, NIMBYs can’t possibly understand what’s good for them, and they are clearly just a predictable obstacle to the collective good as determined by those in the Capitol.

So, as the Council keeps NIMBYs at arms length via Zoom meetings. And the deliberations concerning the HHWF predictably descends into the deepening and partisan political divide. Those of us who are facing the prospect of living with a daily reminder of the egregious encroachment on our beloved Horse Heaven Hills for decades to come, have a sneaking suspicion the odds are clearly not ever in our favor.

In the prequel I pointed out ‘Big Tech’s’ 100% renewable deception and how Amazon, like their colleagues at Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft, is engaging in a deceptive environmental virtue signaling campaign when it comes to promoting wind and solar farms as adequate for “powering” their huge data centers.

As if responding to the appeal I made in Fantasyland #1 for Big Tech companies to come clean, and get on board with funding a forward-looking nuclear renaissance, Amazon Web Services (AWS) made headlines on March 4th with a huge investment in nuclear power.

As a strong supporter of nuclear, the AWS announcement was highly encouraging news for me, and I’m sure countless others who are trying to shine the light on the dark future offered by those living in wind and solar fantasyland.

But we have a long way to go as the wind and solar bandwagon is rolling faster than ever thanks to unrealistic emission-reduction based, and seemingly perpetual, federal tax incentives included in the Inflation Reduction Act which continue to be vigorously supported by detached from reality state politicians like Washington Governor Jay Inslee.

In the introductory paragraphs of a previous post titled Tilting at Windmills and the Great Northwest Land Grab I included the following quote from Inslee who was interviewed for an ABC This Week segment:

“We knew this beast of climate change was coming for us, but now, it's pounding on the door. . . This is a solvable problem. But we need to stop using fossil fuels.”

In the balance of my post, based on a dispassionate review of real-world data, I made the case for the following conclusions:

So, the “beast” Governor Inslee says we are fighting is being fed and is growing completely outside his or United States control, effectively becoming imaginary due to the scale and trends of global CO2 emissions. 

We must come to terms with this reality and slow implementation of irrational and foolish 'bumper-sticker' clean-energy policies that will hurt the poor most and possibly cripple western civilization through unaffordable and unreliable energy.

It continues to amaze me that Jay Inslee is taken seriously and that his foolish and clearly unrealistic claim that modern civilization and the developing world can “stop using fossil fuels” anytime soon goes basically unchallenged and is apparently supported by the majority of voters living in Washington.

To be fair, Inslee’s signature legislation, the Clean Energy Transformation Act (CETA) which requires 100% carbon-free electricity by 2045 does allow for nuclear power. And yes hydropower which currently provides about 60% of Washington’s annual electricity also counts.

With that said, Inslee, the majority of elected officials in the Washington legislature, and energy officials from the State Department of Commerce continue to clamor for the rapid development of massive amounts of resource-intensive and land hungry wind and solar power as the foundation of their fossil-fuel replacement strategy.

And with every mention of clean energy and our desperate need for wind and solar farms, Washington’s energy ‘visionaries’ never fail to mention the promise of ‘green jobs’ and ‘green industry’.

A great case in point was an Inslee press conference back in November 2023 when he showed up to proclaim the wonders of “green energy” and take some credit for a new battery factory being built in Moses Lake, Washington.

While I suppose some would consider a battery factory being built to supply the electric vehicle (EV) industry as representing green energy, it’s important to understand, the battery factory didn’t come to Moses Lake for access to wind and solar power.

They came for what 2,170 megawatts (MW) of hydropower owned and operated by Grant County Public Utility District (Grant PUD) can provide; low-cost and reliable electricity.

Thanks to big hydro, Grant, along with Douglas and Chelan PUDs (aka Mid-C Utilities) have for decades been in a class by themselves when it comes to low cost electricity. And good for them, and the founders of their respective utilities who had the vision and foresight to invest in hydroelectric dams with more than 4,900 MW of combined nameplate generating capacity.

It’s no secret, low-cost and abundant hydropower was the primary reason for the development of electricity intensive data-centers and other industry in Central Washington, which really hit it’s stride in the early 2000’s.

While I do not speak for the Mid-C Utilities, based on publicly available information it appears Grant and Douglas PUD’s hydroelectric dams are operating at or very near their maximum firm capability which is limited by low-water scenarios in the Columbia River.

One indication Grant PUD is reaching their maximum firm hydro capability was their public announcement they are considering exercising their statutory rights to 207 average megawatts (aMW) of the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) hydro and nuclear portfolio, which until now they haven’t needed.

This was followed by Grant issuing an all-source request for proposals (RFP) in December 2023 through which they are seeking to secure an additional 300 MW of firm generating capacity and energy.

Additionally, in June 2023 it was announced that Microsoft's newest 180 MW data center in Douglas County would be served with electricity sourced by Powerex; a Canadian entity primarily responsible for marketing BC Hydro’s surplus hydroelectricity. Douglas PUD’s role will be to transport (wheel) the electricity supplied by Powerex across their transmission and distribution systems for delivery to the Microsoft facilities.

I mention Grant and Douglas PUD’s situations to bring additional awareness to a fact I emphasized in Fantasyland #1 regarding the 31 federal hydroelectric dams marketed by BPA.

As we think about bringing jobs to Washington and Oregon centered on electricity-intensive ‘green industry’, it is critical to understand BPA’s firm energy capability from which their lowest-cost rates are derived, is 100% spoken for through existing contracts they have with the 142 customers and beneficiaries of their generating portfolio.

All of this to say, if Washington is going to attract and land electricity-intensive ‘green industry’, with rare exceptions, it’s going to have to be without the help of firm hydropower.

Yes, there will be years when the Columbia and Snake Rivers are flush with water and hydroelectric dams will deliver surplus energy available for purchase. But as I have said previously, utilities cannot support new industrial development on the hope that hydro will show up. Particularly when they are in a state with 100% carbon-free electricity mandates hanging over their heads.

And while tens-of-thousands of megawatts of solar and wind power is in the queue for possible future development in Washington and other northwest states, it’s important to understand there were only two utility-scale solar farms operating inside Washington boundaries as of May 2023, with a combined nameplate capacity of just over 20 MW.

Further, solar and wind power accounted for 86 aMW (0.83%) and 839 aMW (8.09%) of the 10,376 aMW of retail electricity sales to Washington customers in 2022.

Clearly green energy in the form of solar and wind power are not driving economic development in Washington today.

And the idea these intermittent and variable technologies will function as an affordable and reliable foundation for powering electricity-intensive ‘green industry’ promised by Jay Inslee and Washington’s electrify everything clean energy policies is clearly an unrealistic fantasy.

INSLEE’S QUESTIONABLE SUPPORT FOR HYDROPOWER

Given the inherent deficiencies of wind and solar power, you might think Jay Inslee, who constantly crows about Washington’s ‘climate leadership’ and 100% carbon-free electricity mandate would be an unabashed supporter of hydropower, well think again.

As I wrote in Sawing Off the Branch We’re Sitting On, Inslee and Washington State agencies have been at the forefront of undermining hydropower through increased regulatory control and political maneuvering for many years, including the release of a report in August 2022 co-sponsored by Senator Patty Murray titled the “Lower Snake River Dams: Benefit Replacement Report”. With Inslee concluding (emphasis added):

“The state and federal governments should implement a plan to replace the benefits of the Lower Snake River Dams to enable breaching to move forward,” Gov. Jay Inslee said.

While the ‘Inslee-Murray’ report and accompanying press release may sound quite pragmatic to the casual observer, it’s important to understand that Inslee, like he does with countless issues, always invokes his version of ‘the science’ as unquestionable and certain when it supports his politics.

Never one to humble himself and admit science is really never settled, and is in fact not represented by the consensus opinion of certain scientists, Inslee’s official statement regarding the Lower Snake River Dams includes:

“The scientific review affirms that breaching these specific dams offers the greatest benefit to the salmon.”

What his official statement doesn’t say is the “greatest benefit to the salmon” is a very small percentage increase in the survival of juveniles on their trip down river derived from salmon survival computer modeling which attributes the majority of salmon deaths to delayed mortality theory.

This theory hypothesizes that young salmon encounters with dams causes cumulative trauma on their migration to the ocean.  And that this trauma results in death after the salmon has migrated passed the last dam and has made it into the estuary or ocean. 

And while the Independent Scientific Advisory Board (ISAB) agrees hydroelectric dams on the Columbia and Snake Rivers cause some fish to experience delayed mortality, they have also concluded the magnitude of the impact of delayed mortality on salmon survival is highly uncertain and cannot be scientifically proven because there are too many dynamic variables in the ocean environment.

Despite the fact dam caused delayed mortality clearly represents unsettled science, salmon survival computer modelling which attributes the majority of recent declines in returning adult salmon and steelhead is often promoted by dam breaching advocates as conclusive evidence adequate for justifying the removal of the Lower Snake River Dams. And Jay Inslee has fallen for this version of ‘the science’, hook, line and sinker.

So, the question remains; if theoretical fractional increases in salmon survival are adequate to justify breaching the Lower Snake River Dams, then why stop there. Why not breach all of the dams? A question Jay Inslee should be required to answer, given that his 100% carbon-free electricity mandates are pure fantasy without hydropower.

Subscribe now

WRECKING THE PLANET

Back to the battery factory in Moses Lake and Governor Inslee’s press conference during which he was quoted as saying:

“When we bring good-paying, consistent, environmentally friendly jobs in Washington, it helps everybody,” Inslee said. “It brings in new neighbors, it helps fund our schools. And it’s a group of people who share values, the people in these clean tech jobs, it’s very interesting when you talk to them; they’re highly motivated to build an environment that won’t wreck the planet.”

Says Inslee who’s 2021 State Energy Strategy envisions the Northwest covered by 63,000 megawatts (MW) of industrial wind farms.

And without blinking, Inslee’s Department of Commerce proudly proclaims that 97% of the wind farms representing an area equivalent to more than 100 times that of Seattle would be built in states other than Washington. Namely Montana and Wyoming which have been targeted by Washington’s clean energy visionaries as sources for imported electricity, which they expect will represent 43% of what will be used in the state by 2050.

So much for domestically generated electricity and ‘green energy’ jobs in Washington.

Speaking of wrecking the planet. How about the raw material extraction and industrial processing (done mostly in China with coal-fired electricity) needed to produce the more than 100 million individual solar panels required to build the 40,000 MW of Northwest solar Inslee and his Department of Commerce believe will also be needed.

And we shouldn’t forget the impacts on the planet caused by the construction of countless high voltage transmission lines that will be required to move electricity from rurally located wind and solar farms to urban population centers.

“I guess if we “wreck the planet” in foreign countries and in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho, nobody will notice,” said Rick Dunn.

One thing you will notice that is missing from the Washington’s 2021 Energy Strategy and the previous charts is any reference to nuclear power which represents exactly zero of the colored bars.

Yes, nuclear power is allowed by Washington’s CETA, and many Washington politicians, including Jay Inslee say they support nuclear. But a panicked state energy strategy with a foundational belief in rapid development of wind and solar power results in a massive drain of limited intellectual and financial capital that could be focused on a more reasoned and rational natural-gas-to-nuclear strategy.

Once again, giving credit where it’s due, the Washington legislature recently closed their 2024 session which included approval of a conditional $25 million contribution to the development of Energy Northwest’s Site-1 Small Modular Reactor (SMR) project. The funding condition being that Initiative 2117 which would erase the state's two-year-old Climate Commitment Act (CCA) does not pass in November.

Also, keep in mind that in 2023, Washington’s cap-and-invest auctions (aka carbon tax) required by the CCA raised $1.8 billion dollars. Which begs the question. If you really want to be a global ‘climate leader’ and are serious about not wrecking the planet, why not do even more for nuclear, and not make it conditional on a political outcome.

To illustrate the unique planet-friendly attributes of energy-dense, small-foot print, non-emitting advanced nuclear, check out the following slide highlighting one of the results of a 2020 study commissioned by Energy Northwest.

What this slide illustrates is that under a 100% greenhouse-gas reduction scenario, SMR technology offers the possibility of avoiding the construction of 91 GW (gigawatts)] of non-firm wind, solar and energy storage in the Pacific Northwest by building 5.3 GW of SMRs.

The avoided construction of 44.8 GW of wind and 37 GW of solar shown in the previous chart represents between 80 and 150 Seattle-sized wind farms and 112 million individual solar panels respectively. How’s that for not wrecking the planet.

HOW DID WE GET HERE?

The thesis of this post is that Governor Jay Inslee’s clean energy vision is detached from reality and that he is living in wind and solar fantasyland. But he’s not the only one living there. Every citizen in Washington and other states with clean energy policies myopically focused on elimination of CO2 are living there too; whether we like it or not. So how did we get here?

It starts with the law-of-the-land from which no citizen is immune. Consider the following quoted text from the preamble of Washington’s Clean Energy Transformation Act (CETA) (emphasis added):

“The legislature finds that Washington must address the impacts of climate change” including “modernizing” the electricity system. Even with the “wealth of carbon-free hydropower . . . electricity remains a large source of emissions in our state.”

“The transition to one hundred percent clean energy is underway, but must happen faster than our current policies can deliver” and “[t]he prices of clean energy technologies continue to fall, and are, in many cases, competitive or even cheaper than conventional energy sources.”

Reality check #1. The following graphic sourced from the Washington Department of Ecology indicates electricity represented 16.3% of 2018 Washington Greenhouse Gases.

This chart is aged, but I can assure you the percentages are in the ballpark of where we are today. In fact, if Washington has a good hydro year, the number can be even smaller by several percentage points.

Yes, “large” is a relative term, but has anyone living in reality ever said large and 16% in the same sentence. Remember, this claim is in Washington State law and is the driver of the elimination of dependable coal-fired power from utility portfolios by 2025 before adequate replacements are in place.

Reality check #2. The following graph shows Washington’s electricity sector CO2 emissions represented 0.62% of the US total in 2022.

Furthermore, if you consider energy-related CO2 emissions across all sectors, Washington has on average represented about 1.5% of the United States total for all of the years Jay Inslee has served as Governor. And over this same time period, Washington’s energy-related carbon dioxide emissions per capita have been 35% less than the average of all states.

I think it’s safe to say, Washington isn’t even close to having a ‘dirty energy’ problem. And for the law-of-the-land to say “Washington must address the impacts of climate change”, as if eliminating the relatively small amount of CO2 produced within the state will make a global difference, either directly or by setting a good example, is truly a fantasy.

A fantasy that even in it’s infancy is already increasing the risk of blackouts while also increasing the cost of electricity, gasoline and natural gas.

Reality check #3. While Washington’s electricity is about 60% hydro on an annual basis, hydro only represents about 6% of total US electricity. Just look at the scale of Washington and Oregon based hydroelectric energy on an annual basis represented by the size of the bubbles on the following map.

Remember this map when you hear Jay Inslee and members of the Washington State legislature bragging about their ‘climate leadership’ which is based on seeing how much wind and solar can be built in other states and force fed into a massive base of hydroelectric power unlike anywhere else in the United States.

And just to drive the point home, take a look at the following map which shows how dependent most of the US is on natural gas fired electricity which currently produces 39.8% of electricity followed by coal at 19.5% and nuclear at 18.2%.

The reality is that Washington State’s wind and solar centric 100% carbon-free electricity vision represents nothing that is scalable to anywhere else in the US.

In fact, it’s fair to say Washington is actually way behind the rest of the country where fuel switching from coal to natural gas since around 2007 has driven the majority of the 760 million metric ton (MMT) reduction in emissions in the US electricity sector.

And what has happened in hydro rich Washington as a rational energy transition occurred in ‘coal country’ over the last 16-years. Well, over this period, electricity sector emissions in Washington averaged 10.8 MMT, which is precisely where we landed in 2022.

It is truly a fantasy for Jay Inslee to claim Washington State is leading on ‘climate’ and the so called ‘energy transition’. Thanks to hydropower, Washington was a clean energy state before Inslee was elected governor and the only thing his ‘leadership’ has done is unnecessarily erode grid reliability, increase energy costs, and set the stage for possible dam breaching in the future.

Reality check #4. So what about the claims in Washington’s CETA preamble that “clean energy technologies” are, in many cases, competitive or even cheaper than conventional energy sources.

The reality is no matter how “cheap” wind and solar farms become on an individual basis, their intermittency and variability is a fatal flaw when it comes to meeting the minute-by-minute supply and demand balancing required by the unforgiving laws of power grid physics.

This fatal flaw essentially requires the construction of two grids; the 100% CO2 free grid and the reliable grid. As a consequence, utilities and their rate payers will be double-paying to some degree.

If you want to take a deeper dive into the wind and solar levelized-cost-of-energy (LCOE) deception, I highly recommend reading the latest Substack post from The Energy Bad Boys titled How to Destroy The Myth of Cheap Wind and Solar as they answer the question:

If Wind and Solar Are So Cheap, Why Do They Make Electricity So Expensive?

So, no matter what politicians promise, the retail cost of electricity will always go up as the power grid integrates higher and higher levels of wind and solar; assuming you want to maintain reliability.

Just look at the residential cost of electricity in Europe shown in the following graph where Germany has integrated more wind and solar capacity on a per capita basis than any other country. German residential customers are now paying more than 35 cents per kilowatt-hour compared to the utility I work for with an all-in cost of just under 9 cents, and a US average of around 13 cents.

As if it wasn’t bad enough for German citizens, high electricity costs driven by wind and solar power delusions, have also decimated Germany’s industrial sector.

If you want to get a glimpse of where Washington (and Oregon) could be headed, check out the Substack post by Robert Bryce titled The Deindustrialization Of Europe In Five Charts, with the subtitle:

Industrial electricity use in the EU is collapsing. US policymakers “Have no excuse for not looking at Europe and learning.”

Robert also recently wrote about the consequences of California’s all-in bet on solar and wind power in a post titled: California’s Electricity Disaster In Seven Charts.

As of the end of 2022, California had more than 17,500 megawatts of utility-scale solar power capacity, more than any other state. When small-scale facilities are included, the state had almost 32,000 megawatts of total solar capacity. California ranked eighth in the nation in wind-powered generation.

So what has the investment in wind and solar done for electricity prices so far? You guessed it, residential electricity prices are through the roof.

As Wind and Solar penetration increased to 25.7% of total electricity generation in California between 2008 and 2023, residential electricity costs have increased by 109% during that same time period.

This makes one wonder how long California residents will put up with the ridiculous increases in the cost of electricity which have also come with an increasing risk of blackouts. And California politicians are just getting started with the wind and solar powered energy transition.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Wake up Washington (and Oregon) residents!

The wind and solar experiment has been tried in Europe, California and elsewhere; and the results are terrible across the board. Why not learn from their mistakes.

It is critically important to recognize that implementation of Jay Inslee’s wind and solar fantasyland has just barely gotten started. And we are already seeing dramatic increases in wholesale power market prices and increasing risk of blackouts.

Take a look at the following set of curves which represent the cost of electricity on a forward basis for calendar year contracts (Cal Strips) at the northwest power market hub called the “Mid-C”.

The x-axis begins with January 1, 2022 and ends with February 1, 2024. The y-axis is in dollars per megawatt-hour, with the upper set of three curves representing the wholesale electricity price for heavy-load-hours (HLH) between 6 am and 10 pm. And the lower set of curves are for light-load-hours (LLH) between 10 pm and 6 am.

As a point of reference, all three calendar years were priced at less than $50 per MWh for HLH on January 1, 2022. And then in just one year, Calendar Year 2025 (CAL 2025) prices increased to as much as $105 per MWh, representing a more than 200% increase.

While prices softened somewhat in 2023, CAL 2025 HLH prices have ticked back up to over $100 with CAL 2026 and CAL 2027 at $95 and $92 respectively.

What these curves mean is if a utility is looking to purchase electricity in the regional power market on a forward basis, dependable generating resources have become very scarce.

And there is little hope utilities will be able to procure large amounts of electricity to support a fast turn around (less than 3 years) needed to land ‘green industry’. At least not if you are aiming to meet a price point comparable to Washington’s current average retail industrial rate of $62 per MWh which is 33% lower than current forward wholesale market prices for the highest demand hours.

It’s also important to recognize, even off-peak (overnight hours) wholesale electricity is currently priced at around $70 per MWh which is also well above average retail industrial rates in Washington today.

And if you are thinking mid-to-long-term and the possibility of buying wind and solar electricity from new farms under development. Well there’s bad news on this front as well.

It turns out the feeding frenzy in the wind and solar supply chain driven by the energy transition fantasies of developed nations has caused a supply and demand problem. And I don’t see any reason to believe there will be a reversal of the increasing cost curves anytime soon.

As shown in the following chart, commodities represent 60% to 70% of the cost of batteries and solar modules which has driven an upturn in the capital cost of these technologies. The same upturn is being observed in the cost of capital for wind farms as well.

I confirmed the increasing price trend for wind and solar by doing a quick review of the latest data from Lazard which indicates the unsubsidized (not including federal tax credits) levelized-cost-of-energy (LCOE) for wind and solar have gotten as high as $75 and $96 per MWh respectively, having both been previously as low as $24 per MWh.

And don’t forget, just as The Energy Bad Boys documented in their post, you have to look deeper than LCOE if you want to understand the true cost of wind and solar.

Finally, check out the following headline from March 22, 2024 and consider reading the article with a free trial from ClearingUp.

What the map featured in the ClearingUp article is showing is the Northwest relied on importing 4,745 megawatts of electricity into the region during early evening hours (4pm to 8pm) to avoid blackouts during the deeply cold temperatures experienced this past January.

And if that wasn’t eye opening enough, the analysis by Powerex referenced in the article also revealed that imports averaged 5,241 megawatts across all 120 hours of the January 2024 event. This means the Northwest had more than a peak-demand problem; we had a deeply-concerning fuel supply problem, including relatively low levels of water available for hydropower.

As you read about how close the Northwest came to blackouts, keep in mind, Jay Inslee led the charge to eliminate coal power from Washington by 2025, while demonizing and chilling investments in new natural gas plants; the only logical replacement for the dependable capacity being lost.

And while blackouts were close to happening in 2024, think about the risk some northwest electricity customers will be living with when the final 730 MW coal-fired unit at the Centralia Power Plant located in Washington’s Interstate-5 corridor shuts down at the end of 2025.

Jay Inslee is on his way out, but unfortunately his legacy will live on.

• Washington’s CO2 emissions have long been some of the lowest in the nation across all sectors of the economy, most notably in the electricity sector. And yet, Jay Inslee’s myopic focus on “eliminating fossil fuels” has unnecessarily resulted in some of the highest priced gasoline in the nation, double-digit increases in the cost of natural gas, and a power grid being pushed to the edge of a blackout cliff.

• 100% clean electricity mandates in Washington are critically dependent on hydropower, and yet Jay Inslee has been a leader in normalizing Lower Snake River dam breaching as a “centerpiece action” for salmon recovery.

• Low-cost and abundant hydropower has been the economic engine of the Northwest for decades, but the firm capability of federal hydroelectric dams is tapped out and 100% spoken for. And yet Jay Inslee continues to invite ‘green industry’ to the northwest with false promises of cheap and abundant ‘clean energy’.

• Washington electricity prices have been some of the lowest in the nation but are on their way up and risk deindustrializing many counties as Jay Inslee and the Washington State legislature continue to perpetuate the deception that wind and solar can provide the basis of “cheap” and reliable CO2 free energy.

I look forward to the opportunity for Washington to elect a new governor. And while it will take a small miracle, I hope the next governor will have some common sense and listen to utilities, particularly not-for-profit utilities like the one I work for.

Simply put. Washington and Oregon need every drop of hydropower we can get; and we must make room for cleaner-burning natural gas on our way to a nuclear future.

This is common ground every citizen in Washington (and Oregon) should be able to live with and support. That is unless you want to end up like Germany and California.

An “energy transition” is desperately needed to fight climate change, and we must electrify everything; including transportation and industry. But our ‘grid’ is not up to the task and it must be upgraded, modernized, and made more resilient, especially in the face of increasingly extreme weather.

There is no time to waste! We need to take rapid actions to eliminate the use of fossil fuels, and we have the technology to do it; wind and solar farms.

The energy transition is happening, but not fast enough. We all need to get on board. Have no fear. We are heading toward utopia, where energy will be clean, CO2 free, reliable and more affordable than ever. And there will be jobs galore, especially in ‘green industry’.

So what does ‘Big Tech’ have to say about the energy transition and green industry. Well, I recently discovered a great case study when I happened upon the following statements from Amazon’s Renewable Energy Methodology (emphasis added).

“Amazon is on a path to powering our operations with 100% renewable energy by 2025, five years ahead of our 2030 commitment. This includes all Amazon businesses such as operations facilities, corporate offices, physical stores, Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centers, and all financially-integrated subsidiaries that support millions of customers globally.”

Now contrast Amazon’s claims with the following excerpts from an article published in The Oregonian on February 9, 2024 titled: Amazon will start buying clean power for Oregon data centers (emphasis added).

“Data centers need huge volumes of electricity to power and cool their computers, and the regional utility, the Umatilla Electric Cooperative, now relies primarily on power generated by fossil fuels to meet Amazon’s needs.”

“Amazon said it will buy more than 200,000 megawatt-hours of power annually from a wind farm run by the renewable energy company Avangrid in neighboring Gilliam County. That’s a lot of electricity, enough to power 18,000 homes per year.”

“But it’s only a tiny fraction of the power Amazon’s data centers use. Oregon data shows that Umatilla Electric’s power sales have increased by 5 million megawatt hours in the decade after Amazon began operating in the region, meaning that the wind power may account for as little as 4% of the data centers’ power use.”

So given the facts on the ground in Oregon, how can Amazon make the claim 100% renewable energy will be “powering our operations” by 2025? Well, it clearly depends on what you mean by powering.

In simple terms, energy is the ability to do work. And power is the rate at which work is being done. So, it’s reasonable to assume “powering” means to facilitate the flow of electricity at the levels required to keep data-center equipment working around the clock, no matter the weather.

Otherwise why would Amazon invest in fossil-fueled backup generators like those installed at one of their data centers in Boardman, Oregon pictured below. Based on Google maps aerial photos, I counted 72 generators at this site.

This leads to the common-sense question; then how are intermittent-and-variable wind, and day-time-only solar, powering data centers 100% of the time? Of course the answer is they can’t, and they don’t.

Like their colleagues at Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft; Amazon is engaging in a deceptive but common marketing campaign to brand themselves as uniquely environmentally virtuous in spite of the unforgiving laws of power grid physics which require minute-by-minute supply and demand balancing.

The way the Big Tech deception works is through a relatively simple energy accounting method, where the megawatt-hours (MWh) of electricity physically “powering” facilities through the use of carbon-emitting plants are offset through the purchase of Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs).

RECs are a ‘paper credit’ produced every time a MWh of wind or solar electricity is delivered to a grid somewhere; even grids located in states or countries other than where the REC purchaser is “operating” their business.

RECs can be sold separately from their associated physical electricity. And it is very common for RECs to be purchased by utilities as a means of complying with state mandated renewable portfolio standards (RPS). This is precisely what the utility I work for has done for many years.

Clearly RECs are significantly improving the financial case for wind and solar projects and depending on the physical location of the grid, they can result in the net reduction of CO2 emissions under the right circumstances.

The problem with Big Tech’s 100% green energy claims is that policy makers, the media, and general public look to what these companies are doing as representative of what is state-of-the-art today; and what we believe may be possible in the future.

And there is just no compelling evidence to indicate a power grid using wind and solar as foundational technologies can provide both affordable and reliable electricity today or into the future, especially when it is clear the world needs more energy, not less.

Just look at the reality in the United States where overly-generous federal and state tax credits have driven hundreds of billions of dollars of wind and solar farm expenditures over the last ten years to get us to the point where these technologies only generate 10.2% and 3.4% of electricity on an annual basis respectively.

But what's more eye-opening under ‘electrify everything’ clean energy policies, is understanding that electricity represents 37% of total primary energy consumption in the US. Which means electricity generated from wind and solar is currently only doing 3.8% and 1.8% of total work across all sectors of the US economy annually.

Clearly the numbers beg the question, are wind and solar actually capable of driving a meaningful and rapid energy transition? Or are we living in a fantasyland perpetuated by a myopic focus on CO2 reduction and resulting “groupthink” which is defined as:

A process of reasoning or decision-making by a group, especially one characterized by uncritical acceptance or conformity to a perceived majority view.

A majority view requiring an unwavering and zealously communicated support of CO2 emission reductions as the highest of all moral virtues. Particularly among the young in Western societies who have become increasingly nihilistic under the weight of soul-sucking climate catastrophizing dripped into their minds on a daily basis by corporate media, politicians, academia; and yes, Big Tech.

Additionally, “climatism” dogma has clearly branded human flourishing driven by access to abundant, affordable and reliable hydrocarbons as greed-induced sins against nature for which we must now repent and suffer if necessary. Never mind life expectancy in the developed world since the start of the industrial revolution has increased from 30 to near 80 years. Or that humans have never been safer from climate than at any other time in human history.

So, yes I have a beef with Big Tech’s 100% renewable energy claims, which based on the evidence could be accurately characterized as disinformation. Quite the irony, eh?

Clearly, you don’t have to dig too far to understand Big Tech’s reinforcement of the narrative that part-time wind and solar are state-of-the art, low-cost, and also environmentally benign could not be further from the truth.

Not only does this false-narrative defy common-sense, it is also helping drive out-of-control federal and state spending. And the concentration of limited intellectual and financial capital on what can be objectively characterized as backward looking technologies that are clearly not friendly to the environment in a sober lifecycle assessment of the vast mineral extraction and unprecedented land grabs development of wind and solar farms at the scale being postulated will require.

And what will our industrialized natural landscapes and staggering volumetric waste deliver for our kids and grandkids? Part-time and higher cost electricity with increasing risk of blackouts.

As it happens Energy Bad Boys recently posted 3 Energy Realities That Renewable Advocates Can’t Answer which does a great job of exposing the “elephants in the room” when it comes to the unwarranted belief in wind and solar as adequate technologies for an ‘energy transition’.

“Renewable energy advocates like to stick to their talking points about wind and solar, but they never seem to address the elephant – or elephants – in the room when it comes to running a grid with weather-based, intermittent energy sources, such as not being able to survive without subsidies, causing massive price increases, and ultimately leading to blackouts.”

To be clear, I believe Amazon and Big Tech products and services on the whole make our lives better. And I have great admiration for their otherwise innovative and forward thinking. But it is important to grasp the magnitude of data center loads, and be clear-eyed about what the future holds for electricity-intensive industry under 100% carbon-free mandates in Washington and Oregon.

Consider this. The Oregonian article previously referenced states their research revealed Umatilla Electric power sales have increased by 5 million megawatt-hours since Amazon data centers showed up in their service territory; which is equivalent to over 570 average megawatts (aMW) on an annual basis.

While making no claims to knowing the source of generation used to meet Amazon’s data center requirements, or whether Amazon drove the entire increase in Umatilla Electric’s increased sales, 570 aMW is equivalent to 100% of the output of a typical combined-cycle natural-gas power plant similar to the one pictured here.

Additionally, 570 aMW represents substantially more energy than the 526 aMW of combined total annual electricity supplied by the four consumer-owned utilities (including the one I work for) serving a population of over 300,000 souls in the Tri-Cities area of south central Washington.

For additional context from The Oregonian article, the 200,000 megawatt-hours of Avangrid wind energy Amazon has committed to purchasing converts to 22.8 average megawatts (aMW) on an annual basis which is why the article states “wind power may account for as little as 4% of the data centers’ power use.” But the 570 aMW used in the denominator of their calculation is not the complete story.

Based on publicly available information provided through the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) rate case for FY 2024/2025, Umatilla Electric Cooperative (UEC) is forecasting their total retail load in 2025 will reach 1,051 aMW with 829 aMW of that coming in the form of New-Large-Single-Load (NLSL) customers.

The NLSL number represents how much of UEC’s load is not eligible to be served through the use of their federal statutory rights to BPA’s lowest cost wholesale electricity. The nationally recognized low-cost electricity representative of the legacy of northwest hydropower often credited as the economic development engine of the Pacific Northwest for more than 80 years.

As we think about bringing jobs to Washington and Oregon centered on electricity-intensive ‘green industry’, it is critical to understand BPA’s firm energy capability from which their lowest-cost rates are derived, is 100% spoken for through existing contracts they have with the 142 customers and beneficiaries of their generating portfolio.

That is to say, there is no “guaranteed energy” available for serving growing electricity demand in BPA utility customer service areas at the historically low rates many economic development interests may think are still available.

It is also critical to understand that UEC is one of 127 consumer-owned not-for-profit utility customers of BPA located across the Pacific Northwest restricted by NLSL regulations from serving individual customers with annual electricity demand of more than 10 aMW.

This NLSL limit which is quite low compared to what today’s data centers demand, was put in place many decades ago to keep low-cost hydropower from attracting too much of the nation’s electricity-intensive heavy industry to Pacific Northwest states.

The exception of course were large aluminum plants requiring hundreds of average megawatts each that were located throughout the region. These plants were a special classification of BPA customer referred to as Direct Service Industry (DSI); none of which exist today. And no, data centers and other electricity-intensive industry are not eligible for service as DSI customers of BPA.

With all this said, utilities served by BPA can ask to have NLSL electricity demand greater than 10 aMW included in their BPA wholesale supply contract, but it would occur under BPA’s New Resource (NR) rate. A rate currently priced at $90 per megawatt-hour (MWh) for heavy-load-hours and $80 per MWh for light-load hours.

These rates are in contrast to BPA’s lowest-cost Tier-1 and Tier-2 rates which average about $36 and $62 per MWh respectively. So BPA’s NR rate is 250% higher than their coveted Tier-1 rate.

While I do not claim to know what Amazon’s desired electricity price point is for their data-centers, I happened to hear Kevin O’Leary, “Mr. Wonderful” from Shark Tank fame, recently talking about his latest investment focus in data centers, and how he is looking for states with “4 cents per kilowatt-hour electricity” ($40 per MWh). Additionally, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Oregon and Washington’s average retail industrial rates in November 2023 were $69 and $62 per MWh respectively.

So, clearly a BPA wholesale NR rate that is 130% and 145% higher than the current Oregon and Washington retail industrial rates and 225% higher than Mr. Wonderful’s $40 retail price point is very likely “out of the money” when it comes to serving data center or new electricity-intensive industry. And to my knowledge, no BPA utility customers are serving NLSL customers under the NR rate.

Again, without having any specific knowledge as to Umatilla Electric’s power supply arrangement with Amazon, NLSL restrictions say nothing about Amazon’s ability to access surplus BPA or other northwest hydropower sold in regional power markets when better than low-water years occur in the Columbia River drainage basin.

But as much as Northwest hydro is an unparalleled source of low-cost and carbon free electricity in the US, it is also a variable resource, with significant differences in annual energy produced.

Based on BPA’s 2024 hydro forecast, a low water year is expected to deliver 6,662 aMW of firm energy. And an average or better water year is expected to deliver between 8,360 aMW and 10,778 aMW respectively.

This translates to the possibility of BPA having between 1,700 and 4,000 aMW of surplus annual energy to sell in regional power markets. Which is like having two to four nuclear plants worth of energy showing up randomly from year to year.

Clearly, this is a whole lot of energy and it could certainly “power” a whole lot of data-centers and ‘green industry’.

But you can’t stand up electricity-intensive industry on hope that Pacific Northwest hydropower shows up. Industrial developers, like electric utilities, must play the “long game” due to the very large capital investments and long permit times associated with constructing large infrastructure-based projects. And to secure financing, developers need certainty. And this is something utilities in Washington and Oregon cannot deliver at this point without access to additional dependable and affordable generation technologies like natural-gas, coal, and mature large-scale nuclear.

So why aren’t utilities getting with the program and signing up for new generating plants to meet the demands of economic development interests pushing electricity-intensive ‘green industry’ opportunities? It’s simple, because the only choice in the near term is to build unreliable and increasingly expensive wind and solar being forced by Washington and Oregon 100% carbon free electricity mandates.

While the costs of wind and solar have been on the decline for many years, times have changed in a big way due to raw material and supply chain constraints, compounded by dramatic inflationary pressures precipitated by panicked and draconian federal and state clean energy policies with a near singular focus on rapidly developing tens of thousands of megawatts of new wind and solar farms.

It is now common for the wholesale power prices associated with proposed new wind and solar farms to be more than Washington and Oregon’s current average retail industrial rates of $62 and $69 per MWh. And when you add the cost of firming these intermittent and variable technologies, I’ve seen prices as high as BPA’s New Resource (NR) rate previously identified as being in the $80 to $90 per MWh range.

So contrary to what the general public may be hearing, wind and solar are increasingly out-of-the money when it comes to attracting electricity-intensive industry and the large number of jobs being promised by so many politicians.

CONCLUSIONS

So what’s the answer? While I don’t see it happening anytime soon due to entrenched ‘climate’ ideology and 100% clean electricity policies, we need to take advantage of the nation leading clean energy Washington and Oregon are already blessed with thanks to hydropower, and allow natural gas to play a bigger role in our ‘energy transition’.

I am convinced Washington and Oregon could be world leaders in siting more data centers and other electricity-intensive industry, if we just lighten up on the “CO2 is pollution” dogma and climate catastrophizing that is pushing the selection of inherently deficient wind and solar technology. By the way, have you ever asked yourself how weather dependent wind and solar will provide a “more resilient and modernized” grid in the face of increasingly extreme weather?

While just-in-time natural gas delivery can be problematic for generating electricity, a few more clean-burning combined-cycle plants in the Pacific Northwest could provide a bridge to the only conceivable “long-game” answer; always-on, fuel-on-board, and carbon-free nuclear power.

And if you can’t imagine a large conventional nuclear plant near the area where you live, then consider the possibilities offered by meltdown-proof and walk-away-safe small modular reactor (SMR) technology like what is being proposed by Energy Northwest for construction near their existing Columbia Generating Station (CGS) nuclear plant north of Richland, Washington. 

SMR technology offers something weather dependent and land hungry wind and solar cannot provide; scalability closer to urban areas and the possibility of mitigating the need for extensive and expensive interstate high voltage transmission lines. 

I invite Amazon and other Big Tech companies to come clean, and get on board with funding a forward-looking, small-footprint, Big-Nuclear renaissance that is a must have for a real 'energy transition'.

And in the meantime there is no shame in using affordable, reliable, and cleaner burning natural gas for as long as you can do it economically. Of course, get ready to pay increasingly higher costs as overzealous clean energy policies in Washington and Oregon continue to drive up electric utility rates.

Stay tuned for my future post Fantasyland Part #2 in which I will provide more insights on the growing disconnect between Governor Jay Inslee’s detached from reality promises of ‘green industry’ in Washington State, and the reality experienced by utility executives like me who are often the ‘wet blanket’ at local economic development meetings focused on bringing in big industry and manufacturing.

The preamble to HB 2156 states: “Salespeople and contractors are responsible for accurately representing the financing terms, total cost, and performance of the solar energy equipment to support the customer in making an informed decision about whether the installation is economically viable. If these terms are not communicated correctly, customers face financial hardship.”

It further states: “It is the intent of the legislature to establish rules of business practice for solar energy contractors and solar energy salespersons to promote honesty and fair dealing (emphasis mine) with homeowners, other property owners, and leaseholders.”

Normally, we would all cheer the Washington legislature’s attempt to implement consumer protections shielding citizens from unscrupulous businesses who prey on vulnerable people, particularly the financially poor and elderly on fixed-incomes.

But, HB 2156 is not merely a response to the negative side effects of immoral actors unleashed by inadequately regulated free enterprise. This proposed bill is in response to a monster of the legislature’s own making.

SO HOW DID THE MONSTER COME TO BE?

The birth of the predatory solar-sales monster in Washington coincided with the passage of the state’s ‘net-metering’ law in 1998, with the goal of incentivizing customer-owned renewable generation, including rooftop solar.

For many years throughout the early 2000’s, Washington’s net-metering law failed to help rooftop solar get a foothold. Why you ask? It’s not complicated. Because Washington’s electricity supply has long been based on very low-cost and renewable hydro power. So, there has just never been a strong economic or environmental case to be made that would justify a Washington citizen getting into the business of generating their own electricity.

The poor case for solar is amplified further if you are a customer of a consumer-owned utility in Washington that receives its wholesale electricity from the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA). BPA is a federal agency that markets the generation provided by federal hydroelectric dams and the Columbia Generating Station nuclear plant, which together provide many BPA utility customers with more than 95% CO2-free and nation-leading affordable electricity.

But the facts on the ground did not deter Democrat Jay Inslee who was elected Governor of Washington and took office in January 2013. It was under his ‘climate-leadership’ that the solar-sales monster grew legs.

Rather than celebrate the fact Washington’s retail electricity costs were the envy of the nation, Inslee wasted no time in collaborating with a Democrat majority legislature to give an injection of super-growth hormones to the flagging state solar industry; approving some of the most lucrative tax-payer funded solar subsidies in the United States.

As you check out the following table of “Customer-generated power applicable rates” (subsidies) offered by Washington State beginning in 2013, keep in mind the retail residential energy rates at the utility I work for are currently just under 7 cents per kilowatt-hour ($0.07 per kWh). And the average value of the wholesale electricity purchases we make today from BPA are around $0.036 per kWh.

This means the “Base rate” subsidy of $0.15 per kWh for rooftop-solar was valued at a level equivalent to more than 200% of the cost of residential electricity in Kennewick, Washington today. Or more than 400% of the wholesale price my utility pays for BPA power.

But that’s nothing. With a little ‘creative’ equipment sourcing to gain the “manufactured in Washington” label, a rooftop-solar installer was able to tap into a subsidy as high as $0.54 per kWh which is valued at more than 1,500% of the BPA wholesale-cost basis I am using for comparison.

But wait, there’s more! If you think rooftop solar was given ridiculously high subsidies, check out the next table applicable to community solar projects, which continue to be all the rage. Yes, you are reading it right, community solar projects were subsidized at a rate as high as $1.08 per kWh which is a value representing more than 3,000% of our BPA basis.

So now you know what triggered the otherwise illogical rooftop-solar gold-rush in Washington. And the establishment of so many solar installer businesses in a northern latitude state best known for it’s cloudy, rainy and most populated city of Seattle.

Yes, Governor Inslee and the Washington State legislature had achieved their goal of making the financial case for rooftop solar work for many citizens. Particularly those with the tens-of-thousands of dollars in surplus cash required to fund the up-front cost of a solar system large enough to offset as much as 100% of the annual energy charges included in their utility power bill.

But the over-the-top state solar subsidies created a feeding frenzy, and by June of 2019 the Washington State legislature’s $110 million cap had been reached, leaving solar installers to make the financial case for rooftop solar without the disproportionately large assist from state tax payers.

The problem for roof-top solar businesses in Washington is utility rates haven’t changed much over the last ten years, remaining too low to be helpful to their business case (at least for now).

So the same good news about low electricity rates in Washington that has been bad news for solar installers and their supporters in Olympia for more than 20 years, is still in play today; and still makes rooftop solar a bad financial investment in the absence of overly generous state subsidies.

NET METERING’S NEGATIVE IMPACT ON THE POOR

The inconvenient truth regarding the business case for rooftop-solar was confirmed in December 2023 when the Washington Public Utility Districts Association (WPUDA) released the results of a study titled “Benefits and Costs of Net Energy Metering in Washington”.

The full 117 page report completed by Energy and Environmental Economics, Inc. (E3) is available at the following web address:

https://www.ethree.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/E3_Benefits-and-Costs-of-Net-Energy-Metering-in-Washington_2023-12-21.pdf

But if you just want the CliffsNotes version, here is a chart that says it all. Based on six representative utilities, Figure 1 shows for an average 7-kilowatt (kW) solar installation with a 25-year expected life, the Benefits bars come in lower than the Costs bars in every case, with the exception of Seattle City Light, which shows a break even just as the solar panels are ready to be retired.

So why did I mention net-metering at the beginning of my post, and now it’s showing up again in a similar form in the title of the WPUDA study as “net energy metering”?

Net-metering refers to state laws that force utilities to provide retail price credits for surplus electricity that flows into their distribution systems from customer-owned solar panels, even though the value of the surplus electricity is much less, and closer to that of the wholesale cost of electricity acquired by the utility for delivery to its customers.

Depending on the utility, the wholesale cost of electricity represents a much smaller number, on the order of 50% or less when compared to the residential retail rates they charge. This is roughly the case when you consider the $0.07 retail residential rate I mentioned my utility charges today, and the $0.036 wholesale cost of BPA power.

It’s also important to recognize that surplus electricity flows back on to the utility distribution system from a customer-solar installation due to a mismatch between the bubble-shaped production curve of the solar panels and a typical residential customer electricity demand curve.

What a residential customer with a solar surplus looks like during summer months where I live is illustrated in the following set of curves. As you can see, a customer with solar panels can register negative (less than zero) electricity flow from the utility distribution system during the mid-day hours. This corresponds to when their own demand for electricity is less than what their solar panels are producing.

As a consequence, the customer with solar panels needs the utility distribution system to enable electricity flow to their neighbors, which is relatively easy to do. But in exchange for the energy provided to their neighbors, the solar-customer is owed a credit on their future power bill.

And its the rate the utility uses to calculate the credits that creates the rub when it comes to net-metering. Under net metering laws, distribution utilities are forced to pay a retail rate credit, which I previously indicated can be twice the wholesale price they pay for electricity.

So, under net-metering mandates a solar customer who gets retail-rate energy credits each month that carry over into future months can end up paying nothing for energy on an annual basis (assuming they have a solar system sized adequately to achieve this).

And it’s in the energy charges where a distribution utility expects to collect the revenues needed to pay for the equipment and power lines that are in place to serve the around-the-clock electricity needs of customers with and without solar panels. This means customers with a big enough solar installation can avoid paying their fair share of the distribution utilities fixed costs which are incurred on behalf of all customers.

This subsidization which has been known to exist for all the years net-metering has been in place finally came to a head in the preeminent place for rooftop-solar in the United States; California.

After more than two decades of net-metering, California politicians and state agencies finally faced facts and admitted solar customers are being subsidized by customers without solar. And those without solar are disproportionately low-income families.

This is why the California Public Utilities Commission unanimously voted in December 2022 to revise net-metering in California, eliminating the requirement for utilities to over pay for surplus customer-generated solar electricity.

For an accurate and highly informative take on California’s net metering epiphany, I highly recommend the following post by Mitch Rolling and Isaac Orr, aka .

Energy Bad Boys

Stealing with Solar: The Great Net-Metering Heist

Have you ever wanted to steal from the less fortunate without going to jail? Have we got a deal for you! Affluent households in California siphoned nearly $3.4 billion in 2021 from the pockets of low-income families through a government program called net metering. This program allows people with solar panels to get free electricity while forcing people…

Read more

3 years ago · 41 likes · 24 comments · Mitch Rolling and Isaac Orr

And just like in California, the charts below from the WPUDA study show Washington’s net energy metering (NEM) law is resulting in $40 million per year in cost shifts from solar to non-solar customers today; growing to $67 million by 2030. And that number could grow to as much as $136 million per year by 2030 if the state legislature increases the number of customers utilities must provide retail credits for surplus solar electricity.

Currently, Washington utilities are only forced to pay retail credit for customer solar generating capacity until it reaches four-percent of the utility’s peak demand recorded in 1996. This limit was the result of political negotiations and is somewhat arbitrary. But it is important to know it is often the subject of legislative session lobbying efforts by rooftop-solar supporters who would like to see the limit raised substantially.

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE SOCIETAL BENEFITS OF CUSTOMER SOLAR?

And as if the news for rooftop solar weren’t bad enough on a more straight forward financial basis, Figure 4 below from the WPUDA study also shows through a “Societal Cost Test” (SCT) that the Benefits of customer-owned solar are still not worth the Costs.

This includes consideration of an “Other Societal Benefits” category which accounts for reduced criteria pollutant emissions, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and reduced land use impacts.

CONCLUSIONS

So the question the Washington State legislature must come to terms with in light of the numbers is, what problem do you think you would be solving by enacting “solar consumer protections”? After all, the math is pretty straight forward. Residential retail electricity rates in Washington are just not high enough (yet) to make rooftop solar an easy sell.

Solar installers know this. That’s why some have turned to the smoke-and-mirrors of complex financial contracts and loans propped up by unrealistic underlying assumptions as a means by which they can dupe unsuspecting and confused citizens of Washington into signing up for solar.

Once again, we can turn to California for a cautionary tale described in the following article which opens by stating: “A decade ago, someone knocking on your door to sell you solar panels would have been selling you solar panels. Now, they are probably selling you a financial product—likely a lease or a loan.”

The Rooftop Solar Industry Could Be On the Verge of Collapse (yahoo.com)

This article is worth grabbing a cup of coffee and taking 20 minutes to read through. Maybe you don’t need the information for yourself, but a family member or friend who gets a knock on their door may thank you if you can help keep them from making a big rooftop-solar financial mistake.

It continues to be very frustrating (even maddening) for me as an executive at a consumer-owned utility served by the BPA to listen to Washington State politicians continue to clamor for more-and-more rooftop solar. As I have always said, be careful what you wish for when it comes to politicians picking winners and losers in the energy technology space.

It’s time for Washington State legislators to celebrate the affordable electricity we have enjoyed for so many years and to be held accountable for the deception they have created around the “benefits” of rooftop solar. And if they are so set on a California style clean-energy future, why not learn from California’s mistakes.

And perhaps now you can see why I find it rich that the Washington State legislature, which continues to force-feed costly and draconian clean-energy policies based on hyperbolic claims of catastrophic climate change, and our state’s ability to consequentially impact a global phenomenon, is insisting solar installers operate in an honest and fair way so as not to create financial hardships.

Thankfully, Washington is still a long way from looking like California when it comes to the retail cost of electricity. So, the best thing politicians can do for the most vulnerable citizens in Washington is keep Northwest hydro power in place. Then go to work on a way to relax provisions in Washington’s 100% clean electricity mandates to allow a more rational transition away from coal-fired power using natural gas as a bridge fuel. And most importantly, they need to get serious about a nuclear-power future.

Rooftop solar isn’t going to ‘save the planet’ and it is clearly a bad deal financially in Washington today. And it will continue to be a bad deal; at least until the next-round of tax-payer funded subsidies are approved by the state legislature and/or the expected cost-increases driven by Washington’s 100% clean electricity mandates start to kick in. Let’s hope we come to our senses before either of these things happen.

In the United States we take it for granted that we have protection from nature during severe cold, but that is not the case in countries without access to affordable and reliable electricity.

I thought about this every time I went outside during the polar-vortex deep freeze we just lived through and imagined what it would be like not to have electricity or natural gas to heat my home, and have a warm and safe place to retreat.

If like me, you and your family were warm and safe as temperatures plunged into the single digits, you can thank Northwest hydropower. And of course, I couldn’t help but recruit my wife for another piece of art inspired by what became the title of this post.

As it turns out the timing of the polar vortex couldn’t have been better for reinforcing the central message of what I wrote about in a previous post which featured a detailed review of how critical hydropower is to Northwest power grid reliability. https://rickdunn.substack.com/p/sawing-off-the-branch-were-sitting

What I have to say about Northwest hydro is not new, as there has been no shortage of information over the past week regarding how it once again saved the day. My take on wind power is also part of the common theme, but with a much bigger picture in mind.

But just in case you missed it, check out the following graph which shows how power generation resources in the Bonneville Power Administration’s balancing area footprint (BPAT) performed as temperatures plummeted into the single digits across the Northwest.

It’s no surprise that ramping up federal hydro is BPAT’s answer to maintaining demand and supply balance, cranking out more than 10,000 average megawatts (MWa) during the highest demand hours. You will notice natural gas had some fuel supply issues during the week so generation dropped at an inopportune time, but then recovered.

While I am a big fan of natural gas for it’s high energy-density and small physical footprint, the just-in-time fuel delivery that depends on the continuity of pipelines, storage facilities and compressors is a significant potential liability.

This is also one of the big reasons I believe nuclear power with on-board fuel is a superior generating technology; particularly if your goal is a reliable and resilient grid. My belief was confirmed by the always-on Columbia Generating Station nuclear plant which provided 1,164 MWa and performed flawlessly throughout the deep freeze.

As for wind, the 2,827 megawatts (MW) of nameplate generating capacity inside the BPAT footprint was generating over 2,000 MWa during some hours before the coldest polar air arrived, but eventually bottomed out and made almost zero contribution to grid reliability. And if that wasn’t bad enough, during several hours, BPAT wind farms were actually drawing power from the grid which is represented by the net -1 MWa shown on the graphs for hour ending at 7 pm on January 14th.

To be fair, sizeable Oregon and Washington wind farms exist in other balancing area (BA) footprints adjacent to BPAT, including Avangrid Renewables, LLC (AVRN) and Washington-based investor-owned utility Puget Sound Energy (PSE).

An interesting back story. AVRN is a generation only BA with both wind and natural gas resources. AVRN wind farms were originally part of the BPAT footprint, but Avangrid believed the rates the Bonneville Power Administration was charging them for balancing services were too high. So, Avangrid formed their own balancing area authority (BAA) and moved their Northwest wind assets out of the BPAT footprint.

My understanding is the natural gas in the AVRN footprint is Avangrid’s Klamath Energy Facility, a 591-MW combined-cycle natural gas facility with a steam turbine and peaking natural gas facility owned by an Avangrid affiliate.

The AVRN balancing area reminds me of a quote I heard some years ago . . . “natural-gas is wind power’s best friend”. And you have to admit, there is irony in the fact a company with “Renewables” in their name is depending on ‘evil’ natural gas to optimize the value of their wind farms.

Just like what happened inside the BPAT footprint, you can see in the following graphs, AVRN wind generation which is mostly located south of the Columbia Gorge in Oregon started fairly strong just before the polar air arrived; but then steadily decreased until bottoming out and becoming additional electricity demand on the grid; registering -16 MWa during the hour ending 8 am on January 14th.

As for PSE, the story was no different both for wind and natural gas with the latter working together with hydro to keep the lights on across the Pacific Northwest during the hours and days of coldest temperatures. It should be noted, PSE also has a bit of hydro in their footprint which you can see was bumped up in generation level during the coldest days between January 12th through the 15th.

The fact Washington and Northern Oregon wind farms were AWOL (absent without leave) during the coldest days of the polar-vortex event is not a surprise to utility planners.

In the case of Washington, I wrote a previous Substack post about how analysis performed by the Western Resource Adequacy Program (WRAP) indicates wind inside Washington borders is uniquely deficient in terms of providing “effective capacity” during winter months. https://rickdunn.substack.com/p/washington-wind-farms-are-uniquely

And maybe surprisingly to some, even Washington state energy officials know wind farms in our state cannot deliver on reliability, which they confirmed in a Department of Commerce (DOC) report to legislators in January 2023. In their report to the Washington State Senate, DOC staff shared the state’s clean energy vision which is heavily dependent on out-of-state generating plants; with 43% of electricity expected to be imported into the state by 2050.  And of that amount, 36% of the imports would come from wind farms in Montana and Wyoming.

And of the 63,000 MW of onshore wind envisioned for the Northwest (more than one-hundred Seattle-sized wind farms), Washington is only expected to host 2,000 MW or 3% of the total.

WHAT ABOUT WIND POWER WHERE THE WIND REALLY BLOWS?

But enough about the deficiency of Washington and Oregon wind. What we are hearing from policy makers and utilities in both states, and across the entire west, is we must rapidly build numerous high-voltage transmission lines to the east, so we can tap into much better wind resources. These locations (states) are dramatically represented by the land area corresponding to the orange and purple color tones in the following map.

As the map shows, there is no doubt eastern Montana and Wyoming represent some of the premium western locations for wind farms. But there is nothing like the states right down the middle of the country.

So lets take a look at how wind farms located east of the northwest, and those in the central U.S. performed during the polar-vortex deep freeze; starting with the area inside the gray boundary line of the following grid balancing area map.

Like Washington and Oregon wind farms, those located further to the east also started fairly strong with more than 12,000 average megawatts (MWa) of combined generation inside the greater Northwest (NW) footprint just before the polar air started plunging to the south on January 12th. But as the hours and days progressed, the wind generation across the entire region dropped to a combined low of 784 MWa on Janaury 14th.

So yes, you can generate a lot of average energy from wind by aggregating farms across a large geographical footprint. But an uncontrollable drop in generation of more than 11,000 MWa during dangerously cold temperatures is not a minor deficiency when it comes to ensuring power grid reliability.

Subscribe now

Wind Farms in the Central United States

Now lets go big and see how the premier wind farms in the central U.S. faired. The first thing you should know is, unlike the west with 38 individual balancing area authorities, much of the central corridor of U.S. states depend on a single entity called the Southwest Power Pool (SWPP) to perform power grid demand and supply balancing.

As we consider the SWPP footprint, which includes states from as far north as North Dakota to as far south as Texas, it is also helpful to look at the following map which shows by circle size the installed nameplate capacity of all U.S. wind farms; and illustrates how much bigger a deal wind is in the center of the country compared to anywhere else.

According to the U.S. Wind Turbine Database there are currently 73,352 individual turbines with 144,950 MW of total generating capacity installed across the country.

And according to SWPP, the nameplate capacity of wind installed inside their footprint is 31,217 MW. While that is an impressive total, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas identified as ERCO in the previous balancing area map has 37,725 MW of installed wind capacity inside it’s footprint, which only includes Texas. So combined, SWPP and ERCO account for more than 47% of U.S. wind farm generating capacity.

As a side note, scroll back to the previous map and consider the nearly 69,000 MW of combined wind farm capacity already developed in the middle of the country, and then imagine what 63,000 MW of wind farms envisioned by Washington’s state energy strategy would look like, and the ecological impact it would have on the greater northwest.

So how much of the SWPP wind capacity showed up during the dangerously cold temperatures which were in minus double digit territory across most of their footprint. The following graph shows the corresponding increase in electricity demand as polar air moved south. As the curve shows, SWPP reached its maximum demand of 51,017 MWa during the hour ending at 7 pm on January 14th.

Looking at the generation curves in the next set of graphs, you can see just before the cold temperatures really set in, the SWPP wind generation was supplying impressive amounts of electricity, reaching levels over 20,000 MW and supplying more than half of the total demand in the SWPP footprint. Of course, this is still only 64% of the installed nameplate capacity but impressive nonetheless. What’s more, the average energy being provided by wind was double that of coal and four times as much as natural gas.

But once again, what is concerning is that as the coldest temperatures set in, as little as 4,708 MW of wind generation representing only 15% of the total installed capacity in SWPP’s footprint showed up when most needed.

And for further perspective, the more than 15,000 MW uncontrollable drop in wind generating capacity is like shutting down the equivalent nameplate capacity of 15 Columbia Generating Station nuclear plants, just when you need dependable generation the most. Not surprisingly, what stepped up to keep the lights on was nearly 30,000 MW of controllable natural-gas and coal, with always-on nuclear at a steady 2,038 MW.

There is a very important point that can be learned by pausing and thinking more deeply about what happened in the SWPP footprint on January 14th. What SWPP is managing is essentially two grids; the “clean grid” and the “reliable grid”.

And here’s the key point. Even if the fuel for the wind-based “clean grid” is free, the up-front capital costs of wind farms are significant, with wind power being even more expensive than natural gas in most cases. So, even if a natural gas or coal plant runs less and less over time as their average energy production is displaced by more and more wind farms, you still have to pay for the gas and coal plants to stand by as backup dependable capacity that you know you’re going to need during the most challenging weather and temperature conditions.

Put another way, no matter how “cheap” wind farms become on an individual basis (which is all the “green energy” zealots talk about), the cost to utilities and their rate payers for building both a clean and reliable grid based on increasing penetrations of intermittent and variable wind, will always require some level of ‘double paying’ in terms of up-front capital investment.

As we think about how we want to move forward with clean energy development, it is critically important to look at the power grid through the lens of basic utility requirements which can be viewed as a three-legged stool; with affordability, reliability, and environmentally-responsible representing the legs.

The simple fact is you cannot have 100% of any one of these three legs without significantly impacting the other two. Additionally, all sources of energy involve tradeoffs; no exceptions.

In the case of SWPP, they have done a great job of integrating a tremendous amount of nameplate wind capacity and have so far been able to keep the stool standing quite nicely as far as I know. But they are only at 37% of annual energy in their footprint coming from wind, which I would argue is the easy part of the “energy transition”.

Having reviewed SWPP’s generation “resource adequacy” assessment for 2022, I was able to confirm they have reached an “effective capacity” saturation point of around 15% for wind. What this means is for every 1,000 MW of new wind capacity they integrate into their footprint going forward, only about 150 MW should be expected to show up at the most critical times of high electricity demand.

And this is just what happened during the polar-vortex when only 4,708 MW of the 31,217 MW of installed wind capacity in the SWPP footprint was contributing to the supply stack during some of the hours of peak demand for electricity (4,708 MW divided by 31,217 MW = 15%).

FINAL THOUGHTS

The fact that electricity provided by the power grid is simultaneously generated, transmitted and consumed is an unforgiving law of physics, and is why no matter what politicians promise, the retail cost of electricity will always go up as the power grid integrates higher and higher levels of wind and solar; assuming you want to maintain reliability.

Just look at the residential cost of electricity in Europe shown in the following graph where Germany has integrated more wind and solar capacity on a per capita basis than any other country. Using the euro-to-dollars conversion from 2019, German residential customers are now paying more than 35 cents per kilowatt-hour compared to the utility I work for with an all-in cost of just under 9 cents, and a U.S. average of around 13 cents.

In the US, California which is further down the path of implementing European style clean energy policies than most states, is heading in the same direction as Germany when it comes to high residential rates. And all indications are Washington and Oregon think what California is doing should be their model as well.

As shown in the charts below, three investor-owned utilities (IOUs) in California are projecting they will soon have residential rates exceeding 30 cents per kWh, and in the case of San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E), they are projecting rates over 40 cents per kWh.

In addition, after many years of declining cost curves for wind and solar farms, we are now experiencing worldwide raw-material constraints which are being compounded by overall supply-chain inflation. The result has been significant increases in the cost of new wind and solar farms. And I do not see any reason to believe this trend will change as western nations continue to clamor for more and more wind and solar, while doing almost none of the mineral extraction and refining in their own countries.

So, I see no evidence based on a review of actual experiences or current utility planning that indicates a wind and solar based clean energy strategy will deliver on affordable rates and reliable electricity in an attempt to meet 100% clean electricity mandates.

And the idea, wind and solar are uniquely kind to the environment ignores the massive and disproportionate impact these technologies have when you consider how much energy they deliver per pound of materials used and square miles of land they cover.

While it is heretical for me to say it, there really is no such thing as “renewable energy”. Sure, there are renewable fuels, but from the earth wind turbines and solar panels will come, and back to the earth they will go.

Of course it may be possible for efficient and cost-effective recycling to be figured out and scaled to the level that will be needed. But given the rapidly growing volume of waste and the energy and cost that will be required, I am skeptical. Overall, we really need to have a much more serious conversation about wind and solar as “sustainable” technologies, particularly when you consider they are being proposed as “the technology” but only provide a fraction of US and global energy today.

As you try and digest the scale of what is being proposed in terms of the “clean energy transition” it is important to know that even though wind is now producing over 10% of electricity in the US; electricity only represents about 37% of total energy consumption.

To grasp what it would mean to rapidly eliminate fossil fuels in the US, you have to look at the following chart and consider the scale of what is being proposed based on total energy consumed. Today, the US still relies on coal, natural gas and petroleum for 79% of our total energy. And we only derive 5.6% from wind and solar combined. So just on its face, a plan to rapidly transition off of fossil fuels is just not credible.

And since transitioning to cleaner energy is a global issue, it cannot be said enough, after several trillions of dollars of subsidies and investments in wind and solar throughout the world, these technologies only represent 2.1% of total global primary energy consumption.

You may be a fan of the “all of the above” strategy and I get that. But I am more in the camp of “always the best” technology; and making sure we are doing honest and comprehensive lifecycle evaluations of all electricity generation and energy technologies. And that the utility three-legged stool stays balanced.

But despite the numbers and common sense, wind and solar are where the big dollars are being spent in terms of new electricity generating capacity in the US. And of course this is the case when the federal government continues to print money and pour it into wind and solar with what can be best described as a ‘religious level’ commitment.

And if you think this is a ‘red state versus blue state’ issue, don’t forget the 47% of US wind capacity built in middle America and Texas. Clearly, ‘green energy’ crony capitalism knows no political boundaries.

One of the additional perverse outcomes of federal production tax credit (PTC) subsidies for wind farms is how they undermine the economic viability of dependable generating technologies like coal and natural gas; which is leading to the premature shutdown of far too many plants before the end of their useful lives.

This is a big factor in why we are hearing from the North American Reliability Corporation (NERC) about their growing concerns over increasing blackout risks across the United States. In their Long-Term Reliability Assessment released in December 2023, NERC stated: “Capacity deficits are projected in areas where future generator retirements are expected before enough replacement resources are in service to meet rising demand forecasts.”

NERC’s concerns include the Western US where reliable grid operations is managed by the Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC). In WECC’s Western Assessment of Resource Adequacy report released in November 2023, they indicated the risk of capacity shortfalls is low through 2025, but "starting in 2026, the number and magnitude of demand-at-risk hours increase by orders of magnitude" and that “resource adequacy risks over the medium and long term have increased significantly compared to last year's assessment.”

I am convinced at this point the U.S. must move forward with development of conventional nuclear on the 1,000 MW scale which isn’t happening as far as I know. Additionally, small modular nuclear (SMR) with melt-down-proof and walk-away-safe advanced technology offers the promise of even more energy density and the possibility of locating generating plants closer to where people live in urban areas with the highest demand for electricity.

And new SMR nuclear could be the answer to reducing the need for expensive interstate high-voltage transmission lines often opposed by land owners and other interests; and which require long permitting and construction times which can easily exceed 15 years or more based on recent project experiences.

In summary, the ‘clean’ electricity strategy I continue to endorse for the northwest is to first and foremost keep hydro in place. And then work on a more rational transition from coal to natural gas, and then to nuclear as the foundation. And if there are places wind and solar can be built where people want it, or are at least neutral, then I am willing to compromise. But the idea wind and solar are the foundational building blocks of an affordable, reliable, and environmentally responsible and properly balanced clean energy transition, that I cannot sign up for.

I know I am pushing back against what feels like an inevitability, but I deeply believe we need to come to terms with the reality we are living in and change the course we are on soon. We can do so much better than continuing to develop more and more backward looking technology like expansive and ecologically disruptive wind farms. And our kids and grandkids deserve better.

And while customers and policy makers rightly engage in holding utilities accountable for providing affordable and environmentally responsible electricity, when it comes to delivering on reliability, there is nobody with more skin in the game than utilities. 

Failure to “keep the lights on” can be a matter of life and death and will always be the metric by which utilities will receive their harshest critiques and ultimate judgments.

CLEAN ENERGY LAWS & THE POLITICS OF HYDRO

Unfortunately, overly aggressive clean energy laws in Washington and Oregon have boxed many northwest utilities into a corner by taking reliable technologies off the table before we have dependable carbon-free replacements like nuclear in place.

One frustrating irony is that some of the same entities who helped force-feed a deepening dependence on wind and solar power, are continuing to irresponsibly call for the erosion of carbon-free hydroelectric generating capacity.  The very hydropower on which Washington and Oregon’s 100% carbon-free electricity laws and bragging rights were established.

And rather than celebrating existing nation-leading clean and low-cost energy capabilities, highly-funded special-interest-groups have capitalized on a shift in political power, together with emotionally charged arguments and pseudoscience, to undermine hydropower; while falsely promoting wind and solar technologies backed up by batteries as environmentally benign, low-cost and operationally equivalent replacements.

While the general public is likely unaware, it’s important citizens understand political leaders and agencies in Washington and Oregon have been working behind the scenes for a number of years to diminish hydropower through regulatory actions like endorsement of risky and excessive spillway flows.

The next time you drive by a hydroelectric dam and observe frothy downstream river conditions created by multiple spillway waterfalls, keep in mind no electricity is being generated with this water. And as a consequence of high volumes of plunging water, the total dissolved gas (TDG) levels in the river are increasing.

And when TDG levels get too high, salmon and other aquatic species can be injured or even die. In the case of salmon smolt, high TDG levels can cause gas bubble disease (GBD), a non-infectious, physically induced trauma.

While salmon science is complex it is important to know, with support from Washington and Oregon agencies, federal dam operations have been changed in recent years to allow long periods of 125% TDG levels; which is well above the 110% criteria previously enforced by state water quality regulators to avoid acute levels of GBD and the salmon mortality that can come with it.

It has yet to be determined whether dangerously high spill is helping or hurting salmon. But one thing is for sure, these risky operations are reducing the amount of electricity generated by dams.

Additionally, over the past three years, state officials in Washington and Oregon have helped set the stage for possible future degradation of hydropower through a much broader than intended application of water temperature regulations included in the federal Clean Water Act.

In summary, US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) water temperature regulations are now being unfairly applied to each of the eight federal dams located on the lower portions of the Columbia and Snake rivers. While nobody wants river temperatures to be too high for salmon survival, Columbia and Snake River temperatures at the Canadian and Idaho borders are often too warm to meet state requirements. So the standards may be impossible to meet and may set the dams up to fail.

And as if it wasn’t going to be hard enough for Washington and Oregon utilities to balance affordability and reliability while meeting the electrify-everything clean energy policies of their respective states, we are now forced to contend with an unprecedented effort by our states to coordinate with the federal government in undermining hydropower like never before.

This coordination culminated in the Biden Administration’s public release of a United States Government (USG) “commitments” document December 14, 2023 that puts the full force of the federal government behind further eroding support for hydropower by going as far as advocating for future breaching of the Lower Snake River (LSR) dams.

While it depends on who you ask as to whether LSR dam breaching is a real possibility, anti-hydro interest groups are publicly celebrating the USG commitments as a “roadmap” to do just that. And no matter how you slice it, LSR dam breaching has now been normalized by the Biden Administration as one of several “center piece actions” required to restore salmon runs to non-specific “healthy and harvestable abundances” while claiming “replacement energy” in the form of intermittent and variable wind and solar can provide the basis for a breaching decision.

To add insult to injury, the Biden Administration developed their comprehensive plan using a legal strategy which intentionally excluded utility and hydropower interest groups from their negotiations with anti-hydro entities, four tribal nations, and yes, once again, the states of Washington and Oregon.

Scott Simms, CEO & Executive Director of the Public Power Council summed it up succinctly in a December 14, 2023 press release . . . “Almost two years of a closed-door process that began with a pro-dam breach agenda from the US Government ended today with, not surprisingly, a blueprint for how to devalue, deplete and ultimately demolish our region’s clean, renewable federal hydro power projects.”

Subscribe now

SO HOW BIG A DEAL IS NORTHWEST HYDRO?

Not only would LSR dam breaching eliminate sources of emissions-free electricity, it would also remove 3,483 nameplate megawatts (MW) of generators that historically have delivered as much as 2,500 MW of dependable generating capacity when it’s most needed.

While anti-hydro interests always downplay the annual amount of electricity produced by the LSR dams, they fail to mention the transmission grid stability services and up to 25% of operating reserves these dams provide to the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA). Reserves are the backup capability standing by to meet critically high demand during a polar-vortex winter weather event or when other generators experience an unplanned outage. Basically, operating reserves are “blackout insurance”.

Not only does BPA market the output of the Federal Columbia River Power System (FCRPS) to 142 customers (including 127 not-for-profit utilities) located throughout the Northwest who count on the electricity derived from 31 hydroelectric dams, they are also one of 38 balancing area authorities (BAA) in the western power grid.

BAAs are responsible for coordinating regional exchanges of electricity and for maintaining minute-by-minute power grid demand and supply balance which is most challenging during extreme temperature and weather conditions.

One of the elements included in Biden’s USG commitments and supporting documents is to provide federal funds to form a new Pacific Northwest Tribal Energy Program with the goal of tribal development of between 1,000 MW and 3,000 MW of wind and solar generation backed up by energy storage; which in theory could be used as replacement power for the LSR dams in the event Congress authorizes breach in the future.

Setting aside the legal arguments as to why the USG cannot commit to “sole sourcing” BPA replacement power, lets take a look at the reality of BPA’s balancing area responsibilities today and what it would look like to “replace” the LSR dams with wind and solar farms.

First, it’s helpful to know Pacific Northwest hydro is capable of producing just over 16,000 average megawatts (MWa) or almost half of the annual electricity generated in the region. And on average, BPA’s federal-dams represent around 50% of the total regional capability or about 8,000 MWa.

While these are big energy numbers, when it comes to power grid reliability, averages are mostly irrelevant. What counts is what generation shows up during specific hours, on particular days, and under critically high demand conditions.

One of my favorite quotes in recent years is something northwest utility expert and consultant Randy Hardy said during a regional meeting . . . “averages are the enemy of reliability planning”. What Mr. Hardy was alluding to is that utilities are expected to deliver electricity around the clock no matter what the weather and with 100% always-on customer expectations. Utility customers will not (and should not) accept that utilities are planning to keep the lights on most of the time, on average.

With that said, utilities do not plan the grid to provide 100% reliable power. A common planning standard is referred to as a “1-in-10” which translates to one day (24 hours) in ten years or 2.4 loss-of-load-hours (LOLH) per year, regardless of the magnitude or number of outages. The point of bringing up these numbers is to emphasize that to meet modern grid reliability planning standards, utilities must have generating technologies in place that can be counted on down to the hour.

This means generators that have predictable fuel supplies and are controllable and capable of operating across a range of outputs optimized for electricity demand currently on the grid and what is forecasted for future days, months, and years. In utility vernacular, generators with these traits are referred to as dispatchable.

While this may go without saying, dispatchable does not include wind and solar farms which only produce electricity proportionate to wind speeds and the position of the sun in the sky respectively.

In addition to being controllable, dispatchable generators also have the ability to operate at their maximum (nameplate) generating capacity when called upon. Pacific Northwest total hydro nameplate generating capacity is over 34,000 megawatts (MW). Of this amount, BPA manages just over 22,000 MW (65% of the total).

While hydropower is a great technology in many ways, it is also a variable generation resource subject to available water supplies and whether turbine-generators are out of service on a scheduled or unscheduled basis.

Given these variables, BPA hydro can be counted on to produce just over 16,000 MW during peak demand hours; however, this level cannot be maintained across all hours due to water constraints. According to BPA’s most recent “Loads and Resources Study” federal hydro can be counted on to produce just over 11,800 MW across the hours of highest winter demand for electricity in January. So clearly, the 2,500 MW provided by the LSR dams is significant.

Now, let’s take a look at some recent days in the life of the BPA functioning as a Balancing Area Authority (BPAT). While the eleven-day period illustrated in the following graph did not include particularly cold weather, it does provide a recent and real-world example of how critical controllable generating technologies like hydro are to keeping the lights on.

As is always the case, the demand for electricity follows a pattern corresponding to the season of the year and the daily rhythm of modern life. In the case of late fall (winter), the daily pattern includes early morning and late evening maximums corresponding to hours of highest residential space heating occurring simultaneously with the use of appliances and other electrical equipment that define the “good life”.

In the previous graph you can see BPAT experienced a maximum demand of 9,534 megawatt-hours which occurred between 7 am and 8 am on November 28th. And in the next graph, you can see the generation technologies being used by BPAT to achieve demand and supply balance each hour and at the time of maximum demand.

Clearly, hydro dominates the BPAT generation supply stack with the hourly shape of output following the same pattern of the demand curve shown previously. Nuclear which represents the Columbia Generating Station along with natural gas can be seen to be operating in an always on fashion (flat line) with some adjustments to their output to prescribed levels. This operating mode is what is referred to as base-load capability.

It should be noted, while BPAT is providing grid balancing services for just over 1,000 MW of natural gas, this generation is not part of BPA’s utility customer wholesale power supply portfolio. The same can be said for the vast majority of the 2,827 MW of Wind and 138 MW of Solar. The output from these technologies would normally be part of an exchange BPAT makes with another BAA elsewhere in the region or may be serving a BPA customer utilities’ demand inside the BPAT footprint.

The key take away from reviewing the BPA generation stack is to note hydro is providing both base-load and demand (load) following capability.

Additionally, you will note that wind power is supplying near zero generation across the majority of the 11 day period with only 61% (1,727 MW) of the nameplate capacity showing up randomly after the highest demand period has passed. And solar generation within BPAT’s footprint is too small at this point to make a difference.

Just imagine how this multi-day wind drought scenario would play out during a deeply cold winter weather event without the controllable generating capacity of hydropower. And the idea that 2,500 MW of LSR dam generating capacity can easily be replaced by 1,000 to 3,000 MW of wind and solar backed up by batteries is clearly suspect.

In fact, a 2022 study commissioned by BPA revealed, using currently available technologies without the help of new natural gas power plants, it would require an “impractically large” 10,600 MW of wind and 1,400 MW of solar to do the job under a deep decarbonization scenario driven by Washington and Oregon clean energy laws. And batteries were shown not to be economical due to “antagonistic" interactions characterized by the inability to store enough energy during periods of simultaneously low hydro, wind and solar output.

And just to get a picture of what this would look like ecologically speaking, the prescribed amount of wind would cover an area equivalent to between 20 and 40 times the Seattle land area and the solar farms would require more than 4.2 million individual panels.

Additionally, the wind and solar replacement plan would cost between $277 to $517 per megawatt-hour (MWh) compared to the LSR dams which cost between $13 and $17 per MWh. This multiple orders of magnitude increase in costs would drive northwest retail electricity rates in 2045 to levels between 34% and 65% higher than today. The BPA study did show these big increases would be nullified if technologies like advanced nuclear, hydrogen turbines and carbon-capture are available and cost-effective; but there are some heavy lifts required to get to that point.

The BPA study also assumed the rest of the Pacific Northwest hydropower system would stay in place and be operated the way it is today. Not under some diminished condition resulting from additional regulatory constraints orchestrated by Washington and Oregon, with an assist from the US Government.

Another critically important point for citizens and elected officials to understand is that BPA’s firm (essentially guaranteed), nation-leading, and low-cost output from federal dams is already 100% spoken for through contractual allocations to their utility customers; i.e. there is no surplus.

This means going forward, ‘routine increases’ in electricity demand of less than ten average megawatts served with BPA power will be priced at their “Tier-2” rate which is currently 72% higher than their coveted “Tier-1” rate. Tier-1 rates represent the low-cost power the northwest has long been known for that keeps attracting economic development interest. News flash, there’s none left!

And as for economic development opportunities associated with electricity intensive manufacturing and industry demanding ten average megawatts or more, BPA offers a “New-Resource” rate which on average is currently 136% higher than their Tier-1 rate. Suffice it to say, there are no takers to date, at least as far as I know.

While BPA is not the only game in town, their Tier-2 and New-Resource rates are a reflection of the cost utilities can expect to pay to secure additional dependable supply for at least the next four to five years. And after that, all indications are the glory days of low-cost electricity in the northwest are over.

WE ARE GOING TO LEAN ON NORTHWEST HYDRO AND NATURAL GAS MORE THAN EVER AS COAL SHUTS DOWN

And if you think Northwest hydropower is only critical to BPA and its utility customers, think again. BPA’s hydro resources along with the other 50% of non-federal hydro located throughout the Pacific Northwest are also critical to big municipalities like Seattle and Tacoma as well as investor-owned utilities (IOUs) who are the predominant owners of coal and natural gas power plants in the region.

As planned shutdowns of coal plants proceed and punitive financial penalties included in Washington and Oregon clean energy laws make natural-gas more expensive, IOUs will continue to hope for surplus hydropower as a means of economically balancing their demand and supply.

To put this in perspective, lets look at the same 11-day period previously analyzed for BPAT but expand the footprint to include the aggregate demand and supply balancing for the geographical area shown inside the dark gray boundary on the following U.S. map.

In the highly interconnected power grid illustrated by the BAA map of circles and lines, the lines represent transmission interconnections that allow certain amounts of electricity to flow from one BAA to another. Keep in mind, just because there are transmission lines, doesn’t mean electricity can easily be routed precisely where it needs to go. More on that in a future post.

For the same 11-day period we previously looked at for BPAT, the aggregate electricity demand across the greater Northwest (NW) power grid reached 51,351 megawatt-hours on November 29th, once again between the hours of 7 am and 8 am.

In the next set of graphs, you can see the different patterns and levels of generation from the various technologies used to meet demand across the NW geographical area that extends beyond the Pacific Northwest into Eastern Montana, Northern Nevada, Utah, Wyoming and Colorado.

Once again, just like inside the BPAT footprint, hydro is the single technology providing the most base-load and balancing power inside the greater Northwest (NW) footprint, followed by natural gas and then coal.

Imagine on November 24th at 10 pm trying to meet 45,000 MW of electricity demand without the nearly 25,000 MW of dependable coal and natural gas generating capacity that showed up to assist 16,000 MW of hydro that night. And ask your elected officials this. If hydro capacity is going to shrink, then how do we avoid blackouts if we shut down coal and your policies are aimed at bankrupting natural gas?

As for solar. Not only does it have a ‘night-time problem’ when it’s producing 0 MW, it is also subject to big changes like the 2,500 MW drop in maximum mid-day production that occurred over the first two days of the period we’re reviewing.

And as for wind, you can definitely aggregate a whole lot of wind farms across a big geographical area to produce a big MW number for a relatively short time. But the problem is you can loose all of that generating capacity relatively quickly when mother nature doesn’t cooperate. This is illustrated by the more than 12,000 MW difference in wind generation that occurred between the low of 450 MW on November 24th and the high of 12,500 MW on December 2nd.

Yes, I know batteries are beginning to be deployed. But it’s not a simple matter to predict when to charge batteries and when to discharge them. And batteries don’t come cheap in terms of both dollars and cost to the environment. Particularly when you consider the volume of electricity we are talking about today. And don’t forget Washington and Oregon policy makers are saying we need to double the capacity of the power grid in order to electrify transportation and natural-gas end uses.

Scroll back to the previous graphs, then try to imagine what the Northwest would do without the 17,500 MW of hydropower that showed up and did the heavy lifting to balance demand and supply across so many states.

It truly is unimaginable, but yet we have political leaders who have legislated the rapid shutdown of coal and are demonizing and attempting to bankrupt natural gas; while simultaneously advocating for the removal of the Lower Snake River dams and setting up hydro to fail.

CONCLUSIONS

When it comes to grid demand and supply balancing, controllable hydropower is to the Northwest as natural gas plants are to California and most of the rest of the United States.  And based on multiple studies and common sense, many utilities are deeply concerned drought conditions affecting hydro, together with an unwarranted belief that uncontrollable wind and solar can replace coal and natural gas power, may be walking us closer-and-closer to a blackout cliff. 

To compound the growing reliability risks, Northwest utilities are facing significant uncertainty in planning for an ‘electrified’ future driven by inflation, supply chain constraints and long lead times that come with capital intensive and impactful infrastructure projects.  Thankfully hydropower is standing in the gap for now. 

The next round of Northwest coal plant shutdowns will be in 2025 when the total amount of capacity removed from the grid will reach 4,000 megawatts (MW).  This is equivalent to removing the dependable electricity provided by four Columbia Generating Station nuclear plants. 

While plans to retrofit two coal-fired power generation facilities with natural gas burners have been proposed, one in Nevada and another in Wyoming, going forward hydropower will increasingly carry the grid reliability burden.

Unlike the intermittent and variable generation from wind farms, the availability of affordable and reliable electricity provided by Northwest hydro has been considered a certainty for decades.  But we must not take it for granted.

Electric utility customers always expect their service provider to hold the line on rates.  And they will always hold their local power company responsible when the lights go out. Citizens must recognize that political leaders and the special interest groups that fund their campaigns will not pay the price for blackouts, utilities will. 

Please understand, the Lower Snake River dams are not surplus, outdated or expensive. Nor are any of the other federal dams on the main stem Columbia and Snake Rivers. They are the basis of the low-cost power supply portfolios of 127 not-for-profit utilities in the Pacific Northwest today and are the foundation of 100% clean electricity goals. And we cannot get there by 2045 without hydro.

We must demand more from our elected state and federal officials and hold them accountable for unnecessarily destabilizing the Northwest power grid. And as for their unjustified and dangerous “Hail Marry” attempt to save salmon by advocating breach of the LSR dams, does anyone really believe this action would not be the first domino in the game being played by anti-hydro interests to further diminish and even eliminate hydropower in some cases.

How about we use our limited intellectual and financial capital to find some common ground where we continue to invest in improving salmon survival while also prioritizing the preservation of natural landscapes through the development of energy-dense, small-footprint, always-on technologies like nuclear and natural gas.

And we must stop electing energy ignorant politicians driven more by ideology than science and engineering; and a true desire for human flourishing. Our collective health, safety and well being depend on it. We all want a better future for our children and grandchildren. But if we don’t get involved and demand a change of course soon, a lot of damage will be done, both to natural landscapes and our pocket books. And it will be costly and painful to unwind.

But despite overwhelming local opposition NIMBYism (“not-in-my-backyard”) cannot be allowed to prevail lectures the Colorado-based HHWF developer.  The sacrifice must be made.  After all, our motives are pure, and we are going to save the planet says the wind power lobbyists and Inslee.

While attending a United Nations climate conference in November 2022, Inslee said governments will have to overcome “nimbyism” to achieve clean-energy goals and that regulatory reforms are needed to prevent local opponents from delaying projects. “We have to confront it. We have to succeed” Inslee said.

Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, Governor Inslee’s words are the opposite of what was promised in the “Equity” section of Washington’s State Energy Strategy (SES) which declares . . . “[public] and community participation is important to ensure energy policy is informed by local knowledge, meets local needs and is viewed as legitimate by the local community”.  Additionally, “[communities] and community members must have a seat at the table in designing programs and selecting projects.”

So, despite what has been promised in the SES, majority local opposition to intrusive wind farms will never be legitimate and merely represents a hurdle that must be cleared as rapidly as possible. 

And as justification for steam rolling local interests, the governor invokes a panicked state energy strategy that proclaims Washington’s actions will contribute to “avoiding the worst impacts of climate change” while providing no rational explanation of exactly how this will occur.

Many are familiar with the idiom “tilting (or jousting) at windmills” originating from the novel Don Quixote from which we derive the word quixotic which means “foolishly impractical especially in the pursuit of ideals”. 

In a July 23rd ABC “This Week” interview Inslee said: “We knew this beast of climate change was coming for us, but now, it's pounding on the door. . . This is a solvable problem. But we need to stop using fossil fuels.”

I heard a quote recently from the late American journalist H.L. Mencken which I think provides an apt framing of Governor Inslee’s persistent and panicked climate catastrophizing: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”

While Inslee and countless political leaders and media figures routinely stake out scientific and moral high ground when talking about climate change, they are rarely confronted with scientific or probing moral questions from a mostly sympathetic press. 

And rather than engage in substantive discussions with those who disagree with his clean-energy plans, Inslee like countless others often resorts to the “climate- denier” label for anyone who dares question catastrophic climate change dogma. 

So here I am, call me what you want.  But I am going all in and refuse to be silent while Washington’s draconian clean-energy policies force feed an anything-goes standard so long as even a small fraction of CO2 reduction is achieved. 

I was born and raised in Benton County and our community and Yakama Nation tribal members are at risk of being forced to sacrifice a big part of our shared identity to out-of-state financial interests and clean-energy policies that promote an unwarranted and disproportionate assault on natural landscapes and open spaces.  And since science is based on observed reality, it is abundantly clear to me a ‘reality check’ is way overdue. 

Fundamental to a rational climate change discussion is knowing the concentration of CO2 in the global atmosphere is currently 417 parts per million (PPM).  This is higher than the 280 PPM just before the industrial revolution, but well below the several thousand PPM levels that have occurred over geological time scales. 

And since we all learn at a young age CO2 is life-giving plant food, it’s helpful to know plant life begins to die at less than 200 PPM and that all plant life dies at less than 150 PPM.  I am not arguing climate science.  I offer these numbers because they are ‘real’ and provide perspective and a counter to the anti-scientific CO2-is-pollution dogma.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA) and NOAA, the rate of global CO2 emissions has risen to just over 36,000 million-metric-tons (MMT) per year and will continue to rise as developing nations like China with 12,000 MMT of emissions deploy abundant, low-cost, reliable, and transportable fossil fuels to dig hundreds of millions of their citizens out of abject poverty. 

Data also shows U.S. total energy-related emissions have declined from around 6,000 MMT in the year 2000 to less than 5,000 MMT in 2021.  During this same period, China’s emissions rose more than 8,000 MMT.  And in 2022, China permitted two new coal power plants per week with no signs of stopping. Overall, global emissions have risen every year since the Kyoto Protocol was entered into force in 2005 except for the short period of recession in 2009, and in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

If catastrophic climate change is already happening and is directly proportionate to CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere today, then what about China and other developing nations going forward?  Are they in fact the true “existential threat” so often referred to by climate catastrophizers? 

Consider India which just surpassed China as the country with the most people while only producing 2,500 MMT of CO2 emissions.  Using China’s numbers for perspective, it appears India is poised to add thousands of MMT of CO2 in the coming decades.   

Shifting to the United States.  The primary driver of energy-related emission reductions in the U.S. has been the big switch from coal to natural gas made by electric utilities which lowered power generation emissions by more than 900 MMT between 2007 and 2021. 

But what about all the investments in wind and solar power?  After nearly two decades and many trillions of dollars of worldwide subsidies, wind and solar together only supply 2.1% and 5.6% of global and U.S. total energy respectively, with fossil fuels at 85% worldwide and 79% in the US.  Label me a heretic, but rapidly replacing fossil fuels with wind and solar is a plan detached from reality.

So where does Washington fit into reality?  According to Department of Ecology data, state emissions were 98 MMT in 2018 with 16 MMT coming from the electricity sector and 15 MMT from “Other”, including cow flatulence.  Yes, it’s in there. 

But leaving the cows out of the math, Washington’s energy-related emissions represent 1.5% of the U.S. total. And in the electricity sector Washington’s hydro-based grid represented only 0.63% of the U.S. total in 2021.

Clearly, a dispassionate and realistic assessment of the data shows Washington State’s clean energy actions up to and including 100% elimination of CO2 emissions will make little difference in the U.S. inventory and clearly will not impact worldwide emissions in a measurable way well into the future: either directly or indirectly through “setting a good example”. 

Truly, does anyone really believe China and India will be influenced by how much wind and solar can be added to Washington’s hydro-based grid?  Of course not.  And besides China is too busy dominating the global supply chains for solar, wind and batteries by using energy from their low-cost and reliable coal-fired power plants to process a wide variety of minerals including 85% of rare earths.

People living in energy poverty watch their children die every day of preventable diseases and malnutrition and we will not convince poor people to stay poor.  And the indisputable reality is the globe will continue to use more energy every year for a long time to come.   

So, the “beast” Governor Inslee says we are fighting is being fed and is growing completely outside his or United States control, effectively becoming imaginary due to the scale and trends of global CO2 emissions.  The catastrophic CO2 “hobgoblin” used to drive an anything goes criteria and justification for siting wind projects against the will of ‘locals’ is going to continue to manifest itself whether we like it or not.

We must come to terms with this reality and slow implementation of irrational and foolish 'bumper-sticker' clean-energy policies that will hurt the poor most and possibly cripple western civilization through unaffordable and unreliable energy.  And we must stop the constant drip of highly uncertain doomsday predictions and offer a more optimistic vision that accounts for human adaptation and innovation. 

All of this to say, under a scenario where all electricity produced by Horse Heaven Wind Farm (HHWF) turbines perfectly replaces natural-gas electricity would result in around a 1 MMT per year reduction in annual CO2 emissions. 

Of course, no fair person would ask Tri-Cities residents and Yakama Nation tribal members to sacrifice their beloved Horse Heaven Hills based on such a ridiculously small number.  But we all have to chip in, right?

To add insult to injury, construction of the HHWF would not represent one of many projects planned for the state.  In fact, it’s pretty clear the HHWF would merely be a token project since Washington is not a good place for wind farms and state energy officials know it. 

According to Department of Commerce reports Washington’s clean energy vision will require importing about 43% of electricity by 2050.  And that 36% will come from wind farms in Montana and Wyoming. Of the 63,000 MW of onshore wind envisioned for the northwest (more than one-hundred Seattle-sized wind farms), Washington is only expected to host 2,000 MW or 3% of the total.

With that said and based on the “effective capacity” analysis completed in 2022 by the Western Resource Adequacy Program (WRAP), it’s reasonable to question why utilities would look to Washington to host any new wind farms. 

What WRAP analysis determined is Washington wind farms are expected to provide the lowest effective winter capacity than any region analyzed, by a factor of more than two to three, depending on the month.  In the worst case, utilities who add Washington wind to their portfolio will only be allowed to use 8% of the maximum generating capacity possible as credit toward their January dependable supply inventory.

So, what is a better vision?  How about an energy future of abundance and human flourishing, not one based on unprecedented land grabs, intermittency, variability, and scarcity. 

Benton PUD and more than a dozen other utilities have said yes to considering offtake of the “Site-1” small modular reactor (SMR) project envisioned by Energy Northwest and using X-Energy’s meltdown-proof and walk-away-safe technology sited near the Columbia Generating Station (CGS). 

SMR technology offers something weather dependent and land hungry wind and solar cannot provide; scalability closer to urban areas and the possibility of mitigating the need for extensive interstate high voltage transmission lines.  And Tri-Cities residents would be ecstatic to lead on new nuclear and to have the Site-1 project in our “backyard”.

So, rather than inflame the rural-urban divide by asking those of us who live in Eastern Washington and adjacent states to exclusively sacrifice for the ‘better good of humanity’, I ask everyone to look in the mirror and ask yourself what you are willing to sacrifice?  How about long held anti-nuclear sentiment rooted in outdated fears and misunderstanding?  And I ask Governor Inslee to say no to the HHWF.  It’s too close, too big, and will make too little difference to justify the sacrifices.

It’s common sense to recognize the intermittency and variability of wind power is a significant deficiency when the grid is expected to deliver continuous and uninterrupted electricity no matter what the weather.  The question is, can you assign a number to this deficiency?  The answer is yes, and utilities in the northwest have done it.

In response to increasing risk of northwest power grid blackouts driven by rapid retirement of coal plants and crippling restrictions on new natural gas power plants included in Washington and Oregon clean energy laws, a consortium of utilities organized by the Northwest Power Pool started an effort called the Western Resource Adequacy Program (WRAP). 

One major objective of the WRAP was to adopt common grid reliability planning and analysis standards, including calculating what percentage of installed wind farm generating capacity across selected geographical areas can be counted on when electricity demand is highest, i.e., the coldest and hottest days of the year.

What the WRAP team determined through it’s effective load carrying capability (ELCC) calculations is Washington wind farms are expected to provide the lowest effective winter capacity than any region analyzed by a factor of more than 2 to 6, depending on the month.  In the worst case, utilities who add Washington wind to their portfolio will only be allowed to use 5.6% of the maximum generating capacity (nameplate) possible as credit toward their January dependable supply inventory.

Washington wind is expected to perform better in summer months, but June and July are when hydropower is usually operating at maximum levels and the power grid doesn’t need as much help from other technologies.  The greatest need in summer for dependable generating capacity usually occurs in August and September when hot temperatures are still in play and the hydro system water flows have petered out. 

These are also the months the WRAP team determined the August effective capacity accreditation for Washington wind farms is about 11% of nameplate generating capacity. And like the winter season, Washington is the worst performing geographic location for wind farms anywhere in the WRAP footprint for every month of the summer season.

Clearly the WRAP assessment shows not all wind farms are created equal and that matters to utilities trying to balance affordability with reliability and environmental impacts. 

For further perspective, the next time you are driving by Hermiston or Boardman in Oregon, keep in mind the three natural gas power plants you can see from Interstate 84 occupy 15 to 20 acres each and are providing between 474 and 635 megawatts (MW) of 98% effective capacity year-round, with carbon dioxide emission rates between 50% and 60% less than coal. 

In contrast, the 850 MW HHWF lease boundary area is over 72,000 acres and the project would only be credited by the WRAP for 47 MW of January effective capacity and 98 MW for August.  It would take more than ten projects the size of the HHWF to provide the January effective capacity of a single clean burning and dependable natural gas power plant.

This is illustrative of why a myopic focus on reducing carbon-dioxide emissions through a deepening dependence on energy dilute wind power must ultimately come to terms with the laws of physics and the high financial and environmental cost of achieving a reliable power grid with this technology. 

Yes, I know the HHWF developers are including battery storage and solar in their project.  And who wouldn’t when politicians offer generous tax subsidies to cover the exorbitant cost of propping up their favorite technologies.  Just keep in mind, existing grid-scale lithium-ion battery technology is limited to a four-hour discharge time, is material intensive, and lasts about 3,000 cycles, which is 8 to 15 years depending on the frequency of charging and discharging.  

Yes, elections have consequences.  And when it comes to clean energy policies in Washington, the negative ones are beginning to materialize.  Utility engineers have been backed into a corner by politicians who are now designing the power grid to their liking.  There is no doubt, wind farms are going to be built.  But if you still think the numbers should matter, the HHWF and any other Washington wind farms should be low on the list of alternatives.

While hydropower is clearly the foundation of northwest power grid reliability, it is a variable generating resource limited by the timing and volume of water flows.  So, when hydropower comes up short, other technologies need to be standing by to carry the load.  And while hydrocarbon-based electricity production has historically represented only one third of the nameplate capacity of generators connected to the greater pacific northwest power grid enclosed in the area shown below, coal and natural gas have provided about half of the region’s effective capacity.

In simple terms, effective capacity is the percentage of the maximum generating capability of a particular technology that can be expected to be available when maximum electricity demand occurs on the coldest and hottest days of the year. 

To put things in perspective thermal power plants with predictable fuel supplies like coal, natural gas and nuclear have an effective capacity in the northwest of around 98% or better when considering the diversity of generation plants and electricity demand across a geographically large and interconnected power grid.

In the previous table the effective capacity of greater northwest thermal resources in place in 2018 was determined to be 100%. In contrast, the just over 7,000 megawatts of wind was determined to have an effective capacity of only 7%. This means only about 500 megawatts of northwest wind is expected to show up on the coldest days of the year when electricity demand reaches critically high levels.

In response to increasing risk of northwest power grid blackouts driven by rapid retirement of coal plants combined with crippling financial penalties and restrictions on new natural gas power plant development included in Washington and Oregon clean energy legislation, a consortium of utilities organized by the Northwest Power Pool started an effort called the Western Resource Adequacy Program (WRAP).

One of the major objectives of the WRAP was to adopt common power grid reliability planning standards for participating utilities which included calculating the effective capacity of intermittent and variable wind power throughout different geographical zones across the western U.S. and into British Columbia, Canada. See map in the following graphic. 

What the WRAP team determined was Washington based wind power (Zone 1) provides the lowest effective capacity in the winter months of December through February of any region, with effective load-carrying capability (ELCC) ranging between 8% to 11% as shown by the “Wind VER1” graph. 

This is not surprising to us who live through winters in eastern Washington where we experience many days of high-pressure inversions resulting in deeply cold and windless days.  Clearly the WRAP assessment shows not all wind farms are created equal when it comes to contributions to power grid reliability.

And when it comes to Washington wind, the science of power grid physics and analysis shows a stark difference in performance compared to other regions and should be a serious consideration, especially when wind farm development results in significant environmental and ecological impacts.

As shown in the following graphic, Washington wind is expected to perform better in the summer months with ELCC ranging between a high of 22% in July and a low of 13% in September.

But in the northwest, hydropower is usually operating at maximum levels in June and July and the power grid doesn’t need as much help from other generating technologies.  The greatest need in summer for high effective capacity usually occurs in August and September when hot summer temperatures are still in play and the hydro system water flows have petered out.  These are also the months when Washington wind ELCC begins a summer decline to its lowest levels of 18% and 13% respectively.

So, if you are trying to replace 98% effective coal and natural gas capacity with 8% to 22% effective wind power you can see there are significant gaps to make up depending on the month. 

This is where the overbuilding of wind farms across an expansive geographical area becomes necessary to try and improve its total capacity contribution.  Of course, developers are more than happy to leverage federal and state tax subsidies to build more and more wind farms regardless of the vast amounts of land required.

Yes, all generating technologies are (or have been) subsidized.  But it’s important to differentiate the gross dollar subsidies from the dollar per unit of energy delivered.  Based on 2018 data I gleaned from a presentation by energy expert Robert Bryce, wind power in the U.S. has received 44 times more in subsidies per megawatt-hour produced than fossil-fuels and 157 times more subsidies than nuclear.

And after nearly two decades and billions of dollars of subsidies, wind power currently provides only 9.2% of U.S. electricity and less than 3.4% of total U.S. primary energy.  

You see, the energy density (how much electricity you can produce in a square foot of land) matters if you are cognizant of the scale of energy needed and care about minimizing land use impacts.  And that’s why I continue to argue for a more balanced approach where perhaps the most environmentally responsible thing we can do is generate the most electricity possible, on the smallest piece of land possible, and as close to where the electricity will be consumed as possible.  And if carbon dioxide emission reductions are your goal or mandate, then natural gas and nuclear power are the rational near and long-term answers.

The next time you are driving by Hermiston or Boardman in Oregon, keep in mind the three natural gas power plants you can see from the interstate occupy around 15 to 20 acres each and are providing between 474 and 635 megawatts of 98% effective capacity with carbon dioxide emission rates between 50% and 60% less than coal.

In contrast, a 500-megawatt wind farm in Washington would on average impact an area of 45,000 acres and would only be credited by the WRAP for 40 megawatts of January effective capacity at an 8% ELCC.  It’s instructive to recognize a utility would have to build more than twelve 500-megawatt Washington wind farms impacting around 560,000 acres to get 500 megawatts of January effective capacity credit from the WRAP.

This is illustrative of why a myopic focus on carbon reduction through a deepening dependence on energy dilute, intermittent, and variable wind power must ultimately come to terms with the laws of physics and the high financial and environmental cost of achieving a reliable power grid with this technology. 

It may be argued it’s worth every penny based on concerns with climate change.  Fair enough and we should have that discussion. But at least politicians should level with people and stop promising a grid with ever cheaper wind and solar power will deliver a reliable and lower cost power grid with inconsequential environmental impacts. It hasn’t happened yet and there are no indications as far as we can see that it will. 

Just look at Germany and California where blackout risks have increased, and electricity rates have risen to over 30 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh).  This contrasts with the U.S. average of 12 cents and Washington’s 8 cents per kWh.  And I do not subscribe to the often parroted “all of the above” strategy to make up for wind power deficiencies. 

I’m in the camp of “always the best” technology as utilities try to balance the three-legged stool of providing affordable, reliable, and environmentally responsible electricity, with a full cradle-to-grave lifecycle consideration of all technologies.

It is worth considering Washington state’s 2021 Energy Strategy (SES) indicates a near doubling of electricity consumption will be required by 2050 to significantly decarbonize the state transportation sector and natural gas end uses. 

So, what is the end in mind if wind power is considered essential to meeting state decarbonization goals?  Given Washington’s annual electrical energy consumption was recently 10,700 average megawatts, the SES vision would require more than 35,000 megawatts of wind power to generate an equivalent amount of annual energy without considering the overbuild required due to its low effective capacity (which in previous calculations was demonstrated to be on the order of twelve times for January capacity). 

Of course, no single technology is being proposed as a solution but when you consider wind farms on average require about 140 square miles of land for every 1,000 megawatts of installed capacity, a land area equivalent to sixty Seattle’s would have to be covered with industrial wind turbines to achieve just the incremental energy envisioned by Washington’s clean energy strategy. 

And when you consider the extremely low effective capacity of Washington wind, the number of Seattle sized wind farms goes up by a factor of 5 to 10 which we recognize is impractical and cannot happen.  It is a fool’s errand to think citizens in rural Washington and adjacent states will welcome and have endless patience for the level of sacrifice to natural landscapes required for wind farms to be a primary contributor to a clean energy future. 

Particularly when citizens most impacted by wind farm development realize their sacrifices have delivered an inconsequential and fractional contribution to net reductions in global carbon dioxide emissions while simultaneously increasing retail electricity rates and degrading power grid reliability.

To provide further perspective it is important to recognize nearly 4,000 megawatts of coal-fired power plant capacity will be retired in the northwest by 2025 and that coal power is prohibited from Washington utility portfolios after 2025.  

In Benton County where I live and work, a developer is proposing to build an expansive and controversial 850-megawatt wind farm in the iconic Horse Heaven Hills.  Using the ELCC values produced by the WRAP team, a utility off taker of the Horse Heaven project would receive an effective capacity credit of 68 megawatts for January and 187 megawatts for July. This doesn’t go far toward making up for the dependable capacity lost through coal plant retirements and the future impacts of Washington and Oregon clean energy policies that aim to shut down natural gas plants in the future. 

From a utility planning perspective, it’s clear Washington based wind farms should be low on the list of alternatives if you are trying to balance CO2 emission reductions, grid reliability and land-use impacts in the most cost-effective manner possible.