If you are served by an electric coop in Oregon, then WE NEED YOU — because your locally owned and operated coop is, in all probability, trying to destroy the state’s best hope for an intelligent response to both climate change and energy resource depletion.

Basically, SB 838, which calls for Oregon to get 25% of its electricity from renewable sources (not including existing hydro, which currently provides about 40% of the state’s electric load) by 2025 is being nibbled to death by ducks, the local electric coops that are providing cover for the state’s big industrial users, who oppose the bill reflexively because non-fossil energy currently–and I emphasize currently–costs more than coal.

The big users are simply corporate machines, quite willing to see the earth destroyed if it helps the bottom line, and unwilling to think a minute past this quarter’s shareholder returns. They would rather spend money on greenwashing, like the ads that they run touting their environmental sensibility, than on actually acting responsibly by supporting clean energy development.

On the other hand, the coops’ opposition is more dispiriting. They basically just want out of the renewable energy standard–they enjoy preferential access to the region’s hydro and they would prefer to simply be left alone to do so, while other people deal with salmon recovery, global warming, and building new renewables.

So WE NEED YOU to contact your electric coop board AND your legislator and say that you want them to SUPPORT SB 838 and that you DO NOT WANT AN EXEMPTION for your coop.

As someone put it in a letter to a legislator:

Hello Rep. ________,

I understand the argument that hydro is already renewable energy, but that’s no reason to exempt coops from the state renewable energy standard, for two reasons:

==> 1) Fairness.

Electric customers in Oregon have for decades enjoyed the benefits of a commitment to renewable energy made in the 1930s when there was, literally, no demand for all that power. The federal government stepped up and said that creating BPA was good for the entire Northwest, and made all Americans pay for something that would mainly benefit the Northwest. Turned out that we were lucky to have made that foresighted choice when we needed all that power to make aluminum for airplanes and power the Hanford site during WWII. But we would not have been nearly so lucky if we hadn’t been willing to make an investment.

===> 2) Capacity.

The debate about the Oregon renewable energy standard and hydro is really a false debate, because the only issue now is where do we get new electric supply capacity. Electric from hydro is fully spoken for, and there won’t be any new hydro. In fact, given what we’ve done to the climate, there is every reason to fear that we won’t be able to sustain the hydro we’ve had for all these years—warmer winters mean less snowpack, guaranteed.

So the question is whether, as hydro capacity stays flat or declines, we burn coal or use renewables. Since electric coop customers will benefit from renewables just like everyone else (and will pay the price if we fail to make the transition just like everyone else), why would we exempt them from the renewable energy standard?

If you want, we could count the existing hydro in the region as renewable energy, but then the only renewable energy standard that would make sense would simply be that much more aggressive. So, if you want to say that Oregon already gets 40% of its supply from hydro (about right), then we need a renewable energy standard that calls for 65% by 2025. I’d be happy to support that too.

But the bottom line is that we need to get off the dime and get to work as fast as possible. Every day that we fail to act is another day where we will face reduced choices and higher costs, both economically and environmentally.

I’ve not heard why coops, who have 100% benefitted from the investment in renewable energy made in the past should not contribute to the investments for renewable energy that we need for the future.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007 at 8:32 am and is filed under Energy Future, Environment, Take Action. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.