Federal and state officials spoke in broad strokes this week at an energy forum in Fort Collins about the need to address climate change.
They offered a wide range of solutions, and it’s clear that changing this country’s energy infrastructure isn’t as simple as laying out solar panels. It’s that and much more.
But several recent developments in Colorado show just how complicated and granular that effort needs to be, and how much more yet needs to be done.
For instance, the decision by the Public Utilities Commission to pursue tiered pricing, whereby big energy users are charged disproportionately higher costs to discourage over-consumption, is a good first step.
But it must be followed by demand pricing, which means customers pay higher prices when energy demand is highest.
Holding the line on peak load would mean that fewer new power plants would have to be built. And it could encourage energy use during times when some renewables are plentiful.
For instance, windmills generally produce more energy at night, when power usage is low. Making power cheaper at night might prompt people to make a habit of charging their electric cars overnight. It’s one example of how the landscape could, and should, change.
Gov. Bill Ritter’s administration has made such a change in rate structure a priority. Tom Plant, the state’s energy office director, told The Denver Post in June that demand pricing would put “more of a market force on the cost of electricity so that customers have an opportunity to use electricity when it’s cheapest.”
Admittedly, it would be expensive for utilities to change meters to ones that record power by time of usage, but it’s also pretty darn pricey to build a new power plant.
The other development that caught our eye was the announcement that a Spanish company, Abengoa Solar, would build a demonstration solar plant near Grand Junction that would aid a coal-fired plant in producing electricity.
The question that engineers are trying to answer is whether a field of parabolic mirrors can effectively be used to reduce the amount of coal required to generate electricity.
One of the downsides of solar energy collection is that power generation is intermittent, with energy absorption occurring only during the sunny, daytime hours.
Powering down coal-fired plants poses complications, but if some solar energy could be melded into the mix of energy sources at coal-fired plants, it could reduce carbon-dioxide emissions.
We’re glad to see Xcel Energy taking on this sort of experimental project.
Demand pricing and solar integration into coal-fired power plants aren’t going to answer all the questions that loom as this country begins to transform its energy infrastructure.
But it’s also clear that such innovations and changes — no matter how incremental they may seem in and of themselves — are crucial to changing how we create and use energy in the coming decades.
