Experts: Good things ahead for hydropower

Oct 5 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Christine Pratt The Wenatchee World, Wash.

Hydropower is conquering the environmental demons of its past and faces a bright future, clouded only by the threat of new regulations and their added costs.

That was the message that Chelan County PUD General Manager John Janney and visiting energy expert Craig Gannett delivered Tuesday to a smart, like-minded audience of about 60 people at Wenatchee Valley College.

The PUD and college teamed up to present the talk, part of a series of events to commemorate Public Power Week, which ends Saturday, and the PUD's 75th anniversary.

"The prospects for hydropower playing a role in the energy product are as good as they've been in the last 30 years," said Gannett, an energy and natural resources attorney from his Seattle base with the national law firm Davis Wright Tremaine. "All forms of energy that do not emit carbon will grow in value."

Gannett based his optimism on three points:

The fish protection issues that have plagued the hydropower industry have become better managed.

People -- but not everyone -- are awakening to "the obvious" that hydropower is a renewable resource.

As long as science continues to point to climate change as a man-made effect, dam-produced, carbon-free electricity will continue to increase in value.

A frequent lecturer on climate change policy and hydropower relicensing, Gannett said that the expansion of wind power, which displaces hydro-generated electricity for limited space on the region's power grid, will likely slow post-December 2012.

That's when federal subsidies to the industry will expire and likely not be renewed, Gannett said, given the still-lagging economy.

And to the newly acute issue of whether hydropower or wind energy should have priority on the seasonally crowded power grid?

"That's a legal and regulatory hairball," Gannett said, amid chuckles from the audience. "It's going to come at some expense of the wind developers."

He also predicted that operation of the Columbia River for power generation and flood control will "get a lot more interesting" over the next few years as both Canada and the U.S. decide the future of the Columbia River Treaty.

"This whole debate over who's running the river and what they're going to do is going to get a lot bigger," he said.

Hydropower's future likely won't include construction of a lot of new dams, both Gannett and Janney said, but lots of potential lies in adding powerhouses to the dams across the country that don't have them.

Citing a National Hydropower Association statistic, Janney said that only about 3 percent of the country's 80,000 dams generate electricity. Adding powerhouses could create jobs and multiply several fold the country's total output of carbon-free power.

Gains can also be made through conservation, which Janney said remains a priority of Chelan PUD.

Both speakers said public power will be around for generations to come, but Janney warned that it could face "death by a thousand cuts" over time from increasing regulation and changes in energy policy that require huge expenses of time and money to forecast and react to.

"Our challenge is to make sure we're razor-focused," Janney said.

Gannett agreed. "You have to be smart about addressing those. A frontal attack is not going to happen. The devil's in the details."

Christine Pratt: 665-1173

pratt@wenatcheeworld.com