Positions
Sierra Club Candidate Questionaire
What is your position on the Renewable Energy Standard? What will you do to promote the development of renewable energy resources in Arizona?
Short Answer: I fully support the current Renewable Energy Standard (RES).
What I’d Do To Promote RES:
- Increase RES from 15% by 2025 to 20% by 2015
- AZ recently approved a net metering law that will allow customers to generate up to 125% of their energy usage and be compensated at the retail rate: http://www.prepayment.com/node/12185. Two-way meters are required; and customers who generate more than 125% of use would require a special contract with the utility. I’d evaluate and streamline net metering to include more households and businesses, and make it easier for generators to sell more than 125% of use, since feeding back into the grid at peak times offsets very expensive, more ‘high-risk’ power.
- Consider a feed-in tariff (FIT), which is like “net metering on steroids.” FITs provide rebates as high as 40 cents/kWh for distributed solar/solar photo voltaics to homeowners and small businesses to stimulate people rooftop solar. (This is how Germany brought so much distributed solar p.v. online so quickly.) FITs set a tariff for each type of renewable generation, so that, for example, rooftop solar p.v. gets the highest rebate since it reduces peak load by feeding INTO the grid at the highest-use time; while wind gets a much lower rebate, since the cost of wind is lower and the vast majority of RE in the U.S. and the rest of the world comes from wind.
- Put a price on carbon to stimulate RE. (There is a big debate in the U.S. over carbon tax v. cap-and-trade (or cap-and-auction). Europe had a system for a while where utilities got credits for FREE that they could then sell, resulting in windfall profits for utilities, but no net reduction in pollution or CO2. The utilities like cap and trade – referred to by some as cap-and-pray, since the polluters with the most cash can just pay to keep polluting. The ‘cap’ part is great, since the cap can be reduced over time, but trading credits has problems: very bureaucratic, rules can be ‘gamed,’ and reductions take a long time. (Charles Komanoff’s www.carbontax.org website is outstanding.)
- Make the connection between water use and power generation.
- Look at Time-Of-Use rates; tiered rates (the more power you use, the more expensive the power is); pay customers to reduce load at peak times.
- State Production Tax Credit for Concentrating Solar Power.
- Energy efficiency (EE) is the bridge to more Renewable Energy (RE); thus increase substantially AZ’s commitment to EE. (Right now, Californians use 44% less energy per person than the U.S. average, mostly due to regulations encouraging utilities to save electricity rather than build new plants.)
- Currently APS is spending 0.5% of revenues on EE – $32 million in 2007 – this is waaaay too low! AZ was ranked 23rd by ACEEE (American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy).
- Include water use and health effects in determining cost of electricity; i.e. start to quantify ‘externalities.’
- Require that ALL new homes incorporate RE and EE into new buildings.
- Provide an open, transparent process for resource generation that includes the public, various power generators such as solar, wind, geothermal, biomass; not just coal and natural gas and utilities.
- Moratorium on new coal unless it captures and sequesters 75% of CO2.
What will you do as a commissioner to promote energy conservation and energy efficiency?
- Increase EE requirements; and set a yearly increase, such as 1.5%/year. Require all new buildings to have EE and incorporate some RE;
- Study the benefits of more distributed solar as a way to mitigate peak demand, since AZ and the entire Southwest will be getting hotter;
- Encourage cities/regions/schools/coops etc. to set EE goals that are among the highest in the U.S.
- Work with the largest energy users to determine how to use combined heat and power and EE to reduce peak load;
- Time-of-use pricing;
- Tiered pricing (i.e. the more you use the more you pay);
- Residential v. commercial v. industrial energy reductions, and how much energy can be saved in each sector.
What will you do as a commissioner to assure truth in advertising for companies purporting to sell “green” power?
- Look at total energy or ‘lifecycle’ costs, also called “Energy Returned on Energy Invested (ERoEI) – which considers how much energy is used for mining, transportation, heat loss, transmission loss (generally 10%, can be more with very long transmission lines), water use; pollution etc. For example, although nuclear power does not emit CO2, the lifecycle costs of nuclear energy are high in terms of CO2.
- Look at efficiency for each type of generation: for example, coal plants lose 2/3 of energy as heat; solar p.v. doesn’t use ANY water, nor does wind; CSP uses water but doesn’t contaminate it like coal does. MANY factors we are NOT taking into account.
- Have a public process to vet different types of energy.
- Tour the state, inviting the public to comment on what kind of energy they think AZ should invest in.
- Invite public interest organizations like PIRG to participate in the resource generation process – too much of a ‘back-room process.’
In your opinion what are the most pressing environmental issues facing the State of Arizona?
Most pressing environmental issues:
- Irreversible climate change
- Energy
- Water
- Land use
- Transportation
What are some ways you have contributed in the past to environmental protection?
Last year, a gasified coal plant was sited near Bowie in Cochise County. Although nearly every other politician in AZ was sitting the issue out, I evaluated the technology and decided it was not ready for prime time. Since then, over a dozen gasified coal plants have been canceled.
Do you believe it is necessary to site any new power plants in Arizona? What criteria should be used to evaluate applications for power plants and transmission lines?
Yes, I believe it will be necessary to site new plants, but that I believe the new plants will be renewable energy or should be or hybridized, such as a solar/natural gas combo. AZ should be a leader in Concentrating Solar Power (CSP). Right now, AZ consumes 73.3 billion kWh, but produces 104.4 billion kWh. Thus, AZ does not consume all the power it generates. There are plans to build coal plants in WY and ship the power to AZ. This is a short-sighted ‘solution,’ since it will create more problems than it will solve long-term.
AZ can continue to be a net exporter of power; but should focus on clean energy like wind and solar. AZ has some wind in the northern part of the state, and of course abundant sunshine. CSP plants can only be located where there is intense sun, such as the Southwestern U.S. – NV, CA, AZ, NM and CO. AZ could export clean energy from CSP plants to CA. Since CA will not buy coal power, there will be a huge market for exporting truly clean energy to CA.
New transmission should be built for renewable, and the ACC must help the renewable power plants with this.
Please describe your plans for the campaign and how you intend to win the election.
I intend to win the election by:
- Being honest and forthright about the enormous changes we need to make in electrical generation and the expected price increases and instability associated with coal and natural gas.
- Providing information about the total costs that we – the consumers – pay for dirty energy. The utilities and coal companies don’t pay our health care costs, nor do they pay for environmental clean-up from acid rain, reduced crop yields, irreversible climate change and other costs that will continue to increase as long as we continue to emit CO2 and other toxic pollutants.
- Organize town hall events and group talks with groups all over the state. Open up current ACC policies to include the public.
- Provide ‘information sessions that anyone can attend on current issues of interest, and post all the valuable information to my campaign website Work with citizen’s groups to include ‘life-cycle assessments’ when evaluating various resources.