Getting soft on carbon

Ogden Standard Examiner
Editorial

In golf, they call it a whiff.

That same failure to connect at the Legislature might be something worse: cowardice. That's precisely what's happened with the Utah Senate's passage of Senate Bill 202 and its defeat of SB 173.

The latter was a bill that would have helped Utah confront a looming reality. SB 202, which now is being considered by the House of Representatives, allows the Beehive State to continue pretending tomorrow may never come.

The subject of both bills is renewable energy sources. SB 173, sponsored by Sen. Scott McCoy, D-Salt Lake, would have required Rocky Mountain Power -- the state's largest electrical utility -- to obtain 25 percent of its electricity from renewables like wind, water, solar or geothermal by 2025. The bill had circuit-breakers built in; the mandate would have been voided, for example, if costs for renewables rose more than 1.5 percent above costs for coal- and natural gas-fired generation.

Many of Utah's neighboring states have embraced requirements for renewable energy sources. That's because they see federal mandates for reduced carbon emissions coming down the road; carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming.

It's a byproduct of burning coal and other fossil fuels, in this case to generate electricity.

McCoy's hope was that Utah could move ahead and be already on the path to curbing its carbon emissions by the time the feds decide to force us to conform.

When it comes to electricity generation, our state is perhaps the most coal-dependent in the nation: 80 percent of our power comes from coal-fired plants. But that's just fine with senators, since right now coal is cheap and, overall, the rates for electricity in Utah are comparatively low, as well. They think SB 202, sponsored by Senate majority Leader Curtis Bramble, R-Provo, is the less-threatening way to go. It calls for 20 percent of renewable sources for electricity by 2025, but only if the renewables aren't more expensive than coal and other fossil fuels.

That means it will be at least another year before Utah has an opportunity to get serious about reducing its carbon emissions related to energy production. And that's a missed opportunity. New coal-fired plants aren't as inexpensive as the old ones used to be. Natural gas-fired plants are expensive, too, not to mention being subject to sometimes wildly fluctuating prices for fuel.

And absent the state's urging to pursue other sources of power, Utah's largest electrical utility will, unsurprisingly, continue to do things the way it's always done them; this may satisfy stockholders and get us the power we need, but it doesn't adequately prepare us for the possible federal regulations that few people doubt are coming.

Utahns, logic dictates, should be sympathetic to the dangers of polluting coal-fired plants, since our high-desert valleys experience some of the nation's worst pollution every winter. We should be eagerly pursuing pollution-free alternatives instead of delaying the inevitable.