Commentary

By Hasso Hering

Albany Democrat-Herald

The federal Environmental Protection Agency has singled out Corvallis for buying more "renewable" energy than any other place in the country. Another town around here is actually producing renewable energy, but without much credit or fanfare so far.

The implication of the EPA announcement last week was that Corvallis residents were using more green power than anywhere else. Actually, customers of Pacific Power use exactly the same amount of renewable or green energy as everybody else served by the utility, regardless of where they live. It's just that some of them are willing and able to pay a higher price.

Pacific Power has a program, Blue Sky, allowing customers to pay more on the grounds that some electricity from renewable sources, mostly wind turbines, costs more to produce or acquire.

Wanting to do the right thing, not to mention being able to display yard signs proclaiming the fact, lots of people have agreed to pay more than the going rate.

But, in fact, individual packages of kilowatts can't be channeled this way or that depending on source and destination. So everybody buying electricity from Pacific, whether paying extra for green power or not, gets most of his energy from thermal - meaning coal- and natural gas-fired - power plants.

The utility says on its website that three-quarters of its energy comes from thermal sources, about 5 percent from hydro and about 1 percent from wind. About 19 percent is purchased from other suppliers, and that energy may include renewables as well.

The company is pursuing a number of wind power projects in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Wyoming. When those come on line, their output will go into the system, and all customers will equally share in the result.

Customers paying extra are sending a signal. They want more energy to come from renewable sources, a sensible position as long as it doesn't get so expensive that ordinary households can't afford it.

Another city around here is doing something significant in the green power department. That is Albany, which is about to crown more than 10 years of effort - negotiating federal and state paperwork, raising money and eventually awarding a construction contract - by again generating a pretty good chunk of hydropower at the Vine Street water treatment plant.

This project has begun harnessing an energy source - canal water falling 30 feet into the Calapooia River - that has been wasted since the early 1990s, when the old generator had to be shut down.

Albany spent roughly $2.2 million for the project, mostly local money but also including help from the Energy Trust of Oregon and Pacific. It will dedicate the plant on Feb. 13.

When the canal is running at 190 cubic feet per second, the generator's output is enough to power 500-700 average houses, without the slightest negative environmental effect. That, too, seems eminently green. (hh)