A Burning Issue: How coal-free can our city afford to be?

Columbia’s electric utility is having no problem meeting a voter mandate to increase its renewable energy supply to 5 percent by 2012. The city expects to provide that much electricity to residents — by harnessing wind power and burning wood and landfill gas — by the end of this year.
The next two targets — 10 percent by 2017 and 15 percent by 2022 — are “going to get a little harder,” said Mike Schmitz, interim Water & Light director, during a CBT forum Feb. 23, a day after issuing his renewable energy report to City Council.

But several members of City Council and the Water & Light Advisory Board have said that Columbia can surpass the basic requirements for using renewable alternatives to coal and natural gas. They want Columbia to shoot closer to the goal set by Austin, Texas — 30 percent by 2020.
And one Advisory Board member is thinking bigger. Dick Parker said during the forum that Columbia can be 80 percent carbon-free by 2020 and completely stop burning coal by getting 20 percent of its electricity from natural gas and the rest from renewable sources.
“The costs are not extravagant,” Parker said.
The University of Missouri has committed to eventually going carbon-free and is replacing a coal-fired turbine with one that burns wood and other biomass, and the city is experimenting with biomass burning.
Although Parker drew praise for setting an ambitious goal, none of the forum participants endorsed the proposal, and W&L’s official response was that it’s too sketchy to evaluate the financial consequences.
Columbia gets about 70 percent of its supply of electricity from coal-fired steam from three generators outside the city and three turbines at the municipal power plant on Business Loop 70. The city is mixing in wood chips at one of the local turbines, or boilers, in an ongoing experiment. The rest comes from local natural gas generators, which are rarely turned on but help the city reach its required peak capacity, and from renewable sources.
Missouri as a whole gets 80 percent of its electricity from coal and natural gas, and MU also gets 80 percent from fossil fuel. Gregg Coffin, superintendent of MU’s Power Plant, said the university later this year will start building a new biomass boiler system that will consume 100,000 tons of biomass annually and reduce MU’s dependency on coal by 25 percent.
Parker’s report outlined at the lunch forum has this headline: “Columbia can have 80 percent carbon-free electricity in 2020!” To do it, Parker proposes:

• converting three of the existing coal-fired boilers to 100 percent biomass, which he said would provide 73.6 megawatts of power, or 52 percent of the city’s demand for electricity;
• increase the amount of wind power from 6.3 megawatts to 100 megawatts, or 20 percent of the electric demand;
• increase the amount of solar power from 0.2 megawatts to 30 megawatts, or 3.4 percent of demand;
• add 50 megawatts of pumped hydroelectric storage, or 7 percent of demand;
• establish an aggressive energy-efficiency program that reduce demand 33 percent from what it is currently projected for 2020.

Parker and other lunch forum participants pointed out that technology is swiftly lowering the costs of renewable energy while federal legislation or regulations might soon add caps or taxes that will make carbon-based fuels more expensive.
W&L’s written response said that in Parker’s proposal, “the current costs are high and cannot be completely calculated.”
At the lunch forum, Schmitz said: “Mr. Parker has presented some interesting ideas. We have some concerns about them.”
City Manager Bill Watkins said: “What Dick said is extremely important. Technology and costs are changing.”

The city’s goals should be to have a supply of electricity that is reliable and provided at a reasonable cost, he said. “Thirdly, we’ve got to balance that with being environmentally responsible.”
How to maintain that balance while producing and using renewable sources is the question that City Council will need to answer as demand for electricity is projected to increase and two of the coal-fired turbines are getting too old to operate.
Columbia voters passed the renewable energy ordinance in 2004. In 2008, Missouri voters passed Proposition C, the Clean Energy Initiative, which requires investor-owned electric utilities to generate or purchase 15 percent of their electricity from renewable energy sources by 2021 without causing rates to increase more than 1 percent annually.
Although the 15 percent target is about the same, Columbia’s ballot initiative included a higher rate ceiling, 3 percent, and less generous rebates and other incentives for using renewable energy sources.
Vaugh Prost, co-owner of Prost Builders and Missouri Solar Applications, said the expansion of renewable energy can be an economic stimulant and job creator for Columbia.
“We need to change the existing old coal-fired boilers into new biomass boilers like MU is planning to do at its power plant,” Prost said
Parker estimated that the cost of converting the generators would be $186 million. The project could be paid for with a 20-year bond at 5.5 percent interest, which would cost about $15.7 million annually.
Last fall, the Council authorized W&L to pay a consulting firm to study the practicality of modifying the boilers to increase the amount of biomass they burn or replacing them to provide 100 percent biomass consumption. The Council also authorized the city to build another bioreactor disposal cell at the landfill.
Schmitz said W&L is looking into an expansion of its wind energy supply from Bluegrass Ridge Wind Farm in northwest Missouri and that the department has been approached by several firms in Iowa that want to sell the city renewable energy.
Watkins said buying more renewable energy is worth considering.
John Conway, chairman of the W&L Advisory Board, said, “We’re being proactive in considering other options.”
Tom O’Connor, a W&L Advisory Board member, said it’s an interesting time to be making decisions about energy usage and supply because of the technological, social and political changes taking place.

O’Connor and Win Colwell, energy co-chairwoman for the League of Women Voters in Columbia, agreed that it will be critical to significantly lower demand, which is the cheapest way to reduce overall electricity costs because it reduces peak capacity requirements.

Watkins and several Council members who visited Austin’s municipal power plant last year said the Texas city has been aggressive in reducing its carbon footprint through renewable energy supply and conservation efforts.
Austin’s Climate Protection Plan said actions in the coming years will make it “the leading city in the nation in the fight against global warming.”
The city’s plans include powering 100 percent of city facilities with renewable energy by 2010, meeting 30 percent of all energy needs through renewable resources by 2020, and providing mechanisms for all businesses and individuals to reduce their carbon footprint to zero.
The city, which has a population of about 800,000 and has been growing nearly twice as fast as Columbia in the past 10 years, is in the process of implementing what it calls the most energy-efficient building codes in the nation and is aggressively pursuing energy-efficiency retrofits and upgrades.
Schmitz said during the Council work session on renewable energy that Columbia has implemented many of the same energy conservation measures as Austin. Mayor Darwin Hindman said, “Compared to most places, we’re way ahead of the curve.”
Prost said one step Columbia could take is to double the amount of its rebates for renewable energy to “at least match AmerenUE incentives as required by Proposition C.”
Jason Thornhill, the City Council’s Second Ward representative, said: “The really cool thing about Columbia is that we’re not afraid to try things like chickens… or new power sources. I’m excited to see what alternative power sources make sense for us to use.”

Biogas – Columbia Landfill

Columbia’s Biogas Energy Plant, which cost $3 million to build and has been operating since June 2008, generates electricity by burning gas created from decomposing waste at the landfill on the northeastern edge of the city. In 2009, the biogas plant produced 1.3 percent of the city’s electricity. The City Council has authorized the addition of a second biogas reactor at the landfill, which would double the amount of electricity production to about 2.5 percent.

Biogas – Jefferson City Landfill

Columbia has a 20-year agreement with Ameresco that calls for the biogas plant in Jefferson City to provide 3.2 megawatts of electricity. From April 2009 until the end of the year, the Jefferson City biogas plant provided 1.3 percent of the city’s electricity. In a full year, the amount will be about 2 percent of the total.

Wind

Columbia has been getting wind power from turbines in the northwestern corner of Missouri since September 2007. The Bluegrass Ridge Wind Farm provided the city with 1.5 percent of its electricity in 2009 through an agreement with Associated Electric Cooperative. The cost of Columbia’s wind energy went down from $74 per megawatt hour in 2008 to $66 per hour in 2009.

Wood

The city has been using a 10-percent mixture of wood along with coal at the municipal power plant since April 2008. The waste wood chips are purchased from a plant in southern Missouri that makes wooden barrels for whisky and wine storage. The wood is a byproduct of creating the wooden barrel planks, so it is considered a carbon-neutral energy source. The energy produced by burning the waste wood was about 0.5 percent of the city’s electricity production in 2009. The fuel cost per megawatt hour of electricity produced was $41 for waste wood and $63 for coal.

Solar

Water & Light’s report said solar projects currently do not fall within the 3 percent cost cap in the renewable energy ordinance. However, the city started a project in November 2008 called Solar One in which energy is generated through solar systems built on city-owned property or commercial buildings. There now are two solar production sites: one at the city’s West Ash Pump Station and another at Quaker Oats. (Industrial buildings are considered ideal sites for solar panels because of the large roof tops. Dow Chemical has expressed an interest in installing another solar system.) The extra cost of providing the solar energy to the city’s electrical system is paid for by voluntary subscribers to Solar One. As of March 1, the city utility was selling 137 blocks of solar energy (100 kilowatt hours for $4 a month) to 87 customers. The goal of Solar One is to provide 1 percent of the city’s electricity by 2023.

Individual Producers

In 2007 the city started a net metering system that allows customers on the city grid to get credit on their bills when they generate some of their own power through renewable sources such as solar panels and windmills. But there are only two participating customers.

Participants

Jason Thornhill, 2nd Ward Rep., City Council
Karl Skala, 3rd Ward Rep., City Council
Jerry Wade, 4th Ward Rep., City Council
Laura Nauser, 5th Ward Rep., City Council
Bill Watkins, City Manager
Mike Schmitz, Interim Director, W&L
Greg Coffin, MU Power Plant Superintendent
Paul Coleman, MU Energy Management
Winifred Colwill, Energy Co-Chair, League of Women Voters
John Conway, Chairman, W&L Advisory Board
Stan Elmore, Advisory Board Member, The Callaway Bank
Tom O’Connor, Member, W&L Advisory Board
Gary Meyerpeter, President, Boone County Market, The Callaway Bank
Dick Parker, Member, W&L Advisory Board
Nick Peckham, Peckham&Wright Architects
Shawn Yunsheng Xu, Director, MU Institute for Energy Technologies