AERO KUFM Commentary

November 17, 2005

BIG IDEAS THE GOVERNOR NEEDS TO HEAR

by WILBUR WOOD

Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer is good at coming up with slogans. And there’s no harm in that, especially when those slogans describe worthy programs like weatherizing the homes of senior citizens and disabled people, so that winter heating bills don’t drive them to choose between food or medical prescriptions.

 

“Warm Hearts for Warm Homes” and “Big Ideas” were slogans heard often at the Montana Energy Symposium in Bozeman, for two days in mid-October.

 

Unfortunately the “Big Ideas” publicized in the state’s news media mainly centered on a resource from an “Old Day in Montana”: coal.

 

Coal was always preceded by the word “clean” -- and the biggest Big Idea was converting millions of tons of Montana’s sub-bituminous coal into liquid fuels. This would replace petroleum imported from places on the planet controlled (as the Governor put it) “by dictators and rats.”

 

I grew up in a coal town, Roundup, and I live there now. Because coal still heats many downtown buildings, and my family owns one of those buildings, I handle coal on a regular basis. Shoveling coal into a stoker, hauling ashes to the alley. Black dust settles on my shirtsleeves and hair. I wear a face mask to keep from breathing the stuff. “Clean coal” is an oxymoron.

 

But some people are claiming we can cook coal -- as opposed to burning it -- cleanly, and create jet airplane grade fuel. The U.S. military is very interested, and sent a scientist named Ted Bama to the Symposium to project flow charts on a huge screen behind the podium in the Montana State University fieldhouse. Ted cracked jokes about naming Department of Defense projects after himself: T-E-D, for Total Energy Development, but it was a little scary listening to him, and more than a little scary hearing Suedeen Kelly, the woman from FERC, which stands for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, tell us about “National Interest Transmission Corridors.” These would be thrust through public -- and presumably also private -- lands, so that energy-rich states like Montana could send our gas and electricity to energy-consuming states. If the citizens of any state balked, Suedeen said, then FERC would be there to enforce the corridors..

 

Big Ideas to be sure. But many other Big Ideas at the Energy Symposium didn’t get much media play. Although Schweitzer seems captivated at the moment by coal liquifaction, in his opening speech he said conserving energy is the immediate task with the biggest payback. And he praised renewable energy, especially bio-diesel, ethanol and wind: The Judith Gap Wind Farm soon will be sending 135 megawatts into the powerlines of Northwestern Energy -- that’s 8 per cent of NorthWetsern’s entire portfolio. New power from the wind is cheaper than new power from coal or natural gas. And windpower doesn’t have to be developed at the Judith Gap mega-scale. Plenty of people were there to promote smaller scale wind farms, dispersed around the state and locally owned -- as the Judith Gap project is not.

 

Electricity from the wind is a Big Idea that’s getting bigger.

 

As far as fuels to power trucks and cars down the road, or tractors through the fields, another Big Idea is making liquid fuel from plants, not coal.

 

At a “breakout session” on bio-fuels, Cliff Bradley, a Missoula-based microbiologist, compared the two scenarios. For only 3 billion dollars, the price of one proposed coal liquifaction facility, you could produce enough fuel to meet one-tenth of Montana’s present consumption -- that is, if the military didn’t grab it first. In the process you’d strip-mine lots of land and use up lots and lots of water.

 

Take that same 3 billion dollars and stash 2 billion of it in the bank. Invest the remaining 1 billion to build an array of community-scale ethyl alcohol plants around the state. These could produce enough ethanol to handle not one-tenth, not half, but all of Montana’s yearly needs for transport fuel -- 100 per cent! Not nearly as much water would be consumed, and the land would not be strip-mined but farmed.

 

The Governor needs to hear more Big Ideas like these.

 

I’m Wilbur Wood, for Montana’s Alternative Energy Resources Organization. AERO welcomes your comments and perspectives. AERO is a grassroots membership organization working to help create farm, food, energy and growth solutions for communities throughout Montana. For more information about our programs call us in Helena at 406-443-7272.