Anti-warming proposals soft on industry

By Phoebe Sweet

Friday, June 27, 2008 | 2 a.m.

A Nevada committee’s report about how to combat climate change stands out from its counterparts in other Western states because it does not aggressively target the two industries responsible for the most greenhouse gas emissions.

Gov. Jim Gibbons’ Climate Change Advisory Committee held harmless the auto and electric power industries — which produce 74 percent of Nevada’s greenhouse gas emissions — environmentalists say.

The committee may have been destined to fall short in its mission all along. Six other Western states with climate change committees that suggested carbon taxes or other strict ways to limit greenhouse gas emissions have signed on to the Western Climate Initiative. Five of those states have also adopted California’s fuel efficiency standards, which are more strict than the federal standards.

Despite the makeup of their committees — whether they were packed with environmentalists or business interests or state regulators — those states were all bound by an agreement to set strict limits on greenhouse gas emissions. Nevada’s committee was not.

In fact, Nevada’s only recommendation for new regulations on carbon emissions from power plants would actually allow those emissions to increase, according to the one environmentalist on the committee, Kyle Davis, policy director of the Nevada Conservation League.

Following in the Gibbons administration’s footsteps, the committee shied away from recommending implementation of California’s auto emissions standards, adopted by 17 states. Likewise, the committee and Gibbons have taken a wait-and-see approach with the Western Climate Initiative.

The committee’s recommendations won’t “significantly reduce greenhouse gases,” Davis said. “This report doesn’t get it done ... for the environment in this state.”

In contrast, California on Thursday, rolled out a plan to reduce the state’s emissions to 1990 levels within 12 years using vehicle emissions standards, requiring 33 percent of electricity to be generated by renewable sources and capping emissions from utilities and other businesses.

Davis and other environmentalists are unhappy with the Nevada committee’s plan because although it provides incentives and encouragement for businesses to reduce greenhouse gases, it neither caps those emissions nor envisions punishments for companies that don’t comply.

Davis said the committee was bent on creating consensus, so it quickly cast aside more aggressive proposals such as calling for a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants or adopting more strict tailpipe standards.

“If there was a perception that it could cost someone some amount of money, it didn’t move forward into the final recommendations,” Davis said.

But he said the committee didn’t really know how much any initiative would cost, nor how much it would reduce emissions.

Dr. Antony Chen, an assistant research professor with the Desert Research Institute in Reno and a member of the committee, said the panel was limited by its total lack of funding. Not only was there no money for detailed analysis of the committee’s recommendations — including their costs and benefits — there wasn’t even money for the volunteer members to travel to the 28 meetings, which were held in Carson City and Las Vegas.

The report was released May 21 and a 30-day public comment period begins today. Comments can be submitted online at http://gov.state.nv.us/CCPCSurveyForm.asp. After July 26, the report will be presented to the governor.

Environmentalists were particularly critical of a proposal that the governor create a bureau in the state’s Environmental Protection Division that would regulate something the committee dubbed “intensity” of greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. Intensity is determined by dividing the total greenhouse gas emissions from each utility’s power sources in Nevada by its total power output.

For example, Nevada Power Co. produces 3.175 pounds of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide for every kilowatt-hour of electricity it produces, so its intensity number would be 3.175 per kilowatt-hour. A 50-watt light bulb left on for 20 hours uses one kilowatt-hour of electricity.

The new bureau of the Environmental Protection Division would set an intensity limit that power producers could meet by building more emissions-free solar, wind or geothermal power plants.

But setting a carbon intensity limit wouldn’t discourage utilities from building new coal-fired power plants or other high-emitting facilities — it would require them only to build more renewable energy facilities. And the measure could mean higher power plant emissions overall, whereas limiting greenhouse gas emissions or taxing companies based on emissions would discourage coal plants and encourage renewables, environmentalists say.

“The overall objective was to try to figure out ways to reduce ... the amount of greenhouse gas emissions from the state of Nevada, not create a rationale for an increase in the amount of greenhouse gas emissions,” said Charles Benjamin, director of the Nevada office of Western Resource Advocates, who was not on the committee.

Benjamin said some of the committee’s recommendations would, in fact, reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But those reductions could likely have been dwarfed by the reductions from capping power plant emissions.

Michael Yackira, chief executive of Nevada Power parent company Sierra Pacific Resources, said his company’s total greenhouse gas emissions would not increase after construction of a 1,500-megawatt coal-fired power plant in White Pine County. Because the company will also shut down older, heavily emitting power plants in Southern Nevada, will connect the northern and southern electric grids for the first time and build renewable energy plants, its total emissions would be lower with a new coal plant, he said.

“The environmental groups would not be happy unless everything is shut down,” Yackira said.

He added that a straight cap on carbon emissions is unrealistic for Nevada because its population and its economy are growing quickly, and the state didn’t build power plants in the decades leading up the Western energy crisis. He said setting an unrealistic cap on carbon emissions would hamstring the economy, something the committee noted many times in its report.

A cap also would increase electricity prices, said Jo Ann Kelly, chairwoman of the state’s Public Utilities Commission.

But Benjamin said the membership of the committee — and in particular its electricity consumption subcommittee — limited the likelihood that it would come up with progressive recommendations.

The subcommittee was led by Kelly, whose utilities commission approved Sierra Pacific’s coal plant plans. Also on the subcommittee were Yackira and Allen Biaggi, director of the state Conservation and Natural Resources Department, the agency that has approved a draft air permit for that coal plant.

Environmentalists also pointed out that rapid growth in Arizona and California didn’t stop those states from signing on to both tailpipe emissions limits and the Western Climate Initiative.

But despite criticisms of the report, environmentalists did point to some positives, such as important changes to the Utility Environmental Permit Act. The act requires developers who build power plants that won’t serve Nevada consumers to apply for a permit from the state’s Public Utilities Commission.

The committee suggested the Legislature amend the law to require any power plant using Nevada’s air and water resources to demonstrate that it was necessary to “ensure reliable utility service to customers in this state,” as judged by the PUC. That would throw up a roadblock for merchant power developers who want to build plants that would sell power to neighboring states and not Nevada.

“If resources are going to be used in our state, it should benefit our state,” Yackira said.

But the law would likely be too late to include two developers proposing plants in White Pine and Lincoln counties that would spew more than 20 million tons of carbon dioxide each year for the next 40 or 50 years.

Environmentalists also lauded a recommendation to expand the state law requiring utilities to get 20 percent of their energy from renewables by 2015 to include all electricity providers in the state, not just large utilities, and to analyze the economic effects of making the standard tougher. Another recommendation seeks to require all power producers to offer conservation programs.

Still, many of the report’s proposals will take years, if not a decade or two, to implement, much longer than climate scientists have said it would take the Southwest to begin experiencing some of the worst effects of climate change.