BWL wants 50% clean energy by 2030, net zero carbon by 2040 | Sarah Lehr | Lansing State Journal | Aug. 4, 2020 | www.lansingstatejournal.com
LANSING – The Lansing Board of Water Light would reach 50% clean energy usage by 2030 and net zero carbon emissions by 2040 if officials adopt a recommendation from the utility’s latest integrated resource plan.
The 50% clean energy target is more ambitious than the one laid out in the BWL’s last resource plan, released in 2015, which set a goal of 40% clean energy by 2030. To get to 50%, the BWL plans to increase its reliance on renewables and to reduce its energy waste.
“The customers that we met with wanted us to ratchet that (clean energy) up by 10%,” BWL General Manager Dick Peffley said. “Our customers also wanted us to look at carbon neutrality so I think a carbon neutral goal by 2040 is very aggressive.”
The integrated resource plan, released this summer after a series of public input sessions and a randomized poll of 700 customers, creates a framework for the utility’s commissioners, who plan to formally adopt a document known as the strategic plan by early 2021. Commissioners are broadly supportive of the plan’s recommendation, board Chair David Price said.
The plan does not spell out exactly how the BWL would reach carbon neutrality by 2040, but it could get there both by reducing the fossil fuels it burns and by purchasing carbon offsets.
Randy Dykhuis, co-founder of the Lansing Environmental Action Team, called the plans for carbon neutrality vague. He wishes the BWL had committed to a date for eliminating its use of fossil fuels.
“We’re going to put a lot of CO2 in the atmosphere, but we’re going to plant a lot of trees – that, to me, is not progress,” Dykhuis said.
Price said the board hopes to achieve carbon neutrality by reducing emissions as much as possible. According to the 2020 plan, the BWL should research carbon neutrality over the next several years, so that details can be included in the next IRP.
Additionally, Lansing Environmental Action Team believes the BWL could have promised more than 50% clean energy by 2030, Dykhuis said.
“They can do 50% with their eyes closed,” Dykhuis said. “That’s not what i would term as a stretch goal.”
The BWL plans to reach 30% clean energy, including at least 20% renewable energy, by the end of 2020. Improvements energy efficiency should make up the difference, according to the utility.
The BWL’s renewable sources include solar, wind and hydro power, according to the utility. It also counts landfill gas, the natural byproduct when organic material decomposes in a landfill, as renewable.
Renewable energy sources produce little to no carbon dioxide, a substance that traps heat in the atmosphere and contributes to global climate change.
BWL officials say they’re on track to fulfill a previous pledge to retire the coal-fired Eckert plant by the end of this year and the coal-fired Erickson plant within five years.
The BWL promised to retire Erickson as part of an agreement with the Sierra Club, which had threatened to sue the utility over Clean Air Act violations.
Coal is major source of carbon dioxide, and the BWL expects to reduce its CO2 emissions 80% by 2025, officials with the utility said.
The BWL will continue to purchase coal from the Belle River Plant in St. Clair County even after the BWL stops using its own coal plants in 2025. DTE Energy will be taking Belle River off line by 2030, however, at which point the BWL hopes to compensate for the energy gap by relying more on renewables, including battery storage technology, Peffley said.
Additionally, a natural gas plant built by the BWL in Delta Township is set to go online in 2021. Environmentalists with the Lansing Environmental Action Team criticized the decision to build that plant, noting that, although natural gas is cleaner than coal, it burns fossil fuel and is not a renewable resource.
BWL officials said the natural gas plant is the most cost-effective way to reliably meet energy needs. A rate increase is not planned in 2021, Peffley said, although he did not rule it out for years beyond that. The BWL, which is owned by the city of Lansing, serves more than 97,000 electric customers in Greater Lansing.
“Climate change is no secret out there,” Price said. “We’re all aware of it. We have to balance that by meeting customer needs for electricity.”
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2020/08/04/lansing-board-of-water-light-recommends-50-clean-energy-by-2030-carbon-neutrality-by-2040/