analysis
Repowering the Midwest:The Clean Energy Development Plan for the Heartland
Excerpted from the Executive Summary of Repowering the Midwest, Environmental Law and Policy Center, et. al., 2001.
 The Midwest needs a strategic clean energy development plan that implements smart policies and practices to capture readily achievable environmental, public health and economic development benefits. This sustainable development strategy makes both good environmental and economic sense for our region. Clean energy development will reduce pollution, improve reliability by diversifying our power supply and create new "green" manufacturing and installation jobs, as well as provide new renewable energy "cash crops" for farmers. Repowering the Midwest is a plan to seize these opportunities.
Repowering the Midwest is a blueprint for producing economically robust and environmentally sound electricity in the 21st century by comparing two possible energy futures for the Midwest - one in which we continue to rely on conventional, or "business-as-usual" technologies, and a second in which the Midwest unleashes its homegrown clean energy development potential. This Clean Energy Development Plan quantifies the region’s untapped energy efficiency and renewable resources and lays out strategies, policies and practices to advance a cleaner electricity future from the industrial Midwest across to the Great Plains. These clean power options are technologically and commercially available today, and they can be obtained with only a modest increase in total electricity cost - 1.5 percent in 2010 and roughly three percent in 2020 - that is far offset by the environmental and public health improvements and the economic and employment gains for our region.
Summary of the Midwest Clean Energy Development Plan
The Midwest Clean Energy Development Plan achieves large environmental, public health and economic development benefits with only very modest increases in cost. Moreover, investing in clean modern energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies will diversify the region’s electricity portfolio and thereby improve reliability. The Midwest Clean Energy Development Plan will:
- Aggressively implement modern cost-effective energy efficiency technologies, including the newest as well as the "tried and true" approaches.
- Develop and implement new clean renewable energy technologies, including wind power, biomass and solar photovoltaics (PV).
- Develop and implement efficient natural gas uses in appropriate locations, especially combined heat and power, district energy systems and fuel cells.
- Retire selected older, less efficient and highly polluting coal plants.
- Apply sustainable development strategies to aggressively link these environmental improvement policies to economic development. Clean energy development means more green energy jobs for the Midwest.
Summary of Benefits for the Midwest
Taking these actions to implement the Clean Energy Development Plan will produce:
- Dramatic improvements in environmental quality by 2020, compared to business-as-usual policies and practices, by reducing: sulfur dioxide (SO2) pollution, which causes acid rain, by 56 percent; nitrogen oxides (NOX) pollution, which causes smog, by 71 percent; and carbon dioxide (CO2) pollution, which causes global warming, by 51 percent.
- Energy efficiency improvements for Midwestern consumers that save 17 percent of electricity use by 2010 and 28 percent by 2020. The average investment of 2.3¢ per kilowatt-hour (kWh) to achieve these energy savings is much less than the cost of generating, transmitting and distributing electricity from a coal plant or most other sources.
- Renewable energy development that provides eight percent of the region’s electricity generation by 2010 and 22 percent by 2020.
- Improved electricity reliability as a result of a more robust and diversified mix of Midwestern power resources compared to the region’s historic almost-total reliance on coal and nuclear plants.
- Economic development and job growth through new wind power and biomass energy "cash crops" for farmers, increased business for manufacturers of energy efficiency and renewable energy equipment and new skilled jobs for the installation and maintenance of this equipment throughout the Midwest.
These benefits can be achieved with only slightly increased electricity costs across the Midwest: 1.5 percent in 2010 and 3.4 percent in 2020.
Repowering the Midwest is a collaboration of the Environmental Law and Policy Center, Union of Concerned Scientists, Citizens Action Coalition of Indiana, Iowa RENEW, Izaak Walton League of America, RENEW Wisconsin, Dakota Resource Council, and Minnesotans for an Energy-Efficient Economy. It is a follow-up analysis to the landmark 1994 UCS study Powering the Midwest. To download the full Repowering the Midwest report, executive summary or any of the 10 individual state fact sheets, click here.
|
