eUtah Blueprint
A digital download of the Blueprint, (a summary of the full eUtah: A Renewable Energy Roadmap) is available here:
For decades, reliable low-cost electricity from Utah coal plants has attracted business investment to Utah while also creating jobs and economic development for the rural Utah communities that have mined this important resource for generations. But coal faces mounting challenges, both nationally and within the state of Utah. Already, the threat of a national carbon tax has caused most utilities—including Rocky Mountain Power in Utah—to abandon plans to build new coal plants. Furthermore, the US Environmental Protection Agency may begin regulating carbon dioxide emissions and is considering a number of other regulations on pollution that could force expensive retrofits at existing Utah coal plants. In Utah, coal is becoming more difficult and expensive to mine, and coal reserves near operating Utah mines are dwindling—with some forecasts showing depletion in little more than a decade. This has been recognized in the draft of the Governor’s Utah Energy Initiative: “Given the current situation with coal as a primary fuel for base-load electric generation, Utah needs to develop every viable renewable energy project it can identify.” All these factors add up to increasing risks for Utah’s coal-based economy; these risks could run into billions of dollars, causing our economic engine to sputter unless we head them off.
The eUtah study shows that careful development of Utah’s abundant renewable energy resources can provide a technically sound, economically feasible, and reliable long-term strategy to meet Utah’s growing energy needs through the middle of the this century. Using technology that is commercially available today, Utah’s wind, solar, and geothermal resources can be paired with utility-scale storage to provide the same level of reliability that electric utilities demand today. And if we are bold enough to pioneer the development of an intelligent and distributed electricity system that would use rooftops and passive buildings as much as large scale renewable resources, Utah has the resources to become the technological leader of the 21st century grid.
The least cost and lowest risk way to face the uncertainties of the present is to couple renewable energy and energy efficiency improvements with natural gas and compressed air energy storage. This strategy would save 20 billion gallons of water per year compared with one that employs nuclear energy and coal with carbon sequestration. Furthermore, using nuclear power to reduce emissions by about the same amount is the most financially risky approach, with nearly double the at-risk peak investment capital, compared to employing renewables plus natural gas.
Beyond consequences for Utah, our study shows that pairing renewable resources with energy storage allows renewable energy to provide 75 - 100% of a state’s electricity needs, far beyond the 20 - 30% renewable energy goals already adopted and widely discussed by states and countries today.
Finally, we provide a roadmap for Utah’s policy makers, leading research institutions, and entrepreneurs to begin tackling the challenges of such a 21st century grid; doing so will position Utah as a leading national and international energy innovator and a pioneer of arguably the most advanced electricity system in the world
