From Cascadia Scorecard 2005: Focus on Energy

What are the main points of the book?

How is the Pacific Northwest's energy system insecure?

Shouldn't we beef up security and add more pipelines?

How does energy spending affect the region's economy?

What do you mean by clean energy?

What are some examples of clean-energy solutions that will also tighten security?

How will clean energy benefit the economy?

*Note: Page numbers refer to the pdf of Cascadia Scorecard 2005.

What are the main points of the book?

• The Cascadia Scorecard is Sightline's annual update on key trends shaping the future of the Pacific Northwest. The 2005 edition reports the region's progress on all seven trends. But it focuses primarily on energy, because the region's energy system is so closely linked to environmental and economic performance; and because in 2004, the region scored most poorly in energy.
• The report's chief finding is that the Pacific Northwest's energy system is highly vulnerable on a number of fronts. First, its infrastructure-pipelines and power lines-is profoundly and surprisingly insecure. Attackers could cripple the region's economy for weeks, if not months.
• Second, the region's energy insecurity is compounded because northwesterners consume oil, natural gas, and electricity at such a high rate; and the region's energy use actually increased in 2004, despite higher prices and a slow economy. The Northwest states of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho send $30 million a day out of the region to pay for petroleum and gas. (British Columbia is a gas exporter, but increasing its efficiency will allow it to earn more through exports.)
• The good news is that the region is developing the solutions that will keep transportation moving and businesses and homes powered-and they don't involve guards, gates, or more expensive infrastructure.
• A clean-energy revolution that is already gathering force promises to tighten security not at a cost but at a profit. Ultra-fuel-efficient cars, a "smart" electric grid, local renewable fuels, and quickly rising efficiency can make Northwest energy both bombproof and a powerful job generator.
  

>How is the Pacific Northwest's energy system insecure?

• First, the Northwest states produce virtually none of their own petroleum and natural gas; nor do they have appreciable reserves in the ground. The Cascadia region depends for its energy on just ten main pipelines (five for oil, five for natural gas) and about two dozen major power lines. These lines are almost impossible to defend. (p.30)
• The Trans-Alaska Pipeline, for example, which provides most of Washington's and Oregon's oil, was certified indefensible by the Pentagon in the 1970s. It crosses 800 miles of Alaskan wilderness and has already been sabotaged once, bombed twice, and shot more than 50 times, in each case shutting it down at least briefly. The opening of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil extraction, if it happens, would redouble and extend Cascadia's dependence on this single, insecure pipeline. (p.30-31)
• British Columbia gets most of its oil from Alberta through the Trans-Mountain Pipeline, which crosses hundreds of miles of hinterlands before reaching the lower Fraser Valley. (p.30)
• Losing the Olympic oil pipeline, which connects northern Washington with Portland and Eugene, would create a distribution meltdown that could last for weeks. When a similar gasoline pipeline ruptured in Arizona in 2003, it took authorities almost 2 weeks to begin repairs and 17 additional days to complete them. Average fuel prices rose 60 cents a gallon and did not revert to preaccident level for four months. (p.31)
• The region's five main natural gas pipelines are more explosive and, unlike oil, natural gas cannot simply travel in a truck if a pipeline shuts down. (p.31-32) Cascadia has four liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities that cool and store gas. Usually quite safe, while in transport, it could be an explosive target. (p.32)
• Electricity transmission lines are more secure, but still vulnerable. In 2003, for example, a Spokane resident unscrewed bolts from about 20 transmission towers across the Northwest and California. It took authorities weeks to stop him. Fortunately, his purpose was not to crash the grid but to reveal its vulnerability: he only removed a few bolts from each tower. (p.33)
  

>Shouldn't we beef up security and add more pipelines?

• "Hardening" the existing infrastructure with gates, guards, and guns is the reflexive security strategy, and some of that should probably happen. Constructing more pipelines and power lines to create a denser web of connections might help a bit. But both approaches can make only marginal improvements, and they're exorbitantly expensive, raising the cost of energy, slowing the economy. And the pipelines and power lines are so long that it's very difficult to defend them with guards and guns. (p.36)
• The best solution is to invest in technologies, business models, and policy approaches that will dramatically increase efficiency while decentralizing supplies and strengthening the economy. These kinds of solutions will make Northwest energy both bombproof and a powerful job generator. And they'll not only pay for themselves, but even help to finance further progress. (p.34)
  

How does energy spending affect the region's economy?

• Most spending on petroleum and natural gas leaves the region. British Columbia is a gas exporter, but increasing its efficiency will allow it to earn more through exports.
• Spending on energy drained an estimated $30 million out of the economies of the Northwest states each day in 2004-nearly 3 percent of the region's economic output. (p.34). And a few years ago, Sightline did an analysis showing that in Bend, Oregon, out of a dollar spent on gasoline, no more than 15 cents stays in the city; the rest leaves to pay for drilling, transporting, and refining fuel. (Green-Collar Jobs, Sightline, 1999)
• Energy price spikes, which are increasingly common, are among the leading triggers of inflation and recession. The California electricity crisis of 2001, for example, made the Northwest's recession worse by sucking as much as $6 billion out of the region.(p.34) Investments in clean, efficient energy, on the other hand, could bring big economic gains, such as keeping up to $10 billion a year circulating locally.

What do you mean by clean energy?

• Clean energy means energy sources and distribution networks that are decentralized, resilient, and nonpolluting. It includes energy savings through efficiency and conservation; less dependence on fossil fuels and a greater emphasis on renewable resources and alternative fuels; and advanced technology-such as "smart-grid tools"-that increase efficiency by adjusting to real-time demand.
  

>What are some examples of clean-energy solutions that will also tighten security?

• Transportation: A key step is to update the vehicle fleet to more-efficient, advanced-technology cars and trucks. A powerful first step is to adopt clean-car standards, which Washington State is considering in this legislature; and which Oregon is considering, as recommended by a citizen's advisory board. With fuel use trimmed by 30 percent-which will happen by 2016-clean cars can become a decentralized strategic petroleum reserve because they can go further on less. They emit fewer greenhouse gases and other pollutants, and buffer the region against pipeline disruption and price hikes. (p.55)
• By joining with Canada, California, and seven other US states that have already committed to similar standards, the Northwest states can accelerate the industry's design of ultra-fuel-efficient vehicles that-when combined with greater use of alternative fuels-could reduce dependence on petroleum even more.
• Northwesterners are already choosing efficient hybrids over jumbo SUVs. Hybrid cars were introduced in 1999, seven years after Hummers, but by July 2004, had outsold them by six to one. (p.38, p.49)
• Incentives for efficiency: To make the electrical grid more resilient and redundant, we need innovative incentives to encourage the region's utilities to aggressively pursue energy efficiency.
• Northwest Power and Conservation Council (NPCC) has identified efficiency as the biggest and cheapest source of new energy in its next 20-year plan; and BC Hydro sees enough energy-efficiency opportunities to allow it 40 percent greater energy savings in the next 10 years than it achieved in the past 10. (p.38)
• A promising step is to "decouple" utilities' profit formulas from gross sales-allowing them to make more money by selling less energy. Decoupling helped turn Puget Sound Power and Light (now part of Puget Sound Energy) into an efficiency leader in the mid-1990s. (p.38, p.55-56)
• On the consumer side, feebates are point-of-purchase incentives-fees charged to the buyers of less-efficient products that fund rebates given to the buyers of more-efficient ones. Feebates would have a "snowball" effect on efficiency by encouraging manufacturers to make it a priority in product design.
• Feebates fix a market flaw by making purchase prices a better reflection of the real costs of energy-inefficient products. For example, drivers are largely unwilling to pay for fuel-economy improvements that don't pay for themselves in three years-even though they would benefit over the long haul. (p.56-57)
• Smart-grid tools: The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington, is developing "smart grid" electronic tools that can adjust demand to real-time grid conditions-radically decentralizing the grid. If a transmission line were disabled, smart-grid appliances would switch into power-save mode and decentralized energy sources would feed power into he grid. A smart grid would heal itself.
• Smart-grid tools are a sophisticated example of demand response programs-systems that allow utilities to temporarily turn off certain power-using devices on the consumers' side of the meter. (p.36-37)

• The payoff is twofold: northwesterners get to keep home a large share of the more than $10 billion a year they currently export to pay for oil and gas; and they get an energy system that's secure and less polluting.
• And it will benefit an emerging base of businesses in advanced materials, green buildings, energy efficiency and renewables, plus fuel-cell energy, and tools for the smart grid. For example, plant-based "cellulose ethanol," a locally produced fuel from crop and forest residues and urban wastes, may prove a bonanza for the rural Northwest.
• Best estimates are that the region could meet up to 20 percent of its current gasoline demand with this locally produced fuel. The Canadian firm Iogen is hoping to build a 50-million-gallon-a-year cellulose ethanol plant in Idaho. (p.51-52)
• Already, a leader in manufacturing efficient, ultralight vehicles is Boeing, whose next-generation jet (the 787, formerly known as the 7E7) will be the most efficient airplane in the sky by at least 20 percent. (p.50)
  

More information:

Main Cascadia Scorecard page

Energy to-do list for the Northwest