Montana Wind Resource Map

MONTANA, May 19 2008 (Neo Natura) - The Department of Energy's Wind Program and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) published a new wind resource map for the state of Montana. This resource map shows wind speed estimates at 50 meters above the ground and depicts the resource that could be used for utility-scale wind development. Future plans are to provide wind speed estimates at 30 meters, which are useful for identifying small wind turbine opportunities.

As a renewable resource, wind is classified according to wind power classes, which are based on typical wind speeds. These classes range from Class 1 (the lowest) to Class 7 (the highest). In general, at 50 meters, wind power Class 4 or higher can be useful for generating wind power with large turbines. Class 4 and above are considered good resources. Particular locations in the Class 3 areas could have higher wind power class values at 80 meters than shown on the 50 meter map because of possible high wind shear. Given the advances in technology, a number of locations in the Class 3 areas may suitable for utility-scale wind development.

This map indicates that Montana has wind resources consistent with utility-scale production. Good-to-excellent wind resource areas are distributed throughout the eastern two-thirds of Montana. The region just east of the Rocky Mountains in northern Montana has excellent-to-superb wind resource, with other outstanding resource areas being located on the hills and ridges between Great Falls and Havre. The region between Billings and Bozeman also has excellent wind resource areas. Ridge crest locations have the highest resource in the western one-third of Montana.

Gail Gutsche Runs For Public Service Commission

MONTANA, May 16 2008 (Neo Natura) - Gail Gutsche explains that she is running for the Public Service Commission because "this is a really critical time for a change in the energy future of Montana."

She said she will work to help find solutions to the dramatic price increases consumers have seen since the Montana legislature deregulated electricity.

"We need to think about how we're going to do energy in the future and clearly it's going to be in a carbon-constrained world--Congress is going to set carbon standards," she said. "I want to help create jobs for Montanans, and help shield them from the expected dramatic increases in fossil-fuel-based electricity. Montana has the opportunity to bring back fair and reasonable utility rates, but we can't do it by maintaining the status quo."

The PSC is a regulatory body that examines rates set by the energy utility companies. The PSC commissioners work closely with legislators to promote changes that can benefit Montana ratepayers.

Gutsche said she wants to work with the PSC and the utilities to develop Montana-based generation facilities, while solving the problems caused by deregulation.

Gutsche, a Democrat and former Montana state legislator from Missoula, is seeking the seat held by former Republican legislator Doug Mood, Seeley Lake. As a legislator, Mood was a staunch supporter who voted for deregulation, she pointed out.

"What happened with deregulation is that Montana Power sold its generating dams on the rivers and its interest in coal-fired power plants to Pennsylvania Power and Light (PP&L). In this new deregulated environment, the only restriction was competition from other suppliers on the open marketplace," she explained.

Deregulation failed because Montana's small population and large distances were not attractive to companies and they did not compete for the Montana market, she said. The end result was the worst of all possible worlds: no competition, a sole supplier, and no way to control rates.

That means that Montanans saw dramatic price increases while purchasing the bulk of their power from the deregulated PP&L. The dams and the coal plants owned by PP&L are not regulated by the PSC.

The PSC does regulate the transmission and distribution system, and can work to ensure that Northwest Energy has fairly priced services for its customers, but the PSC has no say over PP&L, she pointed out. "We don't have any say over what PP&L does. Therein is the problem."

Everybody's energy bills utility bills have dramatically increased some peoples bills have as much as doubled since we deregulated. "I'd like to work to find some solutions to that," she said.

The last legislative session enacted partial re-regulation, allowing PSC oversight of any new generation facilities that Northwest Energy acquires. But the PSC still won't be able to affect anything happening in Pennsylvania.

"There are other things we can do to rein in PP&L, mostly through legislation," she pointed out.

For example, the PSC could lobby legislators to generate revenue for rate relief, either by increasing the wholesale energy transaction tax, or adjusting the property tax relief on large power generators, or enacting a hydroelectricity production tax.

Interestingly, the PSC is made up of all former legislators and would be able to work with the Montana legislature on developing new policy.

Gutsche served four two-year terms in the Montana House of Representatives during the legislative sessions in 1999, 2001, 2003, and 2005. She served on the Judiciary Committee, the Fish, Wildlife and Parks committees, and was vice-chair of the Natural Resources Committee. She also chaired the Law and Justice interim committee. She was elected Democratic Whip in 2005.

She recalled serving at the same time as former Rep. Paul Clark (HD-13), who is now running for Sen. Jim Elliott's former seat in Senate District 7.

Her main legislative interests involved public access to land, improving habitat for wildlife, preserving clean air and water, and health care, especially for low-income folks and women.

Since leaving the House, she has served on an advisory council for the Department of Corrections.

On the PSC, she said she would seek to develop Montana's renewable resources, especially wind power, but also solar power and geothermal.

In 2005, the Montana legislature passed a renewable energy standard that requires utilities to obtain 15 percent of their energy from renewables by 2015, she noted. The Northwest Energy Judith Gap project is already halfway to that goal, and costs less than the average cost of the rest of the portfolio.

"I think the PSC's role is to encourage Northwest Energy to look at renewable sources, and to work with the legislature to work with the utilities again," she said. "There are many opportunities in Montana for renewables and energy efficiency. Conservation and energy efficiency is our best response because using less energy has significant benefits over developing any new sources of power." Consumers can help hasten the transformation by demanding more efficient and more renewable energy, she suggested. "It's certainly an important part of the recipe."

New technologies like "smart grids" will create jobs, and Montana can be at the forefront, she suggested. Smart grids increase energy effeciency through methods such as setting your appliances to come on and off at off-peak hours

"We need to do what we can to rein in outlandish energy prices, especially when large energy companies are posting huge profits. PP&L is making record profits, charging record prices. We need to hold these companies accountable," she said.

If she serves on the PSC, she promised to keep a lid on rising rates for working folks and others who have to make the choice between paying for food, medicine, and energy. "I want to be an advocate for those folks," she said.

Gail Gutsche is also a staff member of the Wild Rockies Field Institute.

Colstrip Power Contamination Lawsuit

MONTANA, May 15 2008 (Neo Natura) - An attorney in a water contamination lawsuit against eastern Montana's Colstrip power plant says the plant's five corporate owners have agreed to pay $25 million to settle the case.

The 57 plaintiffs - including some plant workers - alleged plant officials knew the plant was contaminating water supplies beneath at least one Colstrip subdivision for four years before notifying the community. A second subdivision and trailer park also suffered contamination, the plaintiffs claimed.

Plaintiffs attorney Jory Ruggiero said no sicknesses resulted, but he said many homeowners and the Colstrip Moose Lodge lost use of their underground wells.

"These companies fought every step of the way," Ruggiero said. "You can't hide the facts when you're testing wells and they're coming up contaminated."

The lawsuit, filed in 2003, had been scheduled to go to trial in early June. The defendants were PPL Montana, Puget Sound Energy, Portland General Electric, Avista Corp., and PacifiCorp.

The corporations jointly own the 2,100 megawatt plant, which is operated by PPL Montana to generate electricity for West Coast markets.

The contamination came from pollutants removed from the power plant's smokestacks to meet clean air requirements. At least two of the holding ponds where that waste was kept leaked.

The lawsuit also alleged another reservoir - Castle Rock Lake, which provides water to operate the plant - leaked in volumes great enough to raise the water level under the town and cause structural damage to some homes.

A PPL Montana spokesman, David Hoffman, said his company has acknowledged contamination, but only near the surface of Colstrip's aquifers and not in the vicinity of deeper residential wells.

PPL Montana bought into the plant in 1999 when it acquired the Montana Power Co. - two years after the contamination problems emerged publicly.

"We certainly believe this tentative agreement is in the best interest of all parties involved," Hoffman said. "We recognize there had been some evidence of contamination in the shallow aquifer."

He said the two holding ponds where the contamination originated have since
been lined with a rubber material meant to prevent further leaks.

In a seperate lawsuit former employees who sued Montana Power Co. 10 years ago will finally get a trial - but it's still two years away.

District Judge Kurt Krueger set a trial date of Jan. 11, 2010, in the lawsuit filed by past Montana Power employees. They are seeking workers' compensation benefits they claim they were due from Montana Power.

Montana Power eventually went bankrupt and was bought by several entities, including NorthWestern Energy. The lawsuit alleges the company breached its contract with the former employees.

DOE Evalution on Water Quality Law

MONTANA, May 08 2008 (Neo Natura) - During 2005, the Montana Board of Environmental Review (BER) announced proposed changes to Montana water quality regulations. The proposal was directed to discharges of water from coal bed natural gas (CBNG) production, and if adopted, could substantially reduce the amount of CBNG production in Montana. Potential impacts could also extend to Wyoming CBNG production through much greater restrictions on water quality that must be met at the interstate border.

DOE’s interest in this proposal stems from the importance of CBNG to U.S. natural gas supply. CBNG currently accounts for 9 percent of U.S. natural gas production and the Powder River Basin, situated in Montana and Wyoming and having a recoverable resource potential in excess of 25 trillion cubic feet, is a prime future source for U.S. natural gas supply. This is especially important in these times of tight natural gas supply and high prices.

DOE conducts technical and regulatory analyses to assist federal and state agencies in developing regulatory requirements that provide environmental benefits commensurate with their economic and energy impacts. These analyses serve to provide a scientific basis for regulatory and land management decision making.

For the proposed Montana CBNG water management rule, DOE tasked Argonne National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratory to evaluate various aspects of the proposal. Argonne focused on regulatory and policy issues and their interrelationships with technology, and Sandia focused on water treatment and engineering, hydrologic and geologic technical issues associated with the zero discharge requirements of the proposal. The findings of these efforts were submitted for the record to the Montana BER.

Big Sky Carbon Sequestration Partnership

MONTANA, May 06 2008 (Neo Natura) - Montana State University's Big Sky Carbon Sequestration Partnership has received a $157,000 grant from the Montana Board of Research and Commercialization to help fund a study of the potential for geologic carbon sequestration at Kevin Dome in northern Montana.

The study is a part of the partnership's Validation Phase research activities being funded by the U.S. Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory.

Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is a technique that removes CO2 in flue gas from power plant smokestacks and buries it in deep geologic formations. CCS is ready for use now, despite the protestations of grant-hungry researchers. The Shady Point power plant in eastern Oklahoma has been removing CO2 from flue gases and pumping it into depleting oil wells for years. CO2 emissions from a cement plant in Montana are pipelined to oilfields in Canada for sequestration. A busy market buying and selling CO2 operates today in the petroleum industry.

Kevin Dome is a subsurface dome-shaped rock structure. This study, led by MSU geologists David Bowen and David Lageson, will evaluate the potential of the dome as a storage site for man-made carbon dioxide emissions. The scientists will use existing well logs, core samples and a variety of subsurface data, including seismic surveys, to characterize the porosity, permeability, thickness, areal extent, and structural features of the dome.

Thirty years of experience in finding, transporting and injecting CO2 into geologic formations to move more oil out of a reservoir to the surface demonstrates that CCS is a viable, secure way to dispose of CO2.

Until recently, the only source of CO2 for oil recovery lay in naturally occurring geologic traps in New Mexico and Colorado, secure in rocks more than 60 million years old. That ancient leak-proof sequestration history should satisfy even the most skeptical critic.

Trapping mechanisms — porous rocks capped by sealing rocks like salt or shale — are common round the world. Norway says its saltwater aquifer used in sequestration in the North Sea can provide enough disposal space for all the CO2 Europe will produce in the next 100 years. Injection of CO2 works in west Texas; in Oklahoma; in Alberta, Canada; and off Norway in the North Sea. How can we doubt that CCS represents a solution for disposing of CO2 from coal-fired power plants today? Now comes the sticking point: cost. The equipment for removing CO2 from flue gases is specialized and therefore expensive. However, when a huge market develops at coal-fired plants, the price for mass-producing the equipment will come down. The result: a bonanza of new manufacturing jobs in the US.

Geologic studies near the plants will be required to locate one or more sealed saltwater aquifers in which to inject the CO2. In many states, enough wells drilled for oil and gas can provide reliable information about subsurface conditions.

Some concern has been raised about injecting CO2 near populated areas. In west Texas, the cities of Midland and Odessa, with some 250,000 residents, are surrounded by many CO2 injection wells with no escaping CO2 detected for 30 years. A new technology, coal conversion to synthetic gas, or syngas, which is composed of hydrogen, CO2 and carbon monoxide, provides a further boon. This almost inexhaustible supply of hydrogen can power fuel cells, while the carbon gases can be sequestered.

Synthetic Fuel Corporation

MONTANA, Apr 30 2008 (Neo Natura) - Back in 1980, Congress passed the Energy Security Act, which led to the creation of something called the Synthetic Fuels Corp. (SFC). Lawmakers provided SFC with up to $88 billion in loans and incentives to get started (the equivalent of about $230 billion in today's dollars) with the goal of creating two million barrels a day of synthetic oil within seven years.

So why aren't you putting SFC oil into your SUV right now? Well, it turns out that members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries didn't appreciate the competition so they started bringing down the price of oil. From 1980, when SFC launched, to 1986, when it was shut down, oil went from more than $39 a barrel to less than $8 a barrel. Suddenly, synthetic oil didn't seem so important anymore.

In announcing the SFC's closure, then-Energy Secretary John Herrington said that oil prices had simply dropped too low to make it a viable business.

But the good news is that those economics don't work anymore. The state of Montana, which is leading the synthetic fuel charge, says we can now make it for
somewhere around $55 a barrel. That's more than a 50 percent discount from what it costs to buy the real stuff.

Oil isn't the only resource going up in price, though. The highest price affecting CTL synthetic fuel creation is the price of coal.

There is an abundance of coal in the United States, but like many other commodities its price is increasingly dependent on events elsewhere in the world. Snowstorms this winter cut coal production in China and heavy rain flooded mines in Australia — the world's largest coal exporter. Meanwhile, demand for coal to generate electricity and make steel is rising almost everywhere, especially in fast-growing China and India.

Congress doesn't seem to keen about helping to boost synthetic fuel from coal. The new farm bill concentrates it's investment of renewable energy exclusively towards providing grants and loans to help advance the development of cellulosic biofuels.

Air Force's Domestic CTL Plans

MONTANA, Apr 25 2008 (Neo Natura) - On March 19th, 2008, the Air Force successfully completed another in a series of tests designed to switch their planes over to synthetic fuel blends made partly from a Fisher-Tropsch (F-T) coal-to-liquids (CTL) process. In 2006 the Air Force successfully flew a B-52 using the new fuel mix. The latest demonstration involved a B-1B Lancer, which flew at supersonic speeds over Texas and New Mexico using a blend of F-T and JP-8 jet fuel.

"The goal is to have every aircraft [certified for] synthetic fuel blends by 2011," said Maj. Don Rhymer, assigned to the Air Force Alternative Fuels Certification Office. "By 2016 we hope at least 50 percent of this fuel will be produced domestically."

Will the Air Force's scheme be implemented? Coal-to-liquids conversion emits lots of carbon dioxide but produces a viable substitute for diesel and jet fuel made by refining crude oil. An epic battle is shaping up between those concerned about climate change and those seeking to lower their transportation fuel costs and enhance their energy security. But is this the right battle for Americans to fight?

Although the Air Force program is currently purchasing gas-to-liquids synfuel purchased overseas, they are pushing for a CTL facility to be built in Montana. While coal is plentiful in the American West, natural gas is far too precious in the North American market to be used as the input for F-T conversion.

With every $10 rise in the price of a barrel of oil costing the Air Force $600 million, the service is converting its entire 6,000-plane fleet to run on a synthetic fuel mixture. Tentative plans call for construction of a coal-to-liquid fuel plant at a Montana air base.

Air Force officials have been testing synthetic fuels based on coal or natural gas. They plan to certify the fleet of nearly 6,000 aircraft to fly on a 50-50 blend of synthetic fuel and traditional petroleum-based jet fuel by 2011.

Assistant Air Force Secretary Bill Anderson said the search for affordable, cleaner-burning alternative fuels was driven by economic and national-security concerns. The United States would be all but powerless to protect the American economy in the face of a catastrophic disruption of oil markets, high-level participants in Oil Shockwave concluded yesterday.

Even without a large oil shock like those of the 1970s, relentless price increases and the possibility of declining global liquids output leading to supply shortfalls in the U.S within the next decade has led the Air Force to the coal-to-liquids solution. If the Air Force thought we were going to be swimming in oil by 2016, their target implementation date, they would not be proposing using F-T to meet their jet fuel needs.

Many obstacles stand in the way of the Air Force's plan. The climate change lobby is not going to roll over on the issue, which creates a bad precedent and provides momentum for carbon-intensive F-T operations in the United States.

"I think across the board there is going to be opposition from the environmental movement," said John Topping, the president of the Climate Institute in Washington. "I'd say it's going to be almost universal because of the climate concerns."

As awareness of the climate problem grows in the United States, the economic squeeze brought on by higher oil prices creates pressure to implement supply-side solutions to alleviate soaring diesel fuel costs.

On April 1st, truckers staged a slowdown to protest high diesel prices. Tons of freight idled across the country Tuesday as independent truckers pulled their rigs off the road while others slowed to a crawl on major highways in a loosely organized protest of high fuel prices.

Using CB radios and trucking Web sites, some truckers called for a strike Tuesday to protest the high cost of diesel fuel, hoping the action might pressure President Bush to stabilize prices by using the nation's oil reserves.

"The gas prices are too high," said Lamont Newberne, a trucker from Wilmington, N.C., who along with 200 drivers protested at a New Jersey Turnpike service area. "We don't make enough money to pay our bills and take care of our family."

Last week's A Recipe For Disaster touched on the record-high average price for diesel fuel in the United States, which now stands at $4.025/gallon according to AAA's Daily Fuel Gage Report. The big rigs get only 5 or 6 miles to the gallon, so long-haul truckers' profit margins are now disappearing. Trucker Lamont Newberne told the AP that "a typical run carrying produce from Lakeland, Fla., to the Hunt's Point Market in The Bronx, N.Y., had cost $600 to $700 a year ago. It now runs $1,000".

According to data compiled by the ATA and the Air Transport Association, the 2007 fuel bill for all U.S. passenger and cargo airlines was $41.2 billion, but the diesel tab for moving goods by truck was $112.6 billion. Trucking fuel consumption far surpasses use for air travel.

Clayton Boyce, a spokesman for the American Trucking Association (ATA), says his group "is pushing for a number of measures to keep the prices down or to otherwise help truckers, including allowing exploration of oil-rich areas of the U.S. that are now off limits...."

It would take years and years to get any diesel fuel from the outer continental shelves, presuming there are commercial oil reserves out there. Where is the diesel supply going to come from? With the Air Force paving the way, Anderson said the private sector, from commercial air fleets to long-haul trucking companies, would follow.

"Because of our size, we can move the market along," he said. "Whether it's (coal-based) diesel that goes into Wal-Mart trucks or jet fuel that goes into our fighters, all that will reduce our dependence on foreign oil, which is the endgame."

A beleaguered trucking industry will seize the opportunity initiated by the Air Force to push for coal-to-liquids. It won't matter politically that such production, like drilling on the outer continental shelves, is many years away, thus providing little tangible relief for truckers. It won't matter that the quantities of diesel fuel produced will be relatively small, or that coal-to-liquids conversion using an F-T process is exorbitantly expensive, or that building an F-T plant presents difficult engineering hurdles that must be overcome, despite the success of South Africa's SASOL, which operates the only CTL plant running anywhere in the world today.

A heavyweight bout is coming soon between the climate lobby, who are trying to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, and the transport industry, which wants cheaper liquid fuels. The latest issue of the Oil & Gas Journal contains a comprehensive special report GTL, CTL finding roles in global energy supply that sheds light on the conflict. The coal-to-liquids data buttresses the positions of both the climate and transportation antagonists. The data comes from a National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) study for the Air Force.

A 50,000 barrel-per-day CTL plant configured as NETL specified will produce 27,819 barrels of diesel and 22,173 barrels of naphtha, which is a principle component of jet fuels like the Jet-B used in the Air Force's certification tests. The F-T process also produces small amounts of lubes and waxes, which can be hyrdrocracked to make more diesel or naphtha. The naphtha itself "[can] be steam-cracked to syngas and recycled back to the F-T reactor to increase production of high quality diesel" according the Oil & Gas Journal report. These numbers will appeal to the transportation industry.

The NETL data also shows that the envisioned F-T plant will produce 32,481 tons of carbon dioxide every day running at full capacity, a ratio of 1.32 tons of CO2 to every ton of coal burned. Without carbon capture, compression and sequestration (CCS) technology, CTL is viewed as a disaster from the climate perspective. This CTL plant would emit 11.8 million tons of carbon dioxide operating at full capacity over a year's time.

Carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S. declined by 1.3 percent in 2006 to 5,877 million metric tons according to the EIA. The 50,000 barrel-per-day CTL plant would add 0.2% to the U.S. 2006 emissions. On the other hand, the U.S. consumed an average of 5.818 million barrels of jet fuel and diesel in the 4 weeks ending March 28th, 2008 according to the EIA's latest Weekly Petroleum Status Report. The CTL plant's output would be 0.8% of this total.

A number of CTL projects are on the drawing board in the United States. Rentech and Peabody have formed a partnership to look into the feasibility of two 10-30 thousand barrel-per day projects, one in Montana and another somewhere in the Midwest. Only one of the projects listed is larger than the CTL specification used in the NETL study.

None of the projects are anywhere close to implementation because of two main factors: 1) uncertainty about future carbon policy and the CCS option and 2) CTL unit CAPEX costs running between $70,000 and $100,000 per barrel of capacity.

The coming battle between climate activists and those in the transportation industry is oddly disconnected from peak oil concerns. We want to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, right? We want the transportation segment of the economy to function, right? This debate misses some salient points. First, global middle diesel production has been flat for some time now and won't increase much, if at all, in the near future. The further out in time one goes, the more likely declines in global diesel production become. Second, substitutes such as diesel from coal-to-liquids will not become available in a timely fashion to produce significant enough quantities to relieve supply-side shortfalls in the next decade. And there are insufficient railroads to replace long-haul trucking or air freight in the United States.

Looking out a decade from now, carbon emissions from diesel in the U.S. are likely to decrease because overall middle distillate consumption is likely to decrease due to price escalation and constrained world supply. Any carbon emissions coming from CTL are not likely to replace what will be lost from decreased consumption, which is a good thing from the climate perspective. It is a disaster if you want a functioning economy. In the meantime, higher fuel costs will eventually be passed through to consumers, spurring destructive inflation. We will require a functioning economy to fix all of our other problems, including anthropogenic climate change.

Regulators OK'd To Set Wind Tax

MONTANA, Apr 24 (Neo Natura) - The Public Service Commission has agreed that NorthWestern Energy should be allowed to charge a wind developer for costs related to bringing the alternative energy source into the utility's grid system, but gave the utility less than it had sought.

Northwestern Energy had wanted Two Dot Wind of Billings to pay for "regulating reserve" power to replace wind power during non-production. The utility noted wind power does not provide a steady source of electricity and the wind company should pay for that reserve power.

Two Dot Wind countered NorthWestern was overcharging the company.

On Tuesday, the Public Service Commission developed two separate formulas that it says provides less than what NorthWestern wanted to charge, but will force Two Dot to pay something.

Commissioner Ken Toole said the dispute was to be expected as the state develops a system to handle expanded development of alternative energy sources.

"I think this is normal and natural that we are going to struggle with this new kind of resource," Toole said. "This resource is one that represents a lot of challenges, but it also represents a lot of benefits."

Commissioner Brad Molnar voted against the measure and said he was worried the plan would shift the cost of integrating wind power to consumers.

Chairman Greg Jergesen said the approach taken by the PSC "carefully threaded the needle" to reach a workable compromise.

Jergesen said the arrangement might be used as a template if other disputes arise between NorthWestern and wind developers.

NorthWestern buys power from Two Dot Wind, and others, as part of a requirement under state and federal rules to buy energy from small wind developers.