Former utility exec pitches a fossil-fuel-free future

By Mike Dennison - 05/14/2008

HELENA — A former utility executive and energy adviser says America can and should phase out coal-generated power and move entirely to renewable electricity within 30 years.

S. David Freeman, who advised President Jimmy Carter on energy in the 1970s and ran Los Angeles Water and Power and the Tennessee Valley Authority, says the conversion is not without its costs.

But when measured against the long-term environmental damage and geopolitical costs of continuing to burn coal, oil and gas, moving to wind, geothermal, solar and hydrogen power makes economic sense, he says.

“It all depends on whether you want to take out an insurance policy against the serious risk of global warming, and whether you care about ordinary air pollution, which is just shortening people’s lives,” he said in an interview this week.

Freeman, 82, visited Montana this week, at the invitation of the Policy Institute, a liberal think tank in Helena, and the Sierra Club, an environmental group.

He appeared Monday on a panel at the Burton K. Wheeler Center’s annual conference in Bozeman and spoke in Helena and Missoula.

Freeman, who lives in a Los Angeles suburb, also has written a book, “Winning our Energy Independence.” The idea of renewable energy is gaining ground in the minds of the public, Freeman says. But its development is resisted by utilities and oil companies, and needs a push from policymakers and the government, he adds.

“When some smart-aleck comes along and says you ought to be building solar-power plants, (utilities) kind of resent it,” Freeman says. “There’s something in us that wants to keep doing what we’re doing, because we know how.” Freeman says the country should ban new coal-fired power plants, phase out existing ones and invest in technologies and infrastructure that can deliver reliable solar, geothermal and wind power.

Natural gas, the cleanest of fossil fuels, can be used to generate needed electricity as the conversion to renewables unfolds, he says.

Greg Jergeson, the chairman of Montana’s Public Service Commission, says he’s not ready to rule out the use of any available energy resource, such as coal, and that he’s hoping technological advances will render it less polluting.

Yet he agreed that regulators should promote renewable energy when they can. He noted that the PSC is seeking a grant to study storage of compressed air that could be used to generate wind power when the wind doesn’t blow.

“I think you need people like (Freeman) with his experience to push the envelope,” Jergeson said Tuesday.

Pat Corcoran, vice president of government and regulatory affairs for North-Western Energy, the state’s largest electric utility, says renewable resources will “play an ever more important role” in electricity production.

Yet the utility still needs to provide affordable, reliable power for its customers, and it’s not known if an all-renewable-energy system can accomplish that goal, he said.

“Whether it’s gas-fired or clean coal, you’re going to need a resource that’s going to provide stability,” Corcoran said. “The question at the end of the day, as a utility and a country, is that we need to find a balanced portfolio of resources.” Freeman said there’s no such thing as “clean coal,” which he called a marketing gimmick from the coal and energy companies.

Oil and coal companies give lip-service to renewable energy development, but they’re not putting any serious money into it, he added.

Freeman acknowledges that the country will need to build new infrastructure, such as transmission lines, to move energy from new plants in new locations, and that it will be more costly initially.

Yet the investment will pay off in the future, he argues.

“Over time, the cost of these fossil fuels is going to keep going up,” Freeman says. “The beauty of a renewable resource like wind and sun is, once you bought it, once you build it, the sun rises every day and the wind blows every day, and it ain’t going up in price.”