Skyrocketing energy prices, including the cost of nontraditional fuels, may make it feasible to develop Utah's enormous oil-shale reserves, lawmakers were told Wednesday.

Speakers told members of two legislative interim committees — the Public Utilities and Technology Interim Committee and the Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment Interim Committee — that oil shale could make Utah an important producer of petroleum products.

Meanwhile, other forms of alternative fuel, including nuclear power, came in for hard knocks during the meetings Wednesday.

Because of historically abundant coal resources, Utah has enjoyed inexpensive energy until now. According to Philip J. Powlick, manager of the state's energy program, the average cost of power to Utahns from generating plants already built is about 6 cents per kilowatt-hour.

In comparison, nuclear power could be far more expensive than touted, said Christopher Thomas, policy director for the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah. The nuclear industry has talked about the cost of home electricity from nuclear plants as 1.8 cents per kilowatt hour. That amount was to cover only operating costs such as fuel and maintenance, not construction expenses.

An investor service report issued last month predicted that the cost, including building a new nuclear plant, would send electricity production into the range of $5,000 to $6,000 per installed kilowatt, he said.

Recently, leaders of Transition Power Development, a private equity group, said they would like to build a two-unit nuclear plant somewhere in eastern Utah. It would produce 3,000 megawatts of power, they said.

"It's a huge project," Thomas said.

Allowing for economies of scale, the plant could cost between $10 billion and $15 billion, Thomas told the Deseret Morning News, and he believes the cost of home electricity generated by the plant would be more expensive than many realize.

According to Powlick, within 10 years, a new 230-megawatt plant using geothermal power could be built to provide electricity at about 8 cents per kilowatt-hour. In the long term, for Utah to have 620 megawatts of electricity from this source, the cost would rise to 20 cents per kilowatt-hour, he said.

"A lot of people want to see geothermal expand very quickly," Powlick said. An advantage of generating power from rocks heated below Earth's surface is that it would work round the clock, "unlike solar or wind." Solar power units can stop generating during a rainstorm or at night, and the wind doesn't blow all the time.

A development company may need to pay $1 million to drill for the geothermal resource, and if it has a dry hole, the expenses aren't recovered. Also, transmission lines between hot spots and distribution systems could be expensive.