Utah to get raked over coal?

A growing outcry over global warming and the push for carbon regulation could pose serious risks for Utah consumers who rely on coal-fired power plants to generate their electricity.

Rich Walje, president of Rocky Mountain Power, warned Thursday that potential federal mandates regulating carbon emissions could hurt Utah ratepayers to a greater extent than those in other areas of the country.

About 95 percent of Utah's electricity is generated by coal-fired power plants.

Walje, who addressed members of the Utah Association of Energy Users, said it would be unfair for the utility's Utah customers to be penalized for decisions made decades ago to build coal-fired power plants.

And, he added, it took a couple hundred years to establish the nation's carbon-based economy, something that cannot easily be changed overnight.

For Rocky Mountain Power and its parent company, Portland-based PacifiCorp, the issue has come to the forefront of public attention much sooner than anticipated.

"We thought that there was going to be a longer discussion," Walje said. "It wasn't that we weren't thinking about these things. We just didn't think we would have to respond quite so quickly to either congressional changes or what individual states are doing."

Yet in the Northwest, where PacifiCorp is headquartered, there has been a proactive response to the threats posed by climate change.

For instance, proposed legislation in Oregon would require that state's electricity system to be composed of 25 percent renewable resources by 2025.

"Why is your skiing industry not freaking out about climate change?" asked Bob Jenks, executive director of the Oregon Citizens Utility Board, a ratepayer group. "The winter economy there (in Utah) is in trouble."

Walje said the PacifiCorp system will have a 3,000-megawatt deficit by 2016. A megawatt is enough electricity to power about 500 homes.

Much of that deficit is attributable to Utah's growing demand for power, Walje said. But meeting Utah's electricity demands could prove problematic for the utility. The Oregon Public Utility Commission already has denied a request by PacifiCorp to pursue competitive bidding to build two proposed coal-fired power plants, one in Utah by 2012 and another in Wyoming by 2013.

That ultimately could leave Utah ratepayers footing the cost of two coal-fired power plants, without the help of Oregon, Washington or California customers.

"I have a hard time understanding — with what we know about global warming — why a state would rationally say, 'Let's build coal plants, even though we don't know what the cost of carbon pollution will be,"' Jenks said. "I think there are a lot of options out there, but I think the option that I don't think is going to work is building coal plants and making Oregon pay for it."

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