Legislators consider: Will costly new energy sources help oil shale?

Skyrocketing energy prices, including the cost of non-traditional fuels, may make it feasible to develop Utah's enormous oil-shale reserves, experts told two legislative committees today.

Experts told members of two interim committees — the Public Utilities and Technology Interim Committee, and then the Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment Interim Committee — that oil shale could make Utah one of the greatest petroleum-product producers.

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

Electrical power generation from renewable or nuclear power will be expensive, speakers said at the utilities meeting.

Because of abundant coal resources, Utah has enjoyed inexpensive energy. 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.

Christopher Thomas, policy director for the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah, said nuclear power could be far more expensive than touted in the past. At one time, the nuclear industry talked about the cost of 1.8 cents per kilowatt hour. That was to cover only operating costs such as fuel and maintenance, not construction expenses, he said.

An investor service report issued last month predicted that the cost, including that of building a new nuclear power plant, would amount to $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.

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 nearly 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.