[8] Analysis: Dam Breaching Would Leave A Big Carbon Footprint

While federal policymakers ponder just how much "more" BiOp Judge James Redden wants in the region's new salmon plan before he gives it a passing grade, Northwest environmental groups such as the Northwest Energy Coalition are pushing the idea that the region could take out the lower Snake dams without any real consequences, economic or otherwise--a position they say is backed up by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council's latest power plan.

Disregarding the feds' conclusion that the ESA-listed fish runs can probably recover with the dams in place, NWEC echoed results from the council plan that estimated gains from energy conservation will make consumers' electric bills actually go down over the next 20 years, even though actual rates will go up.

The council plan says bills are expected to go down 0.7 percent a year over the next 20 years with the dams in place. If the dams are removed, bills would only go down 0.1 percent a year, since coal- and gas-fired generation would be needed to make up for the hydro generation, along with more market purchases of wholesale power.

"The study concludes--as Bright Future [NWEC's own energy report] does--that the power production and other benefits of the four dams can be very affordably replaced. And that doesn't reflect the economic boom of a revived commercial and recreational fishery," trumpeted NWEC's Feb. 10 press release, which did give the NPCC plan a lot of credit for pushing conservation efforts and energy efficiency for soaking up 85 percent of the region's energy needs for the next 20 years.

Such a rosy scenario could help a certain federal judge prod the feds to come up with a little "more" than they already have to satisfy his concerns.

In his latest move, the judge got the feds to commit to breaching studies if the runs begin to tank. But he has hinted that it would be better for everybody if the feds adopted still more ideas from plaintiffs.

Though he hasn't said anything specifically about it, one of those ideas might be to toughen up the biological triggers (low fish counts) the feds have said will get breaching studies rolling--or why not just start breaching studies right now, since it looks like we can certainly afford to take those pesky dams out?

Redden has given the feds a three-month remand to tuck the Obama add-ons into the salmon plan, and that includes the breaching-study contingencies.

Call me paranoid, but it's happened before. The judge does seem swayed by dam-removal sentiment, despite the prospect of a huge spring chinook return to the Columbia this year.

After a pro-breaching article circulated throughout the region last year that touted what amounted to an outdated and laughable extinction analysis called the Doomsday Clock, the judge made public his concerns over the ESA-listed runs going extinct, contrary to all recent trends on spawning beds.

Redden could easily support Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski's position that breaching studies should begin right now, and fault the feds if they don't add the action to their final document.

But the council's new power plan does not support NWEC's rosy assumptions about dam breaching at all.

The council analyzed 10 future power-demand scenarios, including removing the four dams on the lower Snake, and compared them to the future that seems most likely to occur--one where carbon costs begin to be levied and increase over the 20 years of the plan's timeline.

The scenarios estimated that removing the dams would increase regional carbon emissions by three million tons per year, since more gas-fired plants would have to be built to take their place. Current carbon emissions are about 57 million tons per year.

Breaching would also boost BPA's revenue requirements by $530 million a year, beginning in 2020, when the dams were estimated to be removed, and by even more in future years.

Removing the dams would also increase regional power system costs by $4 billion to $7 billion and lead to higher consumer bills and utility rates.

Without those dams, more natural gas-fired plants would have to be built to provide for reliable power, and more power would have to be imported from other gas and coal sources outside the Northwest, with less to be exported.

The three-million-ton increase in CO2 emissions would be a 7.6-percent boost to the carbon-risk scenario, according to the council's plan. That's five times more than the amount of carbon saved by the states' renewables portfolio standards used in the modeling effort.

So the upshot of dam removal would be to increase BPA's priority firm power rate by nearly 30 percent--and that doesn't include costs of replacing power-system reserves, reactive support for transmission provided by the dams, or the cost of removing them.

In other words, as more wind power goes on line, we will need those lower Snake dams more than ever.

How do you square that with these remarks from a Sept. 15, 2009, press release from Earthjustice, the group leading the charge for removing those dams:

"Opponents of following the science have called the idea of removing dams dangerous in light of climate change concerns. Salmon advocates, however, point to expert analysis from the NW Energy Coalition and a new analysis from the Northwest Conservation and Planning Council (sic) to show that protecting salmon and providing for a clean energy future are both imminently doable and affordable.

"'We truly can have both clean, affordable energy and healthy salmon runs in the Pacific Northwest,' said NW Energy Coalition executive director Sara Patton. 'It's not an either/or. We have an abundance of untapped clean energy opportunities, so saying dam removal would lead to large increases in climate emissions is nonsense. The Northwest can show the rest of the country how to right our past mistakes while creating jobs and providing for a better future.'"

However, even Bright Future's fine print calls for using gas-fired plants for 30 years or so to make up for interim power losses from dam removal--until the magical future of wind power and conservation takes hold.

But that bright future may be dimming somewhat. NWEC's senior policy analyst Steve Weiss told NW Fishletter that more gas-fired plants will be needed in the future, whether the dams stay or not.

It's not a position NWEC admits in public pronouncements. Just a few days ago, Patton said in The Oregonian's online version that "so great are conservation's cost-savings that two actions analyzed but not part of the actual plan--shutting off enough coal power to meet state carbon-reduction laws and replacing the power from four controversial dams on the lower Snake River--still wouldn't raise the average electricity bill."

But she forgot to mention anything about those three million more tons of CO2 added to the environment every year.

So by going green, we may be going more in the black, both financially and atmospherically, than some of us want to admit.

Spewing three million more tons of CO2 into the air every year on the off chance it might add a few thousand more salmon to Idaho streams seems like a fishy tradeoff, since barging fish would no longer be an option with the dams gone.

Plus, it would swamp any savings from the states' prospective renewables portfolios. -B. R.

The following links were mentioned in this story:

Northwest Power and Conservation Council's latest power plan

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