Climate and energy

KEEP – the Kansas Energy and Environmental Policy advisory group. Many CEP readers are followers of the KEEP process, but in case you aren’t, KEEP was formed in spring 2008 by Governor Sebelius, and charged with carrying out a climate action planning process for the state of Kansas.

Climate action planning process? What huh? Translation – reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions with minimum burdens and maximum benefit for the Kansas economy.

It’s more or less an 18 month planning process. Started out with gobs of options on the table, participants added more, then the technical working groups just recently narrowed those options down to 46-48 (depending on who’s counting). Those proposals will be fleshed out, economic modeling and other quantative analysis will take place, then the KEEP will analyze what works, what doesn’t, and vote on what policy recommendations to submit to the legislature.

That’s the short version, but I think it hits the highlights.

Nope, forgot the big one – as part of the executive order forming KEEP, the group is charged with developing an inventory and forecast of GHG sources and emissions from 1990 through 2025, as well as short-, medium-, and long-term goals for statewide GHG reductions.

The KEEP met in Topeka earlier this week. Ice and snow made the drive home interesting for all. It was almost one year to the day since the ice storm that shut down NE KS for weeks (and from which several utilities are still trying to recover).

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As is fairly standard, the meeting kicked off with an address by Lt. Gov. Mark Parkinson. He was recovering from the flu, and very considerately did his intro via conference call so as not to spread germs.

Gist: KS has recently gotten very busy on the renewables and carbon fronts. Lot of discussion re the Midwest Governors Association (MGA) climate accord process.

Review – about a year or more ago KS signed up for the MGA process, which is looking at establishing a regional cap and trade system (similar to the process started by Western Governors, which KS is observing). The recent history of climate action and carbon regulation is that it comes from the state level, not the feds – but with the election of Barack Obama, that trend could certainly change. However, the MGA process is still widely considered to be (in the words of KEC Chairman and KEEP member Ken Frahm) a “valuable dress rehearsal” for what will happen with carbon regs on the federal level.

KS is one of the very few ag states participating in this process, though. As the Lt.Gov also put it, “we need to be engaged in the national process in order to get our issues on the table.”

Case in point – carbon offsets for soil sequestration of carbon dioxide. Non-ag states don’t particularly get those or necessarily think they’re important. Ag states hopefully do. Thanks in no small part to the efforts of the KS MGA delegation, offsets are still on the table. And I can’t recall if a low-carbon fuel standard was mentioned in this context or in the KEC meeting the next day – but that is an example of a complementary policy for cap and trade that also matters to ag states.

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Two big things happened at this KEEP meeting – (1) the group offered its first round of feedback on the draft Kansas GHG Emissions Inventory and Forecast report (.pdf), and (2) the KEEP’s five technical working groups (TWGs) offered recommendations on their priority policy options for future analysis.

I need to make this sound more interesting. Okay – basically, the inventory is a giant list of all the GHG emission sources in Kansas. Why does this matter? Well, if you were on that list and knew that carbon regulation was likely coming down the pike, wouldn’t you care? This document will provide the baseline. Carbon sinks are included as well (sinks absorb carbon emissions). Emissions are broken down by economic sector.

Some of the feedback on the draft inventory so far – and this was not the last opportunity for feedback, this is a document in progress:

From the Ag/ Forestry/ Waste TWG – some discussion about data sources for emissions from agricultural burning- K-State and Extension did participate in the datagathering process. Some dismay that emission estimates from this source had tripled from earlier numbers. Additionally, emissions from wheat residue burning dwarfs rangeland burning. They need better data on forestry sinks, and they don’t know enough yet about how to measure the carbon sinks of rangelands.

From the Energy Supply TWG – Observations that energy generated by KS utilities was overestimated. Suggestion to count emissions based on consumption (per customer, or kilwowatt hour). (I can only guess that other ways to count emissions would have to do with generation – I did ask someone, who told me that as yet there wasn’t necessarily a standardized way to count emissions. Renewables will also be made a separate category so as to reflect out of state sales.

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Onward to the prioritization of the policy options. Man! Translation – how the KEEP figured out what really mattered.

Here’s how it worked - back at the beginning of the KEEP process, the facilitators, Center for Climate Strategies, handed over a giant, tree-killing stack of paper containing all the policy options ever considered by any of the other 20 or so states they have ever worked with. The KEEP then added options they thought were better suited for Kansas, resulting in even more giant stacks of paper.

Over the last two months, the TWGs have been working to narrow down those options. They voted to categorize options as Tier 1, 2, or 3. Tier 3 pretty much went bye-bye and no one seems to mind. At this meeting, the KEEP considered Tier 1 and Tier 2, and pushed some options up or down in the priority process.

You can read all these options for yourself on the KEEP website. By no means am I going to capture all that here. What I will note are some general trends. Here’s a few of the topics that seem to keep popping up in KS energy discussions since the end of the last legislative session (not necessarily in any particular order):

• the MGA process
• the profile of carbon credits and soil sequestration is rising
• so is the need for research into lowering the GHG emissions of traditional fossil fuels, and for looking into compressed air storage to stabilize wind for baseload
• water. water. water. how will water availability affect how Kansas meets energy needs in the future?
• transmission lines – and not just building new ones, but upgrading old ones
• nuclear power – how to afford it, where to put it, and again, what about the water – then licensing, uprating, and re-powering
• natural gas – one participant read over the energy supply list of recs and asked where the natural gas was.
• effective net metering policies
• how utilties get reimbursed for energy efficiency

Thread throughout the discussion – an emphasis on good data for assessing GHG emissions and reductions. Also,  how to use the next KEEP phase – designing straw policy proposals – to come up with final recommendations that make economic sense at the same time as they lower GHG emissions as much as possible. Bang for the buck.

Miscellaneous: Speed limits were mentioned. Lots of laughter. No laughter when the question of the GHG emissions from a proposed freight/ truck intermodal system was raised. Several Tier 2 transportation options were pushed back up to Tier 1. There was some discussion also of the transmission dispute between ITC Great Plains and Westar. The interim KEEP report for the Governor was also discussed.

Next KEEP meeting is scheduled for April 30. Between now and then, the TWGs will work out the straw proposals for policy design – all 46, 47, or 48 of them… and then it sounded like the KEEP would go over every single one of those at the next meeting, and propose modifications before the modeling takes place.

The really good news? At this meeting, there was chocolate! The people are great, the topic is fascinating – and sugar helps keep it that way.

— Maril Hazlett, www.climateandenergy.org

Full disclosure – CEP staff are also participants in the KEEP process.