Gov. Sebelius State of the State Address, 1/12/2009 – and can someone please find the Republican response online for me…?
January 12, 2009
Re the energy bit, clipped from the Wichita Eagle:
… The American energy crisis provides Kansas with challenges we must face and opportunities that together we must seize.
The energy crisis is real on many fronts affecting our economy, our national security, and our environment. Our own scientists at Kansas State University and the University of Kansas have joined with an overwhelming number of experts around the world who tell us that our time to solve these problems is running out.
While we know that the incoming President has promised a new federal energy policy and swift action, there’s uncertainty about the exact rules and financial liabilities Congress will impose.
Kansas is already one of the nation’s worst offenders in per capita carbon emissions, which makes us vulnerable to the costs and penalties of imminent federal regulation.
Recently, the Kansas Energy Council confirmed that we have adequate electricity to power us for years into the future; and no state is better suited to lead the country in renewable power than is Kansas. To do so, we must harness all of the energy that we can from wind, and we’ve already made significant progress.
Two years ago we entered into a voluntary agreement with our utilities to generate 1,000 megawatts of wind power in Kansas by 2010. Tonight, I’m happy to announce that we achieved that goal two years early.
But, we’ve just scratched the surface. The time will come when we reach our potential of 10,000 megawatts of wind from the prairies across Kansas–power used both here in our state and exported to supply the country with clean and renewable energy.
In fulfilling our potential we can attract billions of investment dollars for both transmission lines and the wind farms. We can create thousands of new jobs. And, Kansas landowners will see the benefit of millions of dollars of lease payments for their wind.
Just as Dwight Eisenhower led the effort to develop an interstate highway system to move goods and people across the country, Kansas can lead the development of an interstate transmission system to move power to market.
I am committed to work with the Kansas Corporation Commission to bring the competing companies together to reach a compromise on building new transmission lines in Kansas.
And I pledge that we’ll continue to work with neighboring states in encouraging the Southwest Power Pool to accelerate development of a fair and progressive rate structure for a new transmission grid across our region.
But the cleanest and cheapest energy is energy we don’t use in the first place, so I’m directing the Kansas Corporation Commission to work with our utility companies on measurable and significant energy efficiency programs to further extend our available power well into the future.
We must change our outdated rate structure, which currently rewards consumption, instead of conservation, and fully engage Kansas consumers in reducing their energy use.
I ask the Kansas Legislature to work with me on a green energy proposal which has already been endorsed by two of our major utilities and includes net metering, new building codes, and statutory goals for renewable energy in Kansas. This legislation will send a clear signal to private investors and renewable manufacturers that Kansas is embracing a clean energy future, and will help to spur investment and innovation.
Finally, I am pleased that Len Rodman, CEO of Black and Veatch, a Kansas company that provides strategic advice throughout the world on green energy initiatives, has agreed to Chair my newly created GreenWorks Advisory Council, to expand our opportunities to add more renewable energy jobs in Kansas. Thank you, Len.
With all of us working together, we can and will seize this opportunity. Kansas will become a hub of wind power, a heartland center for green industries, and we will lead the country and the world out of the energy crisis we face…
I’m going to send a shout out for help, since I have to get offline now and have a busy day tomorrow – could someone please find the link to Senate President Morris’s Republican response to Sebelius, and post the link in the comments? (Can’t seem to find the link tonight, ack – I could only find a partial section of it)
:) thank you – I appreciate it!
Also a shout out to newly sworn in Senator Oletha Faust-Goudeau (formerly a member of the House Energy Committee, as some of you may recall) – she is now Kansas’s first black female senator.
A historic first for our state.
— Maril Hazlett, www.climateandenergy.org
Live Blogging – Notes from the KETA meeting
January 12, 2009
Running short on time. Prepare for the super-fast digest version:
Said meeting was last Friday afternoon – which definitely cut down on the attendance, I noticed. KETA kicked off the meeting by kicking those who did attend out of the room, so the authority could hold an executive session related to legal advice on intervening before the KCC on the ITC/ Westar dockets re the disputed Spearville to Wichita line.
KETA decided to intervene in dockets 08-ITCE-936-COC and 08-PWTE-1022-COC (sorry if I have the numbers wrong). KETA is intervening in the interests of protecting the reliability of Kansas electricity and the diversity of the Kansas economy, both of which will be substantially affected if they do NOT intervene (as per their language) (and I paraphrase). Later on they also discussed attending the ITC/Westar settlement meetings coming up at the end of this week.
As you might recall from the last KETA meeting, they were waiting breathlessly, kind of, for the results of the SPP Cost Allocation Working Group (CAWG) re the balanced portfolio. Reason being, the KCC staff wants the SPP to settle on a cost allocation process before the KCC will approve transmission lines.
Well, if this is the case, then they will be waiting a while. Sounds like the CAWG process imploded at their January meeting. Not only did the CAWG not come up with any recommendation for the SPP, they actually scrapped the entire process and went back to the drawing board. The CAWG now has three months to do it all over really fast – starting with developing a new economic model, scrubbing the data, etc. Hopefully this will be done by the end of April 2009. That’s the plan, anyway.
Jay Caspary had to deliver that bad news. KCC staff member and CAWG participant Larry Holloway did not attend this KETA meeting. As Caspary explained the CAWG decision, “stakeholders were getting really nervous about the huge benefits shown in the models” re the wind buildout in SPP territory. Since literally millions of $$$ will be changing hands as a result of these models, they want to get it right. And as many of you know, Nebraska is now joining the SPP and none of the models took that into consideration.
I think I just heard a reader or two scream :) come on, toughen up. Bureaucracy can actually get even more convoluted than this, believe it or not. You gotta get tough, or you’ll die of a stress-related heart attack long before your time.
Chairman Holmes asked how the SPP CAWG delay would delay the proposed Kansas transmission line projects from Spearville to Wichita. Caspary said he didn’t know – a lot of that depended on where the ITC and Westar projects were in their planning stages. SPP needs to know those plans or they can’t create adequate models.
(Sorry, I just started giggling hysterically. Okay, wait, I’m fine now. I guess it does get a little circular.)
Chairman Holmes also pointed out that the KCC is basing their delay on the CAWG decisions for the EHV overlay and balanced portfolion cost allocation mechanisms (which are so mixed together they are all but impossible to sort out – the balanced portfolio is only 345 kV and the EHV is 765 kV, but the 345s could easily be upgraded to 765s in some cases, which would be EHV) – and that ITC can’t start the right of way and siting processes until that gets figured out.
An interesting point came up on the KETA line (which is already approved!), the Spearville to Knoll to Axtell, NE. ITC is building that one, and they could only get cost allocation for 345. However, that line too could possibly be upgraded to 765 if the SPP CAWG cost allocation happened in a timely fashion.
ITC updated KETA on the progress of this line: They are working on the routing now, with 4 possible routes. They are starting the public meetings, which means that they are now down to three routes, and that will be whittled down further as the public meetings progress. ITC hopes to start the siting application process before the KCC this February. ITC exec Carl Huslig said it is a certainty that ITC will face KCC questions about why ITC is pursuing the siting when there is no CAWG decision yet. 2011 is still the completion date. Holmes offered ITC KETA’s explicit support in the KCC siting process.
There weren’t a lot of conclusions at the end of this meeting. We’re in a holding pattern, for the moment.
Sounds like the next KETA meeting is tentatively scheduled for Feb 27. I should mention that there was also a nice presentation to Senator Emler, in honor of his service to KETA over the past three years. He will be replaced by Senator Pat Apple, the new chair of Senate Utilities.
Re the Kansas transmission drama: someone said something so obvious to me today that I felt like smacking myself with a brick for not thinking of it earlier. Their comment: “When two companies both really want to compete to build something, what do you usually do? You hold a bidding process! Doesn’t that sound logical??”
Yes. It is logical. And yet – and yet -
agh.
Hey, BTW – the Kansas legislature is now in session, as of today. And Governor Sebelius’s State of the State address is at 7:00 pm tonight.
— Maril Hazlett, www.climateandenergy.org
NOTE – this is a tentative agenda. But the times/ place should be good. MH
Revised TENTATIVE AGENDA*
Joint Committee on Energy and Environmental Policy
January 13, 2009
Memorial Hall Auditorium
120 SW 10th
Topeka, KS 66612
The meeting will begin at 9:00 a.m. and adjourn at approximately 10:45 a.m.
9:00 a.m. Welcome – Chairperson Senator Carolyn McGinn
Overview of Carbon Tax and Cap-and-Trade Policies
Dan Chartier, Manager, Air Quality Programs, Edison Electric Institute
Panel Discussion of Carbon Tax and Cap-and-Trade Policy Options
Amy Blankenbiller, The Kansas Chamber
Brad Harrelson, Kansas Farm Bureau
Nancy Jackson, The Climate and Energy Project
Tom Thompson, Sierra Club
Woody Moses, Ash Grove Cement
Opening Questions for Panel: How would either a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade
system impact your industry or community? What benefits would you anticipate
for your industry or community resulting from either of those policies? From the
perspective of your business/industry/organization, assuming no action is taken on
either at the federal level, which would you rather see the Kansas Legislature
pursue and why?
Distribution of Committee’s Initial Report to the Legislature
Approval of December 5 Committee Minutes
Jetmore, KS gets wind power underway
January 12, 2009
Yay, Jetmore! (My grandmother’s hometown.) From Hays Daily News (AP):
Jetmore to own its own wind energy
JETMORE, Kan. (AP) — Within weeks, the western Kansas town of Jetmore plans to become the first town in the state to own its towers and turbines to produce wind energy.
It’s taken two years of research and planning but the town of 933 residents 29 miles north of Dodge City hopes to have its two refurbished wind chargers operating by the end of the month.
Various state schools have wind turbines, but Jetmore is the first official town in Kansas to have its own wind turbines and towers, said Jim Ploger, climate and energy programs manager with the Kansas Corporation Commission.
For more than 30 years, the town’s power plant has been used only for a backup power source, said Ray Burns, city superintendent.
Currently, Jetmore gets its electricity from Midwest Energy. It will continue that arrangement but when the two wind chargers are operating, they will feed directly into the city’s grid, producing 12 percent of the town’s energy.
The two units were built by West Wind Energy of Otis and were used in California before being sold to Jetmore.
Each tower, which will be a mile east of town on Hodgeman County land, costs $250,000 and has a five-year operation contract. That cost doesn’t pay for running the lines into the grid, which is similar to hooking into an extension cord, explained Lea Ann Seiler, director of Hodgeman County Economic Development.
Jetmore paid for the wind chargers by cashing in underperforming CDs.
“We looked at the return from the generation and saw it would be more cost-effective for the city than paying interest on a loan,” Seiler said.
The towers will go on county land used for a buffer zone at a landfill a mile east of town. The Kansas Department of Health and Environment approved the town’s request to build the towers at that spot.
The city has a long-term lease with the county and will pay it $300 per tower annually.
As the cost of electricity increases, the community believes it will save money by producing its own power, even if it is only 12 percent of its electricity, Burns said.
I heard a utility executive (who shall remain unnamed) in all innocence ask “what are wind chargers?” a while back – and thought, well, he must not be from around here, or at least not from the rural here, or the odds are he would know. They called them wind chargers before they called them turbines – ie, my great uncle used a wind turbine to charge up batteries to light his house at night. Which made it a wind charger.
—- Maril Hazlett, www.climateandenergy.org
Wind siting webinar coming up Jan 14
January 12, 2009
From email notice:
This is to announce an upcoming webinar on the topic of Wind Power Siting & Environmental Issues. The webinar will take place on Wednesday, January 14, 2009 at 10:00am (Mountain Time). There will be 3 speakers and the webinar will last approximately 2 hours. During the course of the webinar, speakers will examine site-specific and cumulative issues related to wind energy generation. Topics will include environmental benefits associated with wind, public perception and engagement, siting and regulatory framework, environmental and siting challenges. At the end of the presentations, there will be a question & answer period.
This webinar is the second in a series of webinars on the topic of Wind and Renewable Energy. Attached you will find a schedule of other webinars that will be taking place in the upcoming months. We hope you are able to join us.
To participate in this webinar or to register for any of the events listed in the webinar schedule, please contact:
Ryan Harry
BCS, Incorporated
Phone: 303-425-6800
Email: RHarry@BCS-HQ.com
