This page contains a Flash digital edition of a book.
Challenge of Greening the Future


By Angela Perez, with contributions from Tory Tedder Your home’s electricity comes


from one of two sources: fossil fuels and renewable resources. Electric cooperatives balance these resources to deliver safe, reliable, and affordable power. Most electricity gets produced


by either burning fossil fuels or producing a nuclear reaction. Both have consequences. Fossil fuels emit carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas blamed as a climate change contributor. Nuclear reactors emit clean water vapor (steam) but create high- level radioactive waste. Fossil fuels (primarily coal


and natural gas) and uranium (the element required for nuclear energy production) are non- renewable, finite resources with limited stockpiles. Conversely, energy produced from water, wind, sun, biomass, the earth’s heat, and hydrokinetic sources like tides and ocean waves replenish themselves–they are renewable. When it comes to generating


renewable electricity for rural America, electric cooperatives are leading the way. Nationally, electric co-ops receive 13 percent


8 April 2013


of their power requirements from renewable resources compared to 10 percent for electric utilities as a whole. OEC and its power generation co-op, Western Farmers Electric Cooperative (WFEC), top that with wind contributing around 13 percent to the power mix and another 8 percent from hydropower. With the addition in mid- 2012 of the Rocky Ridge wind farm (pictured above), WFEC's wind generation potential increases to some 17 percent, reports WFEC's Sondra Boykin. Renewable energy has its


share of challenges. Green power resources don’t exist everywhere or in sufficient quantity to keep the lights on all of the time. Tere’s also a need for more transmission lines to move renewable power from the places where it’s generated to population centers, and a need for new technology


capable of storing electricity produced by variable wind and solar facilities as a way to make them more reliable forms of generation. Te North American


Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), which oversees reliable operation of the bulk power grid covering the United States, most of Canada, and a sliver of Mexico, estimates 39,000 miles of transmission lines need to be built by 2019, with 27 percent dedicated to connecting renewable resources to the grid. Yet getting these lines constructed poses major regulatory and community challenges. Already NERC claims almost 6,500 miles of planned transmission lines are delayed, with the typical delay lasting up to three years. Meanwhile, the U.S. Energy


Information Administration’s (EIA) 2012 Energy Outlook


Top of this page: The Rocky Ridge wind project, located in Kiowa and Washita counties, has 93 GE turbines on its 18,000 acres. Each turbine has the capability to produce 1.6 megawatts of electricity. Photo by Mark Daugherty, WFEC.


Top of next page: The share of U.S. electricity generation coming from renewable fuels (including conventional hydropower) is expected to grow from 13 percent in 2011 to 16 percent in 2040. Source: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory


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