Air Pollution Prevention Forum: Meetings & Calls

Summary of the March 13-14, 2000 Meeting of the Air Pollution Prevention (AP2) Forum

Portland, Oregon

Venue

Attendees

Also in attendance were Doug Larson and Dale DeCesare of the Western Interstate Energy Board who are providing technical support to the Forum. Others attending and participating in the meeting included: Phil Carver from the Oregon Office of Energy; Blair Swezey from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory; Dave Shilton of PacifiCorp, who was representing the WRAP Emissions Inventory Forum; Kathy Pierce and Jeff James from DOE's Seattle Regional Office; and Pat Murdo from the WRAP Communications Committee.

Forum Actions The Forum reviewed the first draft of its report on renewable energy and made the following decisions, which are organized by the sections in the first draft report.

Section IV of the First Draft Report

Section IV of the report contains the renewable energy recommendations of the AP2 Forum. With regard to Section IV, the Forum:

• Agreed to recommend that states adopt a modified "maximum progress toward the 10/20 goal" approach to meeting the 10/20 renewable goals of the Grand Canyon Visibility Transport Commission. Central to this approach is the recommendation that every state should adopt, as a "core" policy for promoting renewable energy, either a renewable portfolio standard or a system benefits charge. The Forum also agreed that the analysis of the impact of an RPS or SBC in the renewables report should assume different cost-caps.

• Decided to expand the development of a "back-of-the envelope" spreadsheet analysis tool presented by John Nielsen in order to evaluate the impact of policy options and incorporate the results in the introduction to the recommendations in the draft report, as well as the executive summary.
  • The impact analysis work group (John Nielsen, Rich Ferguson, Alan Davis, Blair Swezey) will make available by April 15 its expanded analysis to be incorporated, along with AP2 member comments, into a third draft of the renewables report to be released to the Forum by May 1. Jeff Burks and Alan Davis each indicated that they may have staff resources available to aid the work group in expanding its analysis.
  • The work group will also define the potential scope of work for a contractor to refine the analysis, if a contractor is needed.
  • Based on the work group's product, it will recommend a better way to format the table on page IV-5 of the draft report summarizing the Forum's recommendations.
  • The output of the expanded spreadsheet analysis will also be used to estimate the range of renewable generation that may come on-line. Blair Swezey will determine the status of NREL's work on renewable energy supply curves.
  • After visiting with the Northwest Power Planning Council and the California Energy Commission, staff will suggest a range of assumptions to be used regarding the degree to which renewable generation will supplant coal or gas-fired generation. This information could then be used as input to the work of the WRAP Modeling Forum.
  • It would be useful if the renewable generation data from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the Energy Information Administration were reconciled.

The Forum also discussed the series of "Principles" in Section IV and the suggested actions to implement those Principles:

• The Forum modified Principle 1 and divided the first implementing action into two recommendations, one dealing with states with retail competition and one dealing with states without retail competition.
• Also under Principle 1 the Forum modified the draft recommendations addressing consumer information disclosure and the model rules endorsed by the Committee on Regional Electric Power Cooperation.

• Under Principle 2, Jeff Burks agreed to use the paper developed by Thomas Starrs (of the Renewable Energy Policy Project) on net metering/distributed generation to develop a two page overview paper on Distributed Generation for Section III of the Forum's report. The paper is available at http://www.repp.org
• Also under Principle 2, the Forum separated the principles (and the actions to implement the principles) related to transmission and distribution.
• The Forum directed staff to review the National Wind Coordinating Committee recommendations on transmission energy imbalance markets.

Other changes to Section IV include that the Forum:

• Agreed to switch the order of Section A (recommendations to make the market more efficient) and Section B (recommendations to provide financial incentives). The recommendations on financial incentives will change to Section A while the market efficiency recommendations will move to Section B. The reversal of order will also be carried out under Section III of the report. The decision to reverse the order of the two sections was made following the Forum's decision to establish the RPS and SBC financial incentive policies as the core recommended policies in the report.

• Agreed to condense and recharacterize the draft recommendations on federal actions that would contribute to making progress toward the 10/20 goal.

• Agreed to the language on pages IV-7 and IV-8 regarding the sharing of credit for renewable energy production and use between the producing state and the consuming state. (This language provides that: "the state where the renewable energy is consumed should receive one hundred percent of the credit, unless the state where the renewable energy is produced has adopted financial incentives which could be credited with reducing the cost of producing electricity from renewable facilities.")

• Modified the language of Principle and related language dealing with a cap and trade system (John Nielsen will offer language on the linkage between a cap and trade system and other policy options); modified Principle 5 dealing with siting; restated the Forum's draft recommendation on measuring a state's contribution to the 10/20 goals as a general proposition (p. IV-7).

Section III of the Forum's renewables report contains a series of papers produced by Forum members. These papers are designed to provide a menu of the potential policy actions which are available to states and tribes in promoting the use of renewable energy. At the Portland meeting the Forum:

• Agreed on wording changes to the Section III write-up of green marketing/green pricing by Blair Swezey.

• Changed the description of power labels under III-3a (the description is to be provided by Blair Swezey) and under III-3f (effects on competition) (language change also to be provided by Blair Swezey).

• Jeff Burks agreed to use the Thomas Starrs paper on net metering/distributed generation to develop a two page overview paper on Distributed Generation for Section III.

• Decided to refer to economic development in the report as a benefit flowing from the implementation of the renewable energy policies, but to hold most of the points in Bill Becker's paper on economic development for work on the third charge to the AP2 Forum dealing with economic development. Existing examples of the impact of renewable development on economic development could be incorporated into the renewables paper. A suggestion was made that future work to quantify the economic benefits of renewables and energy efficiency consider a regional economic analysis, as opposed to only a state-by-state analysis.

• Eliminated reference to the incompatability of an RPS and SBC.

Section II of the Forum's renewables report contains the Forum's definition of what constitutes "renewable energy." At the Portland meeting, the Forum agreed to a modification of the definition of what constitutes electricity from renewable resources. The definition now reads as follows:

"Renewable energy" means electricity generated by non-nuclear and non-fossil low or no air emission technologies using resources that are virtually inexhaustible, reduce haze, and are environmentally beneficial. The term includes electricity generated by wind energy technologies; solar photovoltaic and solar thermal technologies; geothermal technologies; technologies based on landfill gas and biomass sources, and new low-impact hydropower that meets the Low-Impact Hydropower Institute criteria. Biomass includes agricultural, food and wood wastes. The term does not include pumped storage or biomass from municipal solid waste, black liquor or treated wood.

Section I of the First Draft Report

Section I provides baseline information on state-by-state renewable energy capacity and production in the West as well as a summary chart of current state policies to promote the use of renewables and information on state-by-state total electricity capacity and production. This information is required to be included in the SIPs under Section 51.309(i-v) of the Regional Haze Rule. During the meeting in Portland the Forum:

• Agreed to add (in shading) the non-GCVTC states to the table on page iii.

• Agreed that the contact point for questions on the renewables report would be Forum Co-Chairs Hap Boyd and Jeff Burks. Boyd and Burks stated that they would work with the WRAP Communications Committee on the process required for releasing the report to the public.
  

The Following items were discussed during the Forum's business meeting:

• The Forum agreed to the following schedule for development of the Renewables Report:
  • Forum members will e-mail staff additional comments on the first draft by March 22;
  • A second draft of the paper will be prepared by staff by April 1;
  • AP2 Forum members will offer comments on the second draft by April 15;
  • The work of the impact analysis work group (John Nielsen, Alan Davis, Rich Ferguson, Blair Swezey) will be available by April 15 and will be incorporated along with AP2 member comments, into a third draft to be released to the Forum by May1.
  • Comments from Forum members on the third draft will be due May 15.
  • On June 30, the report will be submitted to DOE to meet contract requirements.
  • On June 30, the report will be sent to potential peer reviewers and their comments will be due by July 31. The report will be accompanied by a cover letter that places the renewables discussion in the context of the regional haze rule.
  • The report will not be sent to the WRAP until there is an opportunity to incorporate the findings from an on-going tribal study which is due to be completed by the end of 2000.

• The Forum made initial suggestions of a list of outside persons to review the draft Forum renewables report, including: Ryan Wiser (LBL); Ray Williamson (ACC); Ursula Kramer (UT-DEQ); Ed Fox (APS); Alan Nogee (UCS); Renz Jennings; Rick Counihan (Renewable Energy Alliance); Adam Serchek (REPP); Bob Dixon (DOE); Jane Hotchkiss Gordy (Clean Air Task Force); David Nichols (Tellus Institute); Skip Laitner (EPA); John Atcheson (DOE); Anna Garcia (Center for Energy and Climate Solutions); Jan Hamrin (Green-E); a person from the California Energy Commission; and western state energy offices. Forum members should e-mail staff with any changes or additions to this list as soon as possible.

• Co-Chairs Hap Boyd and Jeff Burks will consult with Julie Simpson and Bill Grantham on the preferred approach to incorporating tribes into the draft recommendations.

• Energy Efficiency Scoping: The next meeting of the Forum will focus primarily on the initial scoping of the energy efficiency work of the Forum. However, some time will be allotted to review the third draft of the renewables report. Doug Larson (staff) provided a brief overview of potential issues surrounding the Forum's future work on energy efficiency. In particular, Larson discussed the changing economy and competing views on the impact of increased Internet usage on energy consumption patterns. The Forum discussed the general concept of focusing its analysis regarding energy efficiency on societal changes that will effect the patterns of energy consumption in the West. The possibility of tapping expertise from the Rocky Mountain Institute to discuss issues such as "Natural capitalism" and "Industrial Ecology" was also discussed. The Forum agreed on a working assumption that the scope of its efficiency work should cover all sectors of the economy, except transportation activities that may be covered by the WRAP's Mobile Sources Forum. Staff was directed to investigate the scope of activities of the Mobile Sources Forum. Staff will e-mail out to the Forum a draft agenda for the energy efficiency scoping meeting to be held in late May.

• Staff will seek suggestions from Forum members regarding potential speakers for the May scoping meeting on energy efficiency and will e-mail an initial list to the Forum. The Forum agreed to review the list and offer potential additional speaker suggestions.

• Forum members were asked to make recommendations regarding additions to the Forum's membership to add expertise on energy efficiency issues. Several suggestions were made regarding potential new Forum members including: Tom Eckman from the Northwest Power Planning Council; Margaret Gardner of the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance and a participant from the Gas Research Institute. Rich Ferguson volunteered to contact the University of California for other potential participants. Forum members are to e-mail staff (ddecesare@westgov.org) With the names of the additional suggested candidates. Suggestions as to a potential participant from the natural gas industry would be of particular help.

• Forum members were also offered the opportunity to become "inactive" during the energy efficiency portion of the Forum's work.

• The next meeting was proposed to be held in San Francisco (with Denver as a backup location) the period of May 23-26.