By Guest Columnist

Now that the North Carolina Utilities Commission has approved a method to allocate the state's mandated electricity from poultry litter ("Utilities negotiating with waste-source generators," April 3), the consequences of North Carolina's 2007 ill-conceived energy legislation are even more apparent. Electricity from the combustion of poultry litter will not only increase air pollution, its excessive costs could also reduce renewable energy from clean sources like wind and solar.

More important, while the utilities commission allocated the responsibility to provide electricity from poultry waste, it did not allocate responsibility for the health and environmental impacts. If the state accepts the power-plant model, with a few large plants burning litter, then a few communities will bear the environmental burden. People living in these sacrifice zones will suffer the consequences of increased air pollution, truck traffic and the visible reminder of a 300-foot smokestack in their community.

Another obvious problem highlighted in the commission's order is the shortage of potential suppliers of electricity from poultry litter. Fibrowatt, the Pennsylvania company responsible for the poultry litter mandate, is demanding long-term contracts with open-ended fuel cost add-ons. North Carolina's public utilities have properly resisted, at least so far, any commitments that add excessive costs for an unreasonable duration.

If Fibrowatt is successful in acquiring contracts with the utilities and any environmental permits state regulators deem necessary, then people living in Surry County's wine country and the poor and minority neighborhoods Fibrowatt selected in Montgomery and Sampson counties will face becoming sacrifice zones. This is a direct outcome of legislation that ignored the environment to make way for companies seeking to profit from the development of renewable energy.

With their March 31 decision, the utilities commission confirmed that meeting the poultry litter mandate could result not only in less energy from other sources, but also in less total renewable energy for North Carolina. This would happen if a utility reaches its per-account cost cap, the amount it can charge each customer, because of the poultry litter mandate.

If that happens before it meets the general requirement for renewable energy, the utility will have still complied with the statute. As the agreement states, "Once an electric supplier satisfies its allocated share of the annual Poultry Waste Statutory Requirement or the Electric supplier's total annual incremental costs equals the Statutory Ceiling, the electric power supplier shall be conclusively deemed to be in compliance with the requirements." In other words, electricity from poultry litter is more important than electricity from wind, at least to the decision-makers in Raleigh.

Meanwhile, competitors with a different approach are moving forward. Orbit Energy and Green Energy Systems will construct anaerobic digesters to generate electricity using methane gas from poultry litter. These systems use a mixture of poultry litter and other organic wastes as "fuel" to create methane in a closed system. Methane is similar to natural gas and burns much cleaner than Fibrowatt's combustion boilers. These systems are also smaller and can be distributed proportionally across the utilities' service areas. There are no 300-foot smokestacks.

As the Journal's April 3 story notes, negotiations between the utilities and these potential providers continue. Both Orbit and Green Energy Systems have registered as new renewable energy facilities. Fibrowatt has not. In the two and a half years since the passage of Senate Bill 3, the North Carolina Utilities Commission has approved a wide range of renewable energy resources and facilities. Some, like wind and solar, are cleaner than the coal-fired energy they replace. Others, like poultry litter, meet the requirements as renewable, but definitely are not clean. The circumstances that led to the commission's order on how the suppliers can meet the poultry litter requirements reflect the flaws and difficulties inherent in the 2007 statute.

Legislators are reluctant to re-open complex issues like renewable energy. Unfortunately, their reluctance to address the poultry litter requirement and any minimum standard for emissions continues the risk of more pollution and added costs for North Carolina's electricity customers. It's an expense no one should have to pay, particularly those who live next to a smokestack, but at least for now it's up to the state's utilities to protect both the public's health and their pocketbooks.

David Mickey is the Zero Waste/Clean Energy Campaign coordinator for the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League.

Printed in Winston-Salem Journal on Arpil 24, 2010:
http://www2.journalnow.com/content/2010/apr/24/ questioning-the-delivery-of-next-stage-electricity/opinion/