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Project
Overview. The
Hewlett Foundation granted $200,000 to the Land and Water
Fund of the Rockies (LAW Fund) in Boulder, CO to develop a
long-term Clean Energy Plan for the Interior West. The study will analyze the costs, benefits, and environmental
implications of significantly increasing investments in energy
efficiency, renewable energy, and distributed generation
resources to help meet future electric demand in the western
interconnected grid.
The study will also include an analysis,
funded by the US DOE, of the potential benefits of renewable
resources and distributed generation to alleviate transmission
constraints. This analysis will investigate different configurations of
the resources that make up the Clean Energy Plan to determine
if there are certain opportunities that best address
transmission constraints and regional electric system
reliability.
The study will focus on the seven-state
interior western region, consisting of Arizona, Colorado,
Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming.
The electrical system modeling analysis will also
include the interconnected regions of California and the
Pacific Northwest, because of the impacts these regions have
on the electricity system within the study region.
The model will analyze the operation of the electricity
system within 26 “transmission areas,” i.e., discrete
electric system control areas within the seven-state study
area. Results of
the analyses will be reported at the state and regional
levels. The study
will begin with 2002 as the base year and will report results
in six-year intervals—2008, 2014, and 2020.
The
Business-As-Usual Scenario.
The study will begin with a regional Business-As-Usual
(BAU) scenario which assumes the continuation of current
trends regarding electricity demands and prices, generation
from fossil fuel power plants, and modest investments in
energy efficiency and renewable energy.
The Energy Information Administration’s Annual Energy
Outlook 2002 will be used as the starting point for the
assumptions for the BAU scenario, but the study will use
additional sources and make independent estimates for those
inputs and assumptions where better data are available (e.g.,
electricity demand forecasts, power projects currently
planned, costs of new renewable technologies).
The
Clean Energy Plan. The
study will develop a Clean Energy Plan that includes an
aggressive but feasible set of clean power options, including
energy efficiency, renewable resources, and clean distributed
generation technologies.
The plan will be developed in such a way as to balance
the two goals of maintaining reasonable electricity costs and
advancing the development of new efficient and clean energy
technologies.
The study will compare the
Business-As-Usual scenario to the Clean Energy Plan, to
identify the various costs and benefits of the new clean,
efficient electricity technologies.
Electricity system costs—including fuel, operation
and maintenance, transmission, and capital costs—will be
accounted for, as well as the impacts on SO2, NOX,
and CO2 emissions.
Assessment
of Risk and Transmission Implications.
The study will
identify the risk diversification benefits of the Clean Energy
Plan by analyzing additional scenarios, including those with
higher and lower natural gas prices and those with carbon
reduction policies. The
resulting differences between a BAU scenario and the Clean
Energy Plan will examine to what extent a more diverse
electric resource mix can reduce the risks associated with
volatile fuel prices and stricter environmental regulations.
The PROSYM model will also be used to run
several different scenarios with different configurations of
new transmission lines and clean resources.
Some scenarios will include aggressive development of
clean energy resources within the areas with the greatest
transmission constraints, to identify the impacts of a
targeted approach to relieving transmission constraints. The study will also include several scenarios to investigate
the tradeoff between siting wind facilities in remote
locations with the best wind resources but with high
transmission costs, versus siting them closer to load centers
with lower transmission costs but with less favorable wind
conditions.
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