Mark Robinowitz: “Instead of advocating for more electricity, we should advocate for less electricity, less of everything—less air conditioning in this room, maybe. We need to consider the earth as abundant and finite.”
Presenter: Public comments ask the EWEB board to reject a biomass contract. At the meeting Sept. 2, Craig Patterson:
[00:00:07] Craig Patterson: I want to talk about the upcoming biomass contract renewal. First of all, the fact that it was a nondisclosure contract, I believe undermines confidence in a public utility. However, my understanding is that the Register-Guard found out that you guys are paying 8.7 cents a kilowatt-hour for that biomass dirty energy, whereas the BPA wholesale rate is 3.59 cents.
[00:00:43] A Manomet study found that biomass is 40 times dirtier than coal and 300 times dirtier than natural gas, in part a function of energy density. So why is EWEB paying almost two and and a half times for very dirty power?…