Strong State Policies Mean Support Renewable Energy: Pass Those PUC Rules!

The PUC may have just gotten a some slam-dunk help from the feds to promote its Small Renewable Energy Initiative. The U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory just issuedits 2009 State of the States report. Among the key findings: states that have passed renewable energy portfolio standards and net-metering policies have generally seen more progress in developing renewable energy.

Even though South Dakota is among the handful of laggards on such policies, 50% of South Dakota's electrical production comes from renewable sources (see Table 2.1 in the PDF report). 47.5% comes from the dams the feds built for us on the Missouri. (But remember, we consume more juice than we produce, and we import lots of smoky coal power from Wyoming and North Dakota.)

And even without strong state policies, we lead the nation in growth of non-hyrdo renewable electricity generation, a whopping 17,000% from 2001 to 2007 (see Table 2.4). But huge growth numbers are easy to achieve when you start from almost zilch: wind generation in 2007 still provided just 2.4% of our total electricity production (Table 2.17). 5.5% of Iowa's electrical production came from wind; in Minnesota, that figure was 4.8%. And we're still only 19th in the nation for total wind generating capacity; the top four states are Texas, Iowa (15 times our capacity), California, and Minnesota (9 times our capacity). Declining output from the dams meant South Dakota saw an overall decrease in renewable enrgy output of over 10% from 2001 to 2007; over the same period, 35 states, including all of our neighbors except Nebraska, saw growth in their renewable electricity production (Table 7.5).

Compared to Minnesota and Iowa, South Dakota is woefully behind on passing policies that support renewable energy development (see Table 3.1). NREL finds that, among other things, net metering policies and even green power mandates (that's more than what the PUC is asking for) produce faster renewable enrgy adoption. According to the NREL report, we could boost our clean energy percentages faster and catch up with those darned Minnesotans and Iowegians if we got with the program and passed rules like the PUC's proposals for small renewable generation.

Read the report yourself—I'm sure our friends Dusty, Steve, and Gary will! It's chock full of tables (101!) for your number-crunching enjoyment.

South Dakota Not to Blame for Greenhouse Emissions?

If the planet does get warmer, seas rise, civilizations fall, etc., take heart, fellow South Dakotans: they can't blame us! Well, not much. A new report from Environment America finds that South Dakota generated less fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions in 2007 than all but two states (Rhode Island and Vermont) and the District of Columbia. Our 13.7 million metric tons of fossil fuel CO₂ emissions in 2007 constituted just 0.23% of the United States' total emissions of almost six billion metric tons. Our percentage of emissions is even less than our meager 0.27% of the country's population, so surprise! you might argue South Dakota is even greener than our net emissions ranking might suggest.

South Dakota's per capita CO₂ emissions, 17.2 metric tons, are indeed below the national average, 19.9 metric tons. So we've got coal to burn before those hippies lay a pollution guilt trip on us, right?

Maybe not. According to the Energy Information Administration, South Dakota produces 144 trillion BTUs of energy. We consume 292 trillion BTUs. Over half of our energy is produced in other states. Looking at electricity alone, in 2007, we generated 6,137 gigawatthours of electricity, over half of that from those squeaky clean hydroelectric dams. But we consumed another 5,390 GWh generated in other states. Most of that juice comes from our neighbors, North Dakota and Wyoming... which lead the nation in per capita CO₂ emissions (WY: 124.2 metric tons; ND: 82.1 metric tons).

South Dakota's existing green power on the Missouri River (achieved, by the way, with money and foresight from the federal government) already makes us leaders in keeping our per capita pollution relatively low. Strong climate change legislation, plus the PUC's recommendations for better interconnect rules and other support for small wind and other sources of distributed generation, can help South Dakota get even further ahead of the curve, reeduce our dependence on fossil fuels from other states, and keep the planet cleaner.

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p.s.: If Palauans aren't treading water in ten years, thank the recession. The global economic downturn has us on track to see greenhouse gas emissions down 9%. A good 1930s-style depression would cut those emissions 23%. There's always a bright side....

pp.s.: The above study does not appear to assess the greenhouse impacts of bovine flatulence or Senator Thune's speeches... two strikingly similar gases.