Great question and thanks for forwarding it to me.

Attached, you’ll find a graph that shows where our Montana electric co-ops stand on renewable energy as far as our current portfolio of the types of energy we’re using.  As you can see, it shows that statewide, about 62.3 percent of the energy we’re using is renewable. A total of 57.3 percent is renewable hydropower energy.

West of the continental divide, our co-ops are buying about 83 percent of their power from renewable sources. Most of that is renewable hydropower.

The graph also shows that, on a statewide average basis, about 19.2 percent of our electricity is from carbon-emitting sources – coal and natural gas.

However, this dependency on fossil-fuel generation has dramatically declined over the years. By far our biggest supplier of fossil-fuel generation is Basin Electric Power Cooperative. In 2005, 81 percent of the electricity capability used by Basin Electric was coal and natural gas generation. But his number has steadily declined since then so that by 2025 it is projected Basin Electric’s energy portfolio will be 57 percent fossil-fuel generation capacity. Switching to renewables is a major driver of this decrease. For example, Basin Electric has contracted for the purchase of solar energy from a new 150 MW solar array to be built in eastern Montana. When completed, it will be by far the largest solar array in Montana.

Despite the significant and growing dependency on renewables by our Montana electric co-ops, it’s important to keep in mind the danger of too-rapid a rush to intermittent renewables, which are available only when the wind blows and sun shines. Too great a dependency on this variable energy source can lead to rolling blackouts such as we saw in California this past year. That state has been shutting down base-load generation at lightning speed. Base-load is generation that is available on demand. California has been shutting down these baseload power plants —  natural gas and nuclear. California had decided instead to try to depend on out-of-state energy purchases at times when wind and solar power couldn’t keep up with demand. But this proved to be an unwise decision because at the same time California was seeing power demand spiking, so were surrounding states and that made it impossible for California to import its shortfall from those states.

Using batteries to store intermittent wind and solar energy is an option but not yet viable. Current battery technology is not capable of storing energy for more than a few hours. Moreover, existing battery technology is very expensive.

I could provide more information but hopefully you get the gist of the Montana co-ops’ situation, which is that 1) Most of the energy our co-ops in Montana buy is renewable; 2) The amount of our co-ops’ renewable-energy purchases is increasing; 3) Remaining non-renewable energy purchases are still very important to keeping the lights on for our Montana co-op members.

If you have any more questions, let me know. And thanks again for forwarding the question!

Gary Wiens

CEO

Montana Electric Cooperatives’ Association

Ph:  (406) 868-9177 (c)

(406) 761-8333 (o)

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