ReportWire

Tag: unanimous agreement

  • As a Colorado River deadline passes, reservoirs keep declining

    [ad_1]

    The leaders of seven states failed to negotiate a deal to share the diminishing waters of the Colorado River by a Trump administration deadline on Saturday, leaving the Southwest in a quagmire with uncertain repercussions while the river’s depleted reservoirs continue to decline.

    Former U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt said in an interview with The Times that the impasse now appears so intractable that Trump administration officials should take a step back, abandon the current effort and begin all over again.

    Babbitt said he believes it would be a mistake for Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to “try to impose a long-term solution” by ordering major water cuts across the Southwest — which would likely set off a lengthy court battle.

    “We need a fresh start,” Babbitt said. “I believe that in the absence of a unanimous agreement, [the Interior Department] should renew the existing agreements for five years, and then we should start all over. We should scrap the entire process and invent a new one.”

    Officials for the seven states have tried to boost reservoir levels via voluntary water cutbacks and federal payments to farmers who agree to leave fields dry part of the year. But after more than two years of trying to hash out new long-term rules for sharing water, they remain deadlocked; the existing rules are set to expire at the end of this year.

    The states similarly blew past an earlier federal deadline in November.

    Interior Department officials have not said how they will respond. The agency is considering four options for imposing cutbacks starting next year, as well as the option of taking no action.

    Babbitt, who was Interior secretary under President Clinton from 1993 to 2001, said he thinks the Trump administration’s options are too narrow and inadequate. They would place the burden of water cuts on Arizona, California and Nevada while not requiring any for the four other upriver states — Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico.

    Without a consensus, the only reasonable approach is to extend existing water-saving agreements for a few years while making a new push for solutions, Babbitt said.

    Federal officials have “missed the opportunity” to take a strong leadership role, he said, and it’s time to reimagine the effort as a “much more inclusive, public, broad” process.

    The river provides for about 35 million people and 5 million acres of farmland, from the Rocky Mountains to northern Mexico. California uses more water than any other state but has cut back substantially in recent years.

    Since 2000, relentless drought intensified by climate change has sapped the river’s flow and left reservoirs depleted. This winter’s record warmth and lack of storms has left the Rockies with very little snow.

    Lake Mead, the river’s largest reservoir, is now 34% full, while Lake Powell is at 26%.

    “Our states have conserved large volumes of water in recent years,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a joint statement with Arizona’s Katie Hobbs and Nevada’s Joe Lombardo. “Our stance remains firm and fair: all seven basin states must share in the responsibility of conservation.”

    The states’ positions haven’t changed much in the last two years, said JB Hamby, California’s lead negotiator, and moving toward an agreement will require firm commitments for cuts by all.

    Officials representing the four Upper Basin states said they’ve offered compromises and are prepared to continue negotiating. In a written statement, they stressed they are already dealing with substantial water cuts, and said their downstream neighbors are trying to secure water “that simply does not exist.”

    The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s latest forecast shows the amount of runoff flowing into Lake Powell will decrease so dramatically this year that the dropping reservoir levels could render Glen Canyon Dam unable to continue generating electricity.

    The Interior Department said in a written statement Saturday that it will finalize new rules by Oct. 1, and it “cannot delay action.” The agency is accepting comments from the public as part of its review of options until March 2.

    “Negotiation efforts have been productive,” Burgum said. “We believe that a fair compromise with shared responsibility remains within reach.”

    [ad_2]

    Ian James

    Source link

  • Proposed Kansas utility plan seeks to fairly allocate costs from big users

    [ad_1]

    The Kansas Corporation Commission, from left, Dwight Keen, Andrew French and Annie Kuether, will make a decision this year on a proposed new utility rate plan and tariff affecting large users such as data centers. (Morgan Chilson/Kansas Reflector)

    TOPEKA —  Data centers and large manufacturing facilities can pull hundreds of megawatts of electricity from the utility grid. A case in front of Kansas utility regulators has created a new way to ensure costs created by those businesses are fairly distributed among consumers and investors. 

    On Oct. 8, the Kansas Corporation Commission will consider a unanimous settlement agreement created after multiple consumer, nonprofit and private interest parties worked to reach agreement on a large load service rate plan and utility tariff. 

    A utility tariff sets up a rate structure and terms and conditions of utility services. 

    The unanimous agreement designs a rate structure for large-load customers, defined in the agreement as those that reach a peak load of 75 megawatts monthly. 

    To put that in perspective, Topeka and Lawrence together probably use about 75 megawatts of electricity per month, said Chuck Caisley, Evergy executive vice president of public affairs. 

    Parties involved in the settlement negotiations included KCC staff, Evergy, the Data Center Coalition, the Citizens’ Utility Ratepayer Board, school districts, Google LLC, the Sierra Club, multiple industrial businesses and the National Resources Defense Council.

    “It’s really going to be, I think, a model for the rest of the United States when it’s all said and done,” Caisley said. “It’s unprecedented when you go into a regulatory proceeding like this on such a complicated issue for all the parties to ultimately walk out and say, ‘This would be fair for everybody.’”

    Joseph Astrab, consumer counsel at the Citizens’ Utility Ratepayer Board, was part of the negotiations on behalf of small businesses and residential consumers. 

    “There’s definitely a lot of compromise here,” Astrab said. “This is a unique document. Normally, we file some initial testimony, respond to the application, kind of setting off positions and preferences. But in this docket, we went straight into technical discussions and planning and more of a collaborative approach with utilities, data center customers and other stakeholders in Kansas, to figure out what’s a good tariff.”

     

    Equity between customers

    The rise of data centers has pushed forward national policy conversations about large-load users, with the intent often to make sure costs aren’t shifted to other customers or that their significant electricity needs don’t destabilize the grid. The conversations can be at odds with the desire to create a welcoming economic development environment.

    The U.S. Department of Energy in January issued a policy statement  about mitigation of financial risks should a large user close, leaving an underutilized utility system, and mitigating resource risks if electricity demand would exceed supply, among other issues. 

    Kansas’ proposed tariff addresses multiple factors, including costs large utility users will bear if they terminate their contract early and other safety nets, Caisley said. 

    Large-load users will sign a 17-year contract outlining their maximum load projections, he said. Even if the company reduces its electrical demands to 50% or 75% of their projections, the company will be required to pay 80% of that projection, Caisley said.

    “There’s no other rate in our system today, not even for giant manufacturers, not for oil refineries, not for the Ford plant, not for the Mars plant – they don’t have a requirement like that,” Caisley said. 

    A significant amount of collateral is also required to be posted, he said, amounting to two years of minimum bills, which could run to millions of dollars. 

    Astrab said discussions about rate design captured the “unique notion” that capital investments would not have been made until a later date if a large-load customer hadn’t been coming onto the grid at a specific point.

     

    ‘Novel’ element

    A third part of the proposed tariff is what Caisley called the “most novel” and an approach that makes the Kansas plan stand out. An interim capacity charge will be in place on top of the regular electrical rate to pay for additional electricity generation that’s required to meet the new demand, he said. It acknowledges that Evergy may need to invest in expansion plans earlier than expected, which comes with a cost.

    “As far as I know, that’s one of the first places in the United States that has that, and so these rates will actually be higher than existing industrial consumer rates, but the data centers acknowledge that it’s an issue of equity and fairness,” Caisley said. “From our perspective, if these data centers cause significant rate increases to existing customers, that’s not ultimately good for the state. It’s not ultimately good for economic development.”

     

    Open for business

    In strategizing about potential rates, making sure Kansas stayed competitive in drawing companies to locate here was important, Astrab and Caisley said. 

    “We think that this will protect existing consumers while enabling economic development in Kansas,” Caisley said. “We’ve been calling it the Goldilocks solution. It’s just right.”

    Astrab said Kansas policymakers and the governor’s office have made economic development and attracting large business customers a priority. 

    “With that context in mind, we don’t want to be in the way of developing Kansas’ economies and communities and bringing new businesses to the area,” he said. “We definitely want to make sure that if we do something, it’s not going to be so strict or cost-prohibitive for business that they’ll say, ‘No, we can’t come to Kansas.’”

    Caisley said he believes Kansas is leading the way. 

    “Anytime in today’s society and in the environment that any company or town or regulatory entity operates in today, where you can get everybody with such diverse perspectives and interests around a table and stack hands on something, that means you must have done something right,” he said. 

    KCC’s three-member commission, which is required to approve the settlement, will hold a one-day hearing about the agreement at 9 a.m. on Oct. 8. 

    [ad_2]

    Source link