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The Path From Coal to Renewable Energy Can Be Difficult

For the past decade, the Navajo reservation here has struggled to navigate the change from coal to green power.

It’s still struggling.

The effort began when environmental activists filed a federal lawsuit that helped result in the closure of a nearby coal plant, which ended up costing many Navajos their jobs.

Activists said they would try to help the tribe develop clean-energy jobs. But now, years later, few jobs have been created. And a second large coal plant in the area is facing a partial shutdown, putting many of the nearly 1,000 jobs at the facility and a related mine in jeopardy.

About 90% of those jobs are held by Navajos, and the fallout could be significant on a reservation where unemployment runs about 50%. “We Navajo are wondering what to do next, because coal is a major part of our resource,” says Travis Francisco, 35, who supports a family of six on his job as a plant supervisor.
No easy answers

The situation on the reservation, which sprawls 27,000 square miles across Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, mirrors struggles taking place in coal towns across the country.

When plants close, there’s usually a lot of talk from local officials and environmentalists about trying to replace the lost jobs with ones in green energy.

Delivering jobs is a tall order, though, because renewable-energy projects are usually much smaller scale and less labor intensive. And it can be tough to get green projects started in the first place because they often run into funding problems and political challenges. Eastern Kentucky, for example, has lost about 10,000 coal jobs over the past three years, with only a few dozen solar jobs to replace them, says Peter Hille, president of the Mountain Association for Community Economic Development, an Appalachia advocacy group in Berea, Ky.

“It’s not a decline, it’s a collapse,” says Mr. Hille, who adds one reason solar has been slow to take off in Kentucky is a lack of state programs such as for homeowner leases to help support it. Environmentalists say clean energy isn’t being embraced in Kentucky and other coal-producing areas because many local politicians oppose it.

Local boosters hope Congress will pass President Barack Obama’s proposal to allocate $1 billion to support reclamation of abandoned coal mines. Much of that work to help restore mine sites to their natural condition would go to unemployed coal miners, says Eric Dixon, fellow at the Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center in Whitesburg, Ky.

On the Navajo reservation, no significant wind or solar facilities have been created a decade after a federal lawsuit filed by the Sierra Club and other green groups led to the closure of the 1,580-megawatt Mohave Generating Station in Laughlin, Nev. That took nearly 200 jobs from a coal mine on Navajo and Hopi lands.

The environmental groups said they wanted to see the jobs replaced with clean-energy ones, and officials say they made an effort to help. Sierra Club officials say their testimony helped prompt the California Public Utilities Commission—which oversaw a utility that ran the closed plant—to lend assistance. The commission allocated millions of dollars in pollution credits freed up by the closure to the Navajo and Hopi tribes for help in moving to clean-energy projects.

“Nobody wants to say, ‘OK, you’re on your own,’ ” says Sandy Bahr, director of the Grand Canyon chapter of the Sierra Club. “What is clear is there needs to be a transition, and there are great opportunities relative to clean energy.”

Small-scale efforts

Tribal officials tell a different story. Walter Haase, general manager of the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority, says the tribe never got pollution-credit money because the market for the credits collapsed. And he says there hasn’t been much more support from environmentalists. “They could help us by offering money or helping persuade the federal government to create more grants for renewable energy,” he says. “They’ve done nothing but get existing plants closed.”

Bruce Nilles, director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign, says the Navajo have shown no leadership in clean energy, adding that his group has been more successful in getting projects approved elsewhere.

Tribal officials, who say they have shown strong leadership, have launched green efforts of their own. They pursued a 200-megawatt wind project in Arizona, but that died in part after new protections for the area’s golden eagles put in too many restrictions, Mr. Haase says.

Other efforts came to fruition, but didn’t create many jobs. The tribe’s utility has deployed solar panels on about 300 homes, creating just two jobs, Mr. Haase says. The tribe plans to develop a solar facility, but that will lead to only four permanent jobs.

The debate over renewables is heating up again amid uncertainty over the future of the 2,250-megawatt Navajo Generating Station. The Environmental Protection Agency last year approved a plan for the facility to shut a third of its generating capacity by 2020 to help reduce emissions that contribute to occasional impaired views at the nearby Grand Canyon. The EPA gave the facility until 2030 to bring the rest of the plant up to federal clean-air standards.

The tribe has argued for keeping the whole plant open. And it isn’t clear if the plant can justify the potential $1 billion cost of meeting pollution standards, given pressures by some green groups to close it sooner. A spokesman for Tempe, Ariz.-based Salt River Project, which operates the plant, said it would be difficult for the owners to make such an investment without being assured they would have time to recover their costs.

For now, coal remains king on the reservation, and many Navajos worry about the future. Besides the impact on a tough local economy, they fear the loss to the Navajo culture if workers and their families have to leave.

Conan John grew up on the reservation and managed to land a job at the coal plant after graduating from college in Utah. Now, the 33-year-old says, his three young children are able to learn the Navajo language and customs. “It’s good to be home,” he said on a break recently from his job as a plant chemist.

source: http://www.wsj.com