By ROBERT ZULLO | Arkansas Advocate

DENVER — A recent report released by the Sierra Club faults dozens of utilities that provide a major chunk of U.S. electric generation for failing to speed up their decarbonization efforts. 

“For the sake of our communities and planet, we must do everything in our power to create a clean, renewable electric grid by 2030,” the Sierra’s Club’s “Dirty Truth” report says. “Utilities must lead this transition, but our research shows they are wholly unprepared to do their part. Clean energy is reliable and affordable; electric utilities have no excuse to delay and no time left to waste.” 

The report is an update of a 2021 study the group did. The Sierra Club analyzed plans of 77 utilities that collectively supply about 40% of U.S. electric generation and gave out letter grades based on how well utilities, many with their own clean energy goals, were working to decarbonize.

“Most are still not on the path to achieve 80% clean electricity by 2030. Of the 77 utilities we studied, nearly half of them (44%) made no progress or received a lower score than in our previous report,” the Sierra Club said. “This disappointing inaction occurred despite a tumultuous 18 months of grid reliability crises, blackouts, energy price spikes and extreme weather events; many of these trace their roots in large part to utilities’ stubborn reliance on expensive and unreliable fossil fuels.”

To determine the grades, the Sierra Club looked at the latest versions of the utilities’ integrated resource plans, documents that lay out how they will meet future electric demand, evaluating how quickly they intend to retire coal plants and penalizing them for plans that include building new gas generation.

“If a company includes multiple scenarios in their IRP, we use the scenario they denote as their preferred scenario,” said Cara Bottorff, a Sierra Club managing senior analyst. “If they do not denote a preferred scenario, we use the scenario that is the worst case for gas (i.e., the one that would add the most gas) to demonstrate the largest amount of gas that the company is considering building.”

Overall, 56% of the utilities examined improved their scores, 9% made no progress and 35% got worse grades. You can check how your local utility did here. 

Arkansas utilities

Entergy Arkansas, the Natural State’s largest utility, scored among the highest of the companies evaluated by the Sierra Club. The utility earned an “A” due largely to its commitment to retire coal by 2030 and transition 81% of fossil fuels to clean energy.

Entergy Arkansas wasn’t scored as highly on gas. The utility plans to add 60 megawatts of gas by 2030, according to the report. The Sierra Club says energy companies should avoid adding any new gas plants.

Entergy Arkansas spokeswoman Kacee Kirschvink said the utility was pleased to be recognized for its efforts, noting the company recently announced a 250 megawatt solar facility and is the largest solar provider in the state.

She said Entergy Arkansas customers pay some of the lowest rates in the U.S., adding that about 70% of energy consumed by the utility’s customers last year came from zero-emission resources.

“Our renewable portfolio is expected to continue growing,” Kirschvink said. “We plan to add 4,500 MW of renewable generation, as well as cease burning coal, by 2030, Arkansas’ path to renewable energy will contribute to Entergy’s ability meet its goal of net zero by 2050. We are pleased to provide our customers safe, reliable, sustainable and affordable power.”

Southwestern Electric Power Company (SWEPCO), which serves a large swath of western Arkansas, received a “B.” SWEPCO plans to phase out 64% of coal power by 2030 and replace 77% of fossil fuels with clean energy; it intends to add 558 megawatts of new gas by 2030, the report states.

A SWEPCO spokeswoman said the utility is progressing toward its goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2045. In a statement, the company also noted several recent and forthcoming investments in wind and solar.

“Renewable resources are proving to be the best value option to meet our customers’ energy needs and save them money,” the company said in a statement. “In addition to retiring more than 1,500 megawatts of coal/lignite-fired generation and adding new renewable resources, we are exploring the development of battery technology to store renewable energy and new carbon-free sources of baseload power.”

The Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corporation received a “C.” It plans to retire 68% of coal by 2030 and replace 6% of fossil fuels with clean energy, per the report. The cooperative, which serves roughly 1.3 million Arkansans, received high marks for its plans to not add any new gas over the next decade.

A spokesman for the Cooperative Corporation didn’t respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

Criticism

The Edison Electric Institute, an association that represents investor-owned utilities, called the metrics “arbitrary” and dismissed the report as a “messaging document.” 

“The reality is that existing nuclear generation and the flexibility provided by natural gas generation are what enabled the U.S. electric power industry to deploy 27 gigawatts of new renewables, reliably and cost-effectively, last year,” said Brian Reil, an EEI spokesman. 

“The emissions reductions goals set by America’s investor-owned electric companies are firmly grounded in our current understanding of technology and economics, and they also reflect our responsibility to prioritize customer affordability and reliability.”

Reil noted that more than 40% of U.S. electricity is now generated by carbon-free resources and said electric utilities are investing in new technologies to deliver more. 

“If the Sierra Club truly wants to accelerate the deployment of clean energy, they should consider joining the other environmental, industry and government leaders who are working together constructively to identify ways to overcome the barriers to building the transmission and other clean energy infrastructure we clearly need in order to deliver more resilient clean energy to customers,” he said. 

‘Uncharted territory’

At the Experience POWER conference for energy industry professionals Tuesday in Denver, the pace of the renewable energy transition was a major theme. Duane Highley, the CEO of Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association – a not-for-profit cooperative supplier which operates in New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska and includes 42 electric distribution cooperatives and public power districts that provide power to more than a million consumers – used an old George Carlin comedy bit about driving to illustrate the competing tensions on utilities and electric co-ops trying to decarbonize without risking reliability.

Anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, Carlin said, while anybody going faster is a maniac.

“We’re being pulled between those people who think we are going too fast and those who think we are going too slow,” he said, noting that two states his coop operates in, New Mexico and Colorado, are much more green-energy oriented than the other two: Nebraska and Wyoming.

“There’s no map for this,” he said. “We’re in uncharted territory.” 

He said the ability to generate electricity from fuel oil helped bail out Tri-State during the 2021 winter storm that caused the grid to collapse in Texas, resulting in an estimated 246 deaths. That makes it hard for utilities to ditch the reliability benefits of certain kinds of fossil fuel generation as quickly as some would like. 

“We can make this happen and it is happening,” Highley said. He added that Tri-State, which got a B grade on the Sierra Club report, is on pace to have 50% of the electricity used by its members come from renewable sources by 2024 thanks to bountiful wind and solar resources, with an eventual goal of getting to 80% decarbonization, though that will still require some fossil fuel generation to stay in the mix. 

“We’re going to clean up the grid and then we’re going to electrify everything,” he said.

Hunter Field of the Arkansas Advocate contributed to this report.