Chancellor’s Energy Policy Forum

Keynote Address
A Scientific and Political Conundrum:
Wisconsin’s Energy Generation and Transmission Grid
John D. Wiley, Chancellor
University of Wisconsin–Madison
October 20, 2003

I would like to begin by thanking all of you for participating in this Forum. Frankly, I don’t know how it came to be known as the “Chancellor’s Forum,” but that’s not a disclaimer, as I consider energy policy to be one of the most important public policy issues facing the state of Wisconsin, and an absolutely vital area for our economic recovery. Energy infrastructure for the university is also one of my most important responsibilities and most urgent priorities, so topics related to energy are almost constantly on my agenda.

The campus, itself, is essentially a medium-sized city with a population of about 60,000. The main campus is a little over 900 acres and contains about 12.5 million square feet of research, instructional, living, clinical, and support space in several hundred buildings and other structures. Essentially everything on the main campus is served by centralized heating and cooling (steam and chilled water) generated in two plants (Charter Street and Walnut Street) and piped around campus in underground tunnels. The Walnut Street plant provides a small fraction of our 57MW peak electric needs, and we have about 75 small backup generators for the most critical functions, but most of our electricity is purchased commercially.

That, in a nutshell, is our three-legged energy infrastructure. We are currently at a critical point on all three of the legs. When we complete the new addition to the Biotechnology Center and bring that building online, we will use up the last of our reserve capacity for chilled water, and when we complete the Camp Randall modifications and additions, we will exhaust our steam reserves. Both of these problems are being addressed in the new co-generation facility now under construction as an addition to the Walnut Street plant, so I will focus primarily on electricity – both our concerns for the campus and for the state as a whole.

In simpler times, electricity was a convenience, but it was used mainly for lighting and moving things, and alternatives were available. So a loss of electricity was inconvenient, but life, and even commerce, went on relatively smoothly without it. That’s still true in many parts of the world and in isolated, rural settings. But it is not true in industrialized and developed parts of the world, nor for any modern plant, factory, office, or other place of business, nor even for most of our homes. And I can tell you it is emphatically not true for this campus.

Quite aside from lighting, air-handling equipment, elevators, and other routine electrically-powered items, our laboratories and clinics contain thousand of pieces of sophisticated and sensitive electronic equipment. Our laboratories, classrooms, libraries, offices, and dormitories contain more than 50,000 computers and nearly all of our daily business operations depend on them. When we lose power, work stops. It’s as simple as that. To put a number on it: With an
annual budget of $1.8 billion, it costs us about $900,000/hour, exclusive of lost experiments and damage costs, when we lose power during normal work hours.

Not only do we need reliable power, we are increasingly dependent on high-quality power for our most sophisticated instrumentation. That means we need the power at the wall outlet to remain extremely close to the design voltage and frequency, and to be as close as possible to a continuous, ideal sine wave, free of unwanted harmonics or glitches of any sort.

And we’re not alone. Every modern business has these same needs, and faces similarly large losses when those needs are not met. Because of this, I think it’s easy to make the case that electricity is the most critical energy infrastructure we rely on. In the modern, highly sophisticated, technical, knowledge-based and information-dependent economy, those regions of the world that have reliable supplies of high-quality electricity will thrive, and those that don’t will not.

Unfortunately, it’s also easy to make the case that our electricity infrastructure is the most fragile of our utility infrastructures – nationwide, and especially in Wisconsin. I don‘t think I need to review the current problems for you, other than to say that the national electric grid is exceedingly fragile, and that Wisconsin, in particular needs both more local generation and significant transmission upgrades. If electricity is our most critical and fragile infrastructure, then it’s very much in the public interest to attend to these needs promptly.

Of course, the public has other legitimate and important interests as well. And there’s the rub. There is a clear and compelling public interest in clean, fresh air and clean fresh water. There is a public interest in maintaining attractive neighborhoods, and low noise levels. There is a public interest in maintaining attractive rural landscapes. There’s a public interest in not breaking natural habitats into a patchwork quilt of disconnected pieces. There’s a public interest in minimizing the amount of solid waste in general and hazardous waste in particular. And the list goes on.

Unfortunately, virtually every activity undertaken by human beings – every manmade object or structure – comes into conflict with these legitimate environmental interests in one way or another and at some scale or another. And the electric utility infrastructure is certainly no exception. As a matter of fact, it’s currently one of the most frequent and acrimonious areas of conflict between competing public interests. The only other industries that even come close are mining, metal and chemical production, and motorized vehicles.

And, in fact, the conflicts are substantive. The economics of electricity production strongly favor the use of large baseload plants, and the nature of electricity production in baseload plants usually requires burning something. I don’t want to get into a discussion of alternatives right now, but the fact is that the only new plants we can build and site today are plants that burn something – usually coal or natural gas. As a consequence, (especially because of coal) electric utilities are responsible for producing about 77 of the Sulfur Dioxide and 55 of the Nitrogen Oxides produced by all stationary sources, to mention just two serious pollutants. Add to that, the fact that few people consider large plants or overhead wires of any kind to be visually appealing, and it’s perfectly understandable that all proposed sitings are controversial. (I’m the only one I know who thinks transmission lines, substations, and power plants are attractive works of art. I will tell you, though, that we collaborated with MG&E to build a wall around the East Campus Substation at Park and Dayton, and that wall just won an architectural design award for Potter and Lawson. It will be featured in the December issue of Midwest Construction magazine.)

But the fact remains, Wisconsin needs to upgrade its production and transmission, and the need becomes more urgent every day. From an epistemological point of view, the concept of “truth” is quite a tricky one. If you are willing to question every hidden or underlying assumption, and the exact definition of every word, it is actually difficult to devise even simple declarative statements that everyone will always agree are “true.” But I’m not a philosopher. I’m just an engineer, and a pretty pragmatic one at that. So I find it relatively easy to come up with statements I am willing to say are “true.” Here are a few examples of what I think are clearly true statements:

1. Wisconsin’s electric infrastructure will be upgraded.
2. New power plants will be built in Wisconsin.
3. New transmission lines will be built in Wisconsin.
4. These upgrades will cause some negative environmental effects.

If you agree these are true statements, then you will also probably agree that the only remaining questions are questions about when, where, and how much. That’s the challenge we have. It’s not a matter of whether, but a matter of when, where, and how much.

Democracies, it seems to me, are not very good at averting disasters, catastrophes, and crises. We are much better at reacting to such things after they have happened. The problem with that is it virtually eliminates the possibility of thoughtful planning, optimal solutions, and reasonable compromises. In the case of electricity, it appears to me that most people simply take it for granted and assume it will always be there when they need it. The few who pay close attention are either self-interested (and I don’t mean that in a pejorative way) industry insiders or deeply suspicious and largely hostile advocacy groups, and the two camps seem to be locked in perpetual battle. The public at large stays largely out of the discussion.

To the extent that the battles over plant or transmission line siting and environmental impacts are overly protracted and result in unreasonable long delays, everyone – and I mean EVERYONE – and everyone’s interests are at increasing risk. Long delays do not prevent the plants and transmission lines from eventually being built. Instead, they make them cost more and they make us – all of us – live and work under an increased threat of failure. This is now a nearly crippling problem in Wisconsin. Alliant Energy was recently able to get through the entire approval process for a 500MW plant and an associated transmission line in Iowa within six months. It took us three years of study and three years of contentious process to get a 150MW plant sited on campus, and the Arrowhead-Weston 345KV transmission line has been tied up in process for about 20 years. Furthermore, Iowa was already in better shape than Wisconsin before their six-month process started! I don’t think Iowans are any less concerned for their environment than we are. The difference is that they are able to make decisions and move on. We need to find a way to do that in Wisconsin, because the alternative is grim. We need to give up any pretense that we can afford to prolong the process until the last holdout or the last dissenting voice has been brought into agreement. We need to find the best compromises we can among legitimate competing public interests and then act.

If we don’t, then two things seem overwhelmingly likely to me: 1) Our economy will continue to stagnate because the risk of a Wisconsin location for critical offices or labs or manufacturing facilities will be deemed too great; and 2) eventually we will begin to have larger-scale and longer-lasting power outages. When that happens, the dormant public will wake up and demand immediate action. They won’t demand careful, thoughtful, cost-effective, environmentally benign action. They will simply demand that the lights come back on by any means necessary and at any cost to the environment. It’s hard for me to imagine anything that is LESS in the public interest than allowing Wisconsin to keep heading in that direction.

This is why I think this forum, and others like it, is so important. We need a much more vigorous public dialog that expands beyond the traditional two camps and gets the attention of all customers and citizens. We need a public awareness of what is at risk and a public acknowledgement by everyone that these are not simple “either-or” issues. It’s not a question of whether we should engage in greater conservation or build new plants. We should engage in greater conservation and build new plants. It’s not whether we can have adequate electricity or clean air: We can and must have both.

MG&E and UW–Madison have committed to reducing current emissions sufficiently to more than offset the emissions from the new cogeneration plant. One part of that will be accomplished by phasing out our gasoline-powered vehicles, initially with CNG or some other alternative fuel, but with an end goal of someday having a zero-emission (meaning electric) fleet. We hope suitable electric vehicles will be available soon. The sooner the better! But, whether they are powered by batteries or by fuel cells or whatever, if they are electric we will be shifting the emission of pollutants from our vehicles to an electric generating plant somewhere. Even Hydrogen-fueled fuel cells will require electricity for hydrolyzing water to free the Hydrogen. Hydrogen is not a fuel source. It’s an energy transmission medium. At best, we get back by burning (combining with Oxygen) only as much energy as it took to separate H and O in the first place.

The strategy of replacing IC engines with electric engines is a good one overall if, and only if, we can find ways to produce electricity in more environmentally benign ways. I said earlier that I don’t think this is the time or place for me to go into generation alternatives. What I will say, though, is that there are several generating technologies that are vastly less polluting than coal, oil, or gas, and some of them are available and economical today. Beyond replacement of IC engines with electric engines, I think we should be replacing other uses of nonrenewable and polluting energy sources with renewables and making even greater use of electricity produced from renewable sources. Electricity is far and above the most versatile, safest, most economical, most inexhaustible, and potentially least polluting energy transmission medium we have, and we cannot afford to ignore that simple fact. To me, the most pressing energy policy question is “How can we accelerate the replacement of petroleum and coal with renewable energy sources, and transition to a largely electricity-based energy economy?”

That’s the question. If you ask me the answer, though, I have to say I don’t know. I do know it will take some behavioral and cultural changes. Those are difficult, but not impossible. It will also take some intense public dialogs and broader engagement of the public. It will take a shared vision of where we are headed and why. And all of that implies some serious public information and public education.

I know it is considered easy sport to blame the popular media for much of what ails society. But in this area, I think it is unquestionably true that they deserve some blame and that we deserve some improvement in the way important topics are covered by the media.

Last week, the University hosted a small academic conference on the subject of grade inflation. We invited speakers and participants from all over campus and from around the country to discuss this topic. Is it true that the average grades are going up all over the country and at all levels of education. The phenomenon is more pronounced at some levels and at some places than at others, and it varies in complex and interesting ways, but it is a quantifiable and indisputable fact. There is a great deal of disagreement about how important the phenomenon is. There is disagreement about the reasons for this trend. There is disagreement about what it means and whether we should be worried about it. There are disagreements about nearly every aspect of it. That’s why we had the conference. But only one speaker seemed to dispute that the trend either exists or is any kind of problem. Sure enough: The headline in the paper the next day was something like “Expert says grade inflation is a myth,” and the text gave the impression that the conference was evidence of some kind of amusing two-sided squabble.

And maybe that’s what it appears. But to reduce a complex topic to an oversimplified competition, report even-handedly on “both sides,” and then select the distinctly minority viewpoint as the headline, is worse than not reporting on the topic at all. It turns the entire paper (or radio or television program) into one big sports page where two tough, evenly-matched competitors are identified (even if artificially), and the balance of the reporting can then be reduced to keeping score. It also forces the participants in the debate to divide into two camps lest their points not be scored. Thereafter, the entire debate becomes “boo on you, and hooray for our side.” In this style of reporting, there is every incentive to keep the competition alive. There is no point at which it makes media sense to declare “OK, the preponderance of evidence and expert opinion lies here, and this is no longer news.” When the topic is something as important as energy policy, this style is most certainly worse than no reporting at all. And, yet, we do need accurate, insightful reporting of important public policy issues and debates. We should demand it of the media.

I said cultural changes would be needed but that those are difficult to achieve. Anytime I think about cultural change and get discouraged, I think about how common it was a mere 25 years ago for people to light cigarettes in public places, in offices, and even in classrooms during class. That would be nearly unthinkable for smokers today. Cultural change is possible.

Environmentalists, utilities, and the public at large need to acknowledge that almost every major environmental pollutant has been on the decline for the last 20 years, and that we are all better off for that. A recent study documented that the effect of all environmental regulation and remediation to date has been a huge net positive impact, not just on the air and water and land, but on the economy. The question is “Where do we go from here?” I said I don’t have answers, and I don’t. But I do hope this forum and others like it will begin to build bridges of cooperation and compromise and shared vision among all parties so we can move forward to build the badly-needed infrastructure while continuing to improve the environment for all of us.