WGA Day 2 - Clean up Alberta oilsands: U.S. officials

COMMENT: The Western Governors Association (WGA) annual convention runs from Jun 14-16 in Park City, Utah. The agenda is all energy and climate change.

Clearly articulated in this first article is the message that for all the talk about renewables, the US is turning no corners with energy - the traditional big engines - fossil fuels and nuclear - are the way of the future.

JASON FEKETE,
Vancouver Sun
Canwest News Service
June 16, 2009

Obama administration committed to boosting clean-energy production

Two of U.S. President Barack Obama's top advisers on energy and climate change said Monday the Alberta oilsands are a key part of the U.S. energy mix. But they warned its development must be cleaned up, because there's "a lot of concern" south of the border about their environmental footprint.

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Nancy Sutley, chairwoman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said the Obama administration is committed to increasing clean-energy production in the U.S., and the carbon-intensive oilsands are "very tricky."

They recognized, though, that America's energy portfolio will be diverse for many years, and will include the oilsands, coal-fired power generation, a greater role for nuclear energy, and new opportunities with shale gas.

Speaking to state leaders and premiers at the Western Governors'
Association meeting, Chu and Sutley both said science is critical to moving forward on energy development and climate change, and they're hopeful technology can solve environmental challenges facing the oilsands.

"Canada is a close neighbour. This is energy that one hopes to develop in a clean way, and so that you can decrease the environmental footprint, both in the energy invested in order to recover it, and on the local environmental issues," Chu said.

He noted there's far more energy invested to develop the oilsands compared with conventional sources -- an additional 20 to 25 per cent -- which poses problems in extracting northern Alberta's gooey, tar-like sands, the second-largest proven oil reserves in the world.

"There's also environmental issues with the recovery of the oilsands, the very tarry stuff that's left behind, the residues. There haven't been solutions to that yet," said Chu, who met privately Monday with Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach for about 30 minutes.

Stelmach, Saskatchewan's Brad Wall and Manitoba Premier Gary Doer are participating in the three-day meeting dedicated to energy development and climate change. The talks, which conclude today, have featured a handful of Obama's top cabinet members, including secretaries from the departments of energy, agriculture and the interior.

Sutley, whose department is responsible for coordinating the White House's environmental efforts, said there's promising technology with carbon capture and storage to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions emitted during development of the oilsands and other fossil fuels. But she didn't mince words about some of the worries that U.S. lawmakers have with oilsands development and its environmental impacts on land, air and water.

"There's a lot of concern, frankly, about the environmental footprint associated with the oilsands," Sutley said. "The real approach is to try to look at our energy policy comprehensively, that there isn't just one way we're going to meet our energy future. We need to do it in a cleaner way, and that there's a role for all of the diversified sources of energy to meet that."

Meanwhile, the head of the World Bank delivered a veiled rebuke to governors and cabinet members from the Obama administration about the Buy American provisions in U.S. stimulus spending, and predicted it could take at least another year for the world economy to recover.

World Bank President Robert Zoellick said the global economy will shrink about three per cent in 2009, with some possibility of improvement late this year or more likely in 2010. Nursing the economy back to health could be a slow and painful process, he said, because demand from consumers, businesses and government just isn't near the levels of recent years.

"There's a high degree of uncertainty, a lot of fragility," Zoellick said.
"I wish I could forecast a more robust recovery, but I think it's going to be a challenging couple of years."

Zoellick last week condemned the rules governing the $787-billion US economic stimulus package, warning the Buy American provisions foster protectionism.

Officials vow support for renewable energy in West

PARK CITY, Utah -- Cabinet leaders in the Obama administration promised Monday to help Western states develop a robust system for delivering renewable energy.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said the West has vast untapped potential for harnessing wind, the sun and geothermal energy to create electricity. But "it doesn't do any good to generate energy if you can't get it to market," Salazar said during the annual meeting of the Western Governors' Association.

That's long been the concern of Western governors eager to develop renewable energy projects but frustrated by limitations in the transmission system and sluggish bureaucracies.

Salazar and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack vowed to make renewable energy a priority and find ways to streamline permitting.

Salazar said four Western states - Arizona, California, Nevada and Wyoming - will get federal renewable energy planning offices to help make sure projects don't get stalled.

In a report released Monday, the association - which represents the governors of 19 Western states and American Samoa, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands - identified 54 areas with renewable energy potential across the Western U.S. and Canada.

Delivering the kinds of power loads those areas might generate will require an upgrade in the existing transmission system and the likely need for creating new transmission corridors.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu said the United States has fallen behind places such as China in the capacity of transmission lines.

"This is a little bit embarrassing quite frankly," said Chu, who announced $80 million in federal stimulus money to develop the next generation of high-voltage transmission networks.

---

Western Governors' Association: http://www.westgov.org/