By Brice Wallace

Deseret News

Utah has coal, but it needs to look at renewable energy resources. Utah needs to look at renewable energy resources, but it already has coal.

Those two similar-sounding but diametrically opposite viewpoints emerged Wednesday during an energy-development forum at the Capitol. Some speakers wanted the state to focus on renewable energy resource development, while others said coal remains a plentiful and relatively affordable resource for at least the near future.

Eighty-seven percent of Utah's energy needs are met by coal-fired generation, compared with 50 percent nationally. But Dianne Nielson, energy adviser for Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., said technologies must be put in place to help coal burn cleaner in order to reduce emissions, and the state must diversify its energy resources "and bring on renewables." Huntsman has set goals for energy-efficiency, the expansion of renewable energy use and the reduction of emission levels.

"There isn't any question that Utah's economy will grow, but it has to grow with a diverse set of resources, and it must include renewables in the future, such as solar, geothermal, and wind. It's alternative fuel for transportation, compressed natural gas, hybrid vehicles, all kinds of plug-in hybrids," she told a crowd of about 60 at the forum, presented by the Women's State Legislative Council of Utah. "We have the ability and we have the resources in Utah to accomplish all of them."

But Kimball Rasmussen, president and chief executive officer of power-generation company Deseret Power, stressed a need for "balance." Coal is a low-cost and native resource for Utah's energy needs, he said.  "If you want affordability, sustainability and predictability, build from a base that's already working, and go forward from there," he said. "That's the message that we have. We'd like to encourage Gov. Huntsman to adamantly defend the base that we have as we aggressively move forward to the new situation of greener and cleaner resources in the future."

Rasmussen said policy makers face public pressure to "do something," but "gutting" coal-fired power plants by placing environmental restrictions on them could have severe economic impacts. Businesses facing higher energy costs could opt to move operations to countries with worse emissions problems, he said.

Rep. Roger Barrus, R-Centerville, said Huntsman's "silence" about the use of fossil energy resources is disappointing.  "Regardless of what we do, these new technologies that are on the horizon are at least a decade or more away, and the question I have in my mind is, how do we bridge that gap between now and 10 or 15 or 20 years, when they really become commercially viable and can be used in a broad enough arena that they can replace the fossil energy resources we now have?" Barrus said. "I think we're going to be faced with electrical brownouts, fuel shortages and a lot of other things if industry is not allowed to find a way to bridge that gap during the next decade or so."

Vanessa Pierce, executive director of the Healthy Environment Alliance, or HEAL, of Utah, urged a look at renewable energy options. She noted that coal is reliable and cost-effective but added that Utah's reserves are limited to perhaps 50 years. She also said Utah communities relying on the coal industry could face a future akin to the present situation of Flint, Mich., which is suffering after years of near-complete dependence on the auto industry.

John Baza, director of the Utah Division of Oil, Gas and Mining, cited projections by the federal Energy Information Administration showing that fossil-fuel use in the U.S. will drop by only 3 percent between now and 2030.  "That tells me that we're kind of stuck with fossil fuels for a while, that the only way to replace that is to rapidly develop things like nuclear...to rapidly move to things like wind and solar. But the Energy Information Administration is saying that shift is not going to occur that rapidly," Baza said.

Robin Riggs, vice president and general counsel for the Salt Lake Chamber, said the state needs fossil fuels but also needs to invest "aggressively" in renewable energy development while trying to avoid a spike in customers' energy price. "They don't call these things nonrenewables for nothing," he said.