EVs address climate change. Removing dams restores salmon habitat. But what if the former is at odds with the latter?
By Charles Coxe. March 11, 2021. Electric cars are coming—maybe faster and in greater numbers than you think. Even as overall car sales plunged, electric vehicle sales in 2020 increased globally by 43%—and that amid a pandemic, economic recession and average gas prices still less than $2.25 a gallon in the United States.
The escalating trend in EV ownership has massive implications for our existing power grid, called the Western Interconnection. According to a recent U.S. Department of Energy study, the nation’s demand for electricity could grow by as much as 38% by 2050. A big reason for that increase, ironically, comes from our desire to drive eco-friendly electric vehicles.
This is especially true in the Pacific Northwest. The top three states for EV market share are California, Washington and Oregon. Seattle is pushing to have a third of its drivers behind the wheel of an EV by the end of the decade.
MORE: EVs in Eastern Oregon
While electric cars don’t guzzle gas, they do pound power: The average electric vehicle requires 30 kilowatt-hours to travel 100 miles, according to research by the PEW Charitable Trusts. That’s roughly the amount the average American home requires to power everything happening inside its walls, from lights and laundry to computers and air conditioning, for an entire day. By 2030, the State of California estimates EVs will consume 17 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in the Golden State alone, or 5.4 percent of the state’s entire energy supply.
Where will all of this electricity come from?
Why breach a dam?
Compared with the rest of the country, residents of the Columbia River Basin have historically enjoyed cheap, abundant power. Although hydroelectric provides only 8% of the national power supply, more than half of the electricity used in Idaho and Oregon—and as much as 74 percent in Washington—comes from hydropower produced by dams. Without dams, the Pacific Northwest as it exists today could not have been created nor could it continue to be maintained.
Power tie: While dams have provided the Pacific Northwest with seemingly unlimited power, by one account they’ve cut off 55% of the Columbia River Basin’s fish habitat. Photo by Jurgen Hess
Although it’s tough to deny the value of the virtually emission-free power they produce, however, dams aren’t nearly as eco-friendly as many once believed.
A study by the Environmental Defense Fund found that while dams themselves don’t contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, the warming, stagnant reservoirs that collect behind them do. Slack water lakes can sometimes contribute more carbon dioxide and methane to the atmosphere than a plant burning fossil fuel. Reservoirs are also prone to filling with toxic algal blooms, which create numerous environmental problems. Add to that the monumental obstacle they present to salmon, steelhead and other native fish species, and you understand the rationale for an unfavorable view of dams and hydropower.
No wonder the trend for dam removals has picked up steam across the country. According to conservation group American Rivers, 160 U.S. dams have been removed over the past two years. Those removals have reopened more than 1,598 miles of upstream rivers, many in the Pacific Northwest.
Those figures don’t even include the upcoming largest dam removal project ever attempted, on the Klamath River in California, where four dams are slated for removal beginning in 2022. Or the $34 billion plan Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson unexpectedly announced in January to breach four controversial dams on the Lower Snake River in southeastern Washington.
MORE: ‘The stars are aligned’: Rep. Mike Simpson breaks down plan to breach Snake River dams
Environmentalists have celebrated the decommissioning of dams. But are we sure this is entirely a good thing?
From the perspective of near-extinct salmon, or Indigenous cultures built around them, undoubtedly so. The 2020 removal of a diversion dam on the Middle Fork Nooksack River near Bellingham, Washington, opened up 16 miles of salmon habitat in the hope that once they un-build it, the fish will come.
Experience is showing that can happen even sooner than expected. Just a decade after the Marmot Dam was removed from Oregon’s Sandy River in 2007, the number of spring chinook, winter steelhead and coho salmon returning to spawn jumped to levels not seen in 40 years.
“Since 2007, salmon and steelhead in the Sandy River have been out-performing similar populations in nearby basins,” says Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife North Willamette district fish biologist Ben Walczak. “This increase can likely be attributed to the removal of Marmot Dam coupled with intense stream restoration in the upper basin.”
Even so, any serious conversation about removing dams should weigh the cost of removing their clean’ish electricity potential against future energy needs—especially as EVs proliferate.
Electric relationship
Those four dams on the Lower Snake River—Ice Harbor, Lower Monumental, Little Goose, Lower Granite—are at the center of one of the longest-running and most consequential environmental battles in the Columbia River Basin. New life was breathed into the decades-long effort by conservationists to get rid of them when Rep. Simpson unveiled his sweeping plan to breach all four dams in hope of ending what he called “the Salmon Wars.”
More, more, more: Power-hungry EVs are becoming common around the Columbia River Basin. Photo by Jurgen Hess
The centerpiece of the argument to remove the dams is that, largely due to the emergence of wind and solar power, the dams are now money losers that have become hydroelectric redundancies on the larger power system while also, by the way, compromising the entire Snake River eco-system. Power from the dams is marketed by the Bonneville Power Administration.
“The BPA was having financial difficulties and they still are—the problem is they are not the cheapest power in the Pacific Northwest anymore,” Simpson recently told Columbia Insight. “Rural electrics will be looking outside of the BPA to buy their power to be able to get it more cheaply.”
MORE: No surrender: Coalition to sue feds over Snake River dams … again
Yet for all their faults, those four Lower Snake River dams generate 1,004 megawatts (MW) of power on average annually, with a capability of generating up to 3,000 MW, according to the BPA. One megawatt is about what it takes to power 796 Northwest homes for a year, according to the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.
When looking at a state like California needing 17 billion kilowatts, the potential loss of a million kilowatts here or there may feel like a drop in the bucket. And, as Spokane’s Spokesman-Review recently reported, the four Lower Snake River dams produce only a fraction of the energy that feeds into the Pacific Northwest’s power grid.
But when dams are taken offline that lost energy supply might need to be made up somewhere.
Although wind and solar power become more prominent sources of electricity each year—up to 7.1% and 1.7% of the U.S. supply in 2019, respectively—their current capacity doesn’t come close to filling anticipated future consumption demand. Power shortages may still need to be met by the costly and dirty burning of fossil fuels.
In 2018, the NW Energy Coalition found the energy produced by the four Lower Snake River dams could be replaced by a mix of other clean energy sources. Energy industry advocates refuted those calculations, calling them outdated and incomplete.
Changing behaviors
As with many modern challenges, at least part of the solution to balancing increased EV power demand with decreased supply of traditional electricity sources will simply require working smarter. According to the National Hydropower Association, America’s hydro capacity could be doubled without building a single new dam if we invest in improving efficiency and capacity at already existing facilities, and explore adding turbines to dams that aren’t currently generating power.
Power player: Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson wants to breach the Lower Snake River dams. Courtesy of Office of Representative Mike Simpson
While solar and wind power have limitations, each year brings improvements and incremental progress in efficiency.
Proposals stemming out of new research might open pathways to at least partial answers. A recent Department of Energy study, for example, determined that (inevitably controversial) offshore wind turbines along the Oregon coast could generate 2 to 3 gigawatts of electricity—enough to power a million homes in the Pacific Northwest.
A large part of controlling the impacts of increased electricity demand will be controlling its timing. If all those new EV drivers charge their cars as soon as they get home from work, during the time of peak demand, delivery systems could likely be overloaded. But convincing owners to charge during overnight hours when demand is low—an objective that can be accomplished through education, time-of-use variable pricing structures and smart chargers—can flatten demand peaks and actually help the overall transmission grid.
And although electricity consumption is expected to rise, the past 20 years actually defied projections, with nationwide energy use unexpectedly dropping by 7% per person, mostly thanks to small improvements in energy efficiency that will likely continue.
Smaller measures individually won’t meet all of the increased need—especially as American roads become dominated by electric vehicles—but taken together, they can have a much larger impact.
This doesn’t mean hard choices and unforeseen consequences aren’t on the road ahead.
“Look, these are valuable dams and we all need the energy,” admits Amy Kober, vice president of environmental nonprofit American Rivers. “But can we save the most iconic salmon runs on the planet without losing the Snake River dams? The answer is no.”
Charles Coxe has written about environmental issues ranging from ice road trucking in northern Canada to BASE jumping in the Snake River Canyon for publications including Rolling Stone, Life and Popular Science. Illustration by Isabelle Tavares.
Columbia Insight‘s series focusing on the Lower Snake River dams is supported by a grant from the Society of Environmental Journalists.
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I believe that all articles and analyses such as this should at least mention modern modular nuclear power. Most of the public associate nuclear power with mammoth reactors, construction cost overruns, terrible risk and unsolved waste. Modern designs are intrinsically safe, have waste products with short half live. Cost efficiencies with centralized mass production holds the promise of electricity cheaper than both fossil fuel and current renewable design. “A Bright Future” by Goldstein is a convenient source that uses the European experience to analyze the costs and benefits of nuclear electric power.
Thank you for this.
The current design nuclear plants are very much safer than the ones designed seventy years ago and need to be phased in. Perhaps uses for the waste could be discovered.
I’ll add that the other tool that should be on the table here is to reduce energy consumption.
Thank you Chuck for your thoughtful comments re: consideration of Small Modular Reactors (SMR’s). I’m on the Oregon Hanford Cleanup Board (OHCB); we’ve had some discussion of SMR’s. A 1980 Oregon ballot measure created a moratorium on nuclear plants until there was a permanent place for nuclear waste. Three bills have been introduced in the legislature dealing with SMR’s and possible exemptions from the moratorium.
While the design of SMR’s may be safer than existing large nuclear plants, nuclear waste is created. Some feel the nuclear waste created per MW of generated SMR power is the same or higher than the waste per MW of generated power from existing nuclear plants.
It’s not sure if the half-life of SMR waste is any different than that of existing nuclear plant waste. It depends on the waste isotopes which can be quite variable. Per our staff’s thoughts if the SMR waste isotopes are similar to other nuclear waste, the half-life should also be similar.
Our OHCB board will have more discussion on the subject of SMA’s. Again, thank you for the comment. Stay tuned, let’s keep “talkin”.
…Jurgen Hess
Nukes v dams: a false and deadly choice
Capitalism presents us all with myriad false choices. The idea that, to fuel our dependence upon electricity, we must choose between salmon-killing dams and all-life-killing nuclear, is one of those false choices. I have encountered this one all my adult life, beginning in the 1960s.
Late environmental leader David Brower stated in my presence, back in the 1990s, that his greatest regret was that, during his years as the Sierra Club Executive Director in the 1960s, a majority of the Sierra Club board decided that, to keep from building dams on the Colorado River (including one in the Grand Canyon!), they needed to support nuclear power generation. This idea led to the Sierra Club supporting the construction of Diablo Canyon Power Plant near San Luis Obispo CA. Brower opposed his board on this, and this was one of the issues that ended his job as a Sierra Club leader. Earlier in the decade the Sierra Club had opposed construction of a nuclear power plant on Bodega Head, in Marin County CA.
The Colorado dams issue (prominent in a Brower biography entitled Encounters with the Archdruid) presented a false choice, clearly understood as such by Brower then, but not by some other environmental leaders.
We seem to be revisiting this false choice again today: to remove the dams on the Snake and Columbia Rivers we must embrace a new form of nuclear power generation, the so-called Small Modular Reactor. More broadly and, possibly more disturbing, is the idea that nuclear in any form is “clean energy”, to be considered along with solar, wind and other renewable energy. People who buy into this definition of “clean” do not understand two things about nuclear power at any scale: the fuel cycle (mining, milling, conversion, enrichment, fuel fabrication, electricity generation, waste disposal and decommissioning) is dirty and not carbon-free, requiring much fossil-fuel energy along the way. And the proliferation of nuclear waste continues without pause, piling up this deadly poison on the sites of the nation’s nearly 100 operating reactors, as well as at Hanford, Oak Ridge, Savannah and other locations. Decentralized nuclear such as this small-scale idea will so decentralize the nuclear waste problem as to scatter it across the landscape more than it already is, potentially making it impossible to regulate and control.
At the core of the false choice is the definition of “clean” energy. The idea that nuclear is carbon-free and thus “clean” comes from a singular focus on the electricity generation stage and not the rest of the fuel cycle. The federal Department of Energy has adopted a definition of “clean energy” that is used by many other entities, both official and not official. The third paragraph on the USDOE’s “Clean Energy” page reads: “Responsible development of all of America’s rich energy resources — including solar, wind, water, geothermal, bioenergy & nuclear — will help ensure America’s continued leadership in clean energy. Moving forward, the Energy Department will continue to drive strategic investments in the transition to a cleaner, domestic and more secure energy future” (www.energy.gov/science-innovation/clean-energy).
This nuclear priority of the USDOE is not new. But what is new is the inclusion in President Biden’s priorities (www.eenews.net/stories/1063719675), the embracing of the technology by such organizations as the Breakthrough Institute and some environmental organizations and leaders (such as James Hansen). These leadership priorities are presenting us with these false choices, sometimes embraced by people who should know better.
One reason this is a false choice is that we in the United States still waste gigantic amounts of electricity. Nuclear provides about 18% of the nation’s electricity. More than 20% of the electricity used by residential and commercial sectors is wasted, the waste is avoidable, and can be reduced by no-cost, low-cost, and cost-effective measures. Further, about a quarter of the electricity generated by the central power station is wasted on its way to the user (www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-u-s-energy-use-in-one-giant-chart/). Added up, there are many opportunities to replace both the nuclear electricity already generated and the hydroelectricity generated by such as the Snake River dams.
We have no “need for power” where old nuclear, new (modular) nuclear, and some of the hydro power is concerned. All we need to do is live more mindfully and be supported in our efforts by various incentives from government and non-profit institutions.
What disturbs me most when these false choices are embraced by environmental activists and organizations is this: we are helping corporate America divide and conquer us. This, combined with the bribes offered to communities and organizations, undermines all our efforts to win these battles.
(https://theecologist.org/2015/feb/05/false-solution-nuclear-power-not-low-carbon)
M. V. Ramana, “Eyes Wide Shut”, Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility report (2020) (https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/oregonpsrorg/pages/1625/attachments/original/1598897964/ EyesWideShutReport_Final-30August2020.pdf?1598897964)
David
Your reply to the nuclear option is spot on. We need to move away from centralized energy production wherever possible, especially production that produces forever waste products. I realize that solar and wind also have a significant carbon footprint, but I think that when people have greater control over their own localized energy production they will also become more mindful of ways to reduce their needs.