TOPEKA — The future of green energy is challenged almost daily by decisions at the federal level that affect the Kansas utility industry, according to an environmentalist who has spent most of her career focused on practical solutions to climate and energy challenges.
Dorothy Barnett, executive director of the Climate + Energy Project, became interested in climate science and energy through working in community and economic development in rural areas.
“I wanted to see how rural Kansas could really take advantage of the clean energy economy and how that could help the areas I had grown up in,” she said. “But as I learned more about climate change, about the environment, as I began to be a grandmother, much of the mission to equitably reduce greenhouse gas emissions resonated with me.”
Today, she’s watching with concern as federal policy encourages the country’s energy reliance on fossil fuels and reduces incentives to move toward green energy.
“My primary concern about what’s happening is how the inaction we’re taking will impact climate change,” she said. “Every report that we read, every bit of scientific data, says this is the decade that we should be scaling up large-scale renewable energy projects and cutting greenhouse gas emissions if we’re going to stay within a reasonable amount of global warming.”
Barnett pointed to climate change effects, including recent flooding and heat waves.
“I was reading an article yesterday that was talking about every degree it gets hotter is impacting crop yield, and that should concern every Kansan as the breadbasket of the world,” she said. “Climate change is an economic issue. It’s a health issue. It’s a resiliency issue.”
Along with those concerns, Barnett also highlights the pocketbook effect for most Kansans, who will be paying more for energy. The federal government changed or eliminated incentives to build large-scale wind and solar farms, which do a lot to help Kansans offset costs associated with gas and coal, she said.
Barnett listed other changes that cut support for the federal weatherization program that helps people with low incomes make their homes more energy efficient and safe.
Kansas Corporation Commission Chairman Andrew French at a hearing last week talked with Evergy officials about potential inequities in the energy system.
“You’ve probably got a lot of higher-income folks that have newer housing stock, efficient appliances, their bills are on autopay, so they may be experiencing lower bills, even if they have a larger house,” French said. “And they’re not as price sensitive. Then you’ve got a pretty good segment of the population that’s lower income. They have less efficient housing stock, they have less efficient appliances and probably don’t have the means to upgrade those.”
French said that there’s an argument to be made that offering the same rates for such vastly different residential consumers could be seen as “not just and reasonable or unreasonably discriminatory.”
Such discussion isn’t a surprise to Barnett.
“We’ve seen decades of disinvestment in marginalized communities,” she said. “Folks that are in those older homes oftentimes are dealing with really hard choices. Am I going to pay the electric bill so that I can maintain some sort of cooling in these high temperatures that we’re facing, or am I going to be able to buy some medicine and put some food on the table?”
Aging infrastructure
Keeping energy costs down is an important consideration for infrastructure expansions in the state. Evergy recently received KCC approval to build two natural gas plants and a solar plant. Barnett is concerned about the gas plants, which she refuses to call “natural.”
“That’s a fossil fuel talking point, so let’s call it what it is,” she said. “It’s fossil gas, and it may not be as bad from a greenhouse gas emission standpoint or from a carbon pollution standpoint as coal, but it does emit methane, which is a very strong greenhouse gas.”
Climate + Energy Project intervened in the KCC docket about building the new plants, Barnett said.
“We oppose them on two fronts,” she said. “Again, it’s completely against our mission to reduce greenhouse gas emissions equitably. From a more practical standpoint and going back to what I said about energy burden, we have some real concerns that fossil gas is a risky financial investment for Kansans.”
Barnett said the cost of gas has been “low-ish” for a decade, but according to predictions that won’t continue. Specifically, she said, the federal government is pushing for more gas use and is incentivizing exporting it to other countries, all of which are likely to drive up costs.
She said she remembers talking with an executive in the utility industry early in her career who had begun investing in wind energy.
“He was like, ‘We didn’t do this because we care about the environment, because we care about clean energy,’” she said, recalling his words. “‘We were really dependent on gas and our portfolio had a lot of gas and people couldn’t afford their bills. So we needed to diversify our fuel mix.’”
Energy future
Barnett said she hopes to see investment in battery energy storage systems and other innovative strategies to address utility needs.
Battery technology and energy storage tax credits survived the federal government’s changes, she said.
“What I’m hearing is we may begin to see a big investment in battery energy storage, while wind and solar are kind of on the back burner,” Barnett said. “Geothermal technology actually also fared well in the ‘big, beautiful bill.’”
Kansas has limited opportunities in geothermal, she said, because it uses so much water.
“Kansas has such a robust wind resource that almost nothing can compare economically,” Barnett said. “For so many years, the mantra was, ‘Let’s let the market decide.’ Well, the market decided that wind and solar were the most cost-effective ways to generate electricity in the United States. And now, what market, right? It has been some of the most interesting times I’ve ever been a part of around wind and solar for the last almost 20 years.”
Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com. Follow Kansas Reflector on Facebook and Twitter.
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