Estimating effects of energy planning on environmental impacts in the Western United States

As part of their long-term planning process, utilities and government agencies are choosing power generation and conservation strategies that will effect environmental interactions for decades to come. In the US, power marketing administrations within the US Department of Energy have a strong influence over the strategies to be implemented in large multi-state regions. Pacific Northwest Laboratories (PNL) prepared environmental impact statements (EIS) for two power marketing agencies, the Western Area Power Administration (Western) and Bonneville Power Administration (Bonneville). The Western EIS assessed the effects of integrated resource planing (IRP) on the public utilities Western serves, while the Bonneville EIS assessed the effects of acquiring new energy resources in the pacific Northwest. The results were found using models that simulated utility systems. In both cases, environmental impacts were reduced when the conservation strategy in question was considered. This paper describes the results of the environmental analyses for the two agencies and compares the results with those of another simplified approach that relies on attributing emissions of new resources based on an extrapolation of existing capacity