A boat, the weekend sailor’s gripe goes, is a hole in the water you fill with money.
You might be tempted now to swap out “boat” for “tidal energy turbine.”
Earlier this month, the Snohomish Public Utility District announced it was shelving its pilot project to install two giant turbines on the seafloor of Admiralty Inlet west of Whidbey Island to study the feasibility of adding tidal power to the PUD’s portfolio of energy sources.
To date, the project has involved eight years of effort by the PUD and others to work through plans and permitting to address the concerns of environmentalists, tribes, residents, a telecommunication company and others. The turbines, during the three- to five-year study, would have been connected to the electrical grid and provided energy to PUD customers.
But the initial cost estimate of $20 million to see the project through proved too optimistic. PUD General Manager Steve Klein told The Herald in an Oct. 3 article that the PUD believed it had a “gentleman’s agreement” with the U.S. Department of Energy that it would pay half of the project’s costs through grants and in-kind contributions.
Now, with the project’s site preparation scheduled to start next year and bids ready to go out to contractors to build the turbines, the PUD recently went back to the DOE with an update of the project cost and a request for $8.5 million more that the PUD would match. The PUD received a flat refusal; the DOE would make no further investment past its agreed-upon $10 million. Ironically, much of the additional cost resulted from additional federally mandated studies and permits.
The Department of Energy said there was no “gentleman’s agreement”; it committed to $10 million and no more. It’s hard to believe otherwise. Washington state officials and the state Department of Ecology have struggled to nail down the DOE on its commitments to clean up the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, and they have iron-clad written agreements and court orders in place.
Still, it’s shortsighted of the DOE to hold to its $10 million line, considering the benefit that could come of the project. If the PUD can’t find a way to install the turbines and complete the study, it’s difficult to see how any other tidal project would ever be built in Washington state waters. It’s even more frustrating when you consider that this is a project promoting renewable energy, an investment that if other tidal projects follow would pay for itself many times over.
Unless the tidal project moves forward the eight years of effort and the money invested might as well be sitting in a hole in the water.
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