Opinion: The Oracle says higher energy costs go hand-in-hand with more carbon emissions
OPINION|
I venture down the crunchy hobbit trail. Ornate cobwebs slap my face ruining hours of work by industrious arachnids.
I unfold my chair and carefully remove hitchhiking Spanish Needles stuck in my socks. I wait for her.
The Oracle speaks because she channels a universal field of consciousness just like all living things. She won’t tell me how she forms words in my mind, but I suspect it has something to do with those wily fungi. They are everywhere, meddling in everyone’s business.
The dry trees of August closed the valves on the underside of their leaves to prevent water loss, which meant they closed off respiration, which meant they didn’t photosynthesize, which meant they didn’t make sugar, which meant they were starving.
The rains came in September but the soaring temperatures in October are a universal stressor reminding us the planet is warming.
Read previous columns from The Oracle.
The Oracle explains the stakes: higher temperatures disrupt eons of partnerships between the plants and animals who depend on precise cycles of temperature, nutrients and sunlight to stay alive. She reminds me the sources of food I take for granted are no exception.
She informs me the cost of our energy and food will rise at the same time we increase carbon emissions. I mention a story I saw in the Springfield Daily Citizen: Springfield City Utilities will spend $230 million in ratepayer dollars to build a new natural gas electrical generation plant.
Southwest Power Pool requiring carbon-based generation
We’re told the transmission authority we partner with (Southwest Power Pool or SPP) requires new generation to be carbon-based. Tragically, the area SPP governs is the Saudi Arabia of renewable energy: regional, unlimited, inexpensive wind and solar energy.
And so, CU is instead plowing a ton of money (and raising rates) for a facility to burn natural gas at the exact moment the U.S. is expanding natural gas shipments to Europe to replace Russian sources.
The Oracle predicts the cheap domestic price for natural gas will rise accordingly.
She asks me: Does it really matter how much you pay for a razor? The real cost over time is blades. Similarly, a $230 million capital cost is nothing compared to the cost of the pollution caused by the natural gas we will burn to meet the needs of a growing population.
I mention the fastest growing, cheapest and most reliable form of new generation around the world is solar — with wind a close second. These new sources of electricity become “base load” (reliable and predictable) when you couple them with utility scale batteries. CU did announce 36 megawatts of new batteries but for a city utility with a remarkable combination of renewable energy and low rates, their new carbon-emitting generators are a giant step backward. (Editor’s note: In 2024, City Utilities reported 34% of its delivered energy came from renewables, primarily wind. It has pledged to be “net zero carbon” by 2050.)
Let’s hope we never use it
As utility bills spike across the country, the best outcome for Springfield would be this: we bought a $230 million mistake but we will never use it.
The Oracle knows history. She predicts nothing good can come from linking our utility bills and our region’s future to a never-ending war in Europe. “Foolish humans” she murmurs over the sound of spring water bubbling over mossy boulders.
I can see she is busy with the Fall transition: leaves to colorize; turtles to burrow in the mud; wild bees to complete their nests and then perish; fur coats to thicken and seeds to drop and sleep in soil blankets.
“Come again…” she whispers, dropping a coterie of crimson maple leaves on my path to the warming world above.