$2 billion building plan challenges climate goals, but OPPD confident emissions will drop

[Omaha Steve]

Replacing coal generation with renewable resources like wind and solar has helped the Omaha Public Power District slash its climate-changing emissions over the last decade by more than 4 million tons.

That’s no small amount, says OPPD President and CEO Javier Fernandez — the equivalent impact of taking every vehicle in OPPD’s eastern Nebraska service area off the road.

Now Fernandez and other OPPD officials say they are confident the utility can continue on that more sustainable road, even as it faces fast-rising power demand from data centers and other big industrial power users.

While OPPD’s $2 billion plan for meeting that demand calls for new generating plants, both renewable and not, they say 90% of the actual energy generated will come from the renewable resources.

FULL story: https://omaha.com/news/local/business/2-billion-building-plan-challenges-climate-goals-but-oppd-confident-emissions-will-drop/article_6ca9460c-361c-11ee-8cbc-93be4abd98c1.html

We own 15 shares of OPPD's community solar project. We have already recovered our investment on our bill.

[Think. Again.]

1. That's a shame...

The OPPD was making such a great start, they got up to 33.7% of their power coming from renewables compared to 20% nationwide.

But even at 33.7%, why would they even think about making a major increase in production before they were anywhere near finishing their originally planned transition.

Obviously these big data could simply be told they will have to build their own renewable generation plants, and at the amounts of power they're talking about, it would probably be economically better for them to do so.

I know people will say: "but Omaha has to grow!" without ever asking "grow toward what?".