Obama’s climate change plan: Idaho’s impact

President Obama’s climate change initiative is creating concern over the cost of energy and renewable sources.

The big concern in Idaho is with hydro-power.

Under Obama’s current plan it doesn’t recognize hydro-power here as a renewable energy source, which could mean increased costs.

“We’re concerned that it goes too far too fast, we really need a better glidepath that considers where are base load energy’s going to come from,” said Jackie Flowers, general manager of Idaho Falls Power.

Idaho’s no stranger to alternative energy.

“Really the keys going be when we have to buy power if we have a bad water year and we have to go the market to buy power and either coal’s not available or its more expensive because of this year those prices are going to go up,” said Flowers.

Another issue is finding out a base-power to meet the new standards and not pass that burden on to customers.

“The reality is: it’s not the same energy and they’ve removed the building block in there for nuclear energy so what’s the base load resource going to be,” said Flowers.

Their customers have concerns too:

“Renewable energy is a nice idea, but until they can make it affordable- the majority of us don’t make 150 thousand a year,” said Mark Larsen, and Idaho Falls Power Customer.

The big focus on the new plan is renewable energy, but there are many determining factors on what’s considered “renewable”.

In Idaho Falls, about 95 percent of our energy comes from hydro-power

The clean-air initiative would cost about $8.4 billion nationally.

This would include the requirements for states to make a carbon emission reduction standard.