The novel coronavirus is causing decreased demand for electricity across the United States and while it can be hard to see a measurable impact on Montana’s renewable energy sector, industry members say larger operations are resilient in the face of the novel coronavirus pandemic. YPR’s Kayla Desroches updates Nicky Ouellet on Montana’s renewable industry.
NICKY OUELLET: So, Kayla, oil and gas have hit some pretty rocky extremes in the past couple of months. How do members of the renewable industry say they're doing here in Montana?
KAYLA DESROCHES: The Montana Renewable Energy Association is a group that advocates for small renewable energy developers like rooftop solar and small wind. Andrew Valainis is the executive director of that group. He said they're seeing changes to customer interaction like they're not going to go inside homes. There have been some changes to business protocol. There have been some permitting issues because everything is being done by mail. So there have been some just day to day changes. He's also saying that there have been some delays in installing rooftop solar and some potential project cancellations with the pandemic going on.
"People are concerned about, you know, the economic downturn. And so it's potentially a tough time to put forward a big investment like that," Valainis said.
OUELLET: So small scale, kind of home projects are maybe in a tenuous position. What about bigger large scale solar and wind projects?
DESROCHES: Industry members tell me that larger operations tend to be more resilient than smaller operations. Jeff Fox is Montana policy manager with clean energy advocacy organization Renewable Northwest. And he's saying that those types of larger scale facilities like wind farms or hydroelectric facilities are more robust than some of the smaller operations.
"That's because they are on long term contracts with utilities and those utilities are in relatively good financial health and are not particularly subject to drastic effects of the corona virus on their business," Fox said.
DESROCHES: Valainis saying that residential electricity is up because everyone's at home. Commercial electricity is down and that's something that Greg Copeland, who works with NaturEner, says. Copeland is vice president of asset management with NaturEner, which is the company that runs these three large wind farms in Montana. Copeland said in mid-May that NaturEner sells power on the open market on an hourly basis. But he was seeing energy demand dropped significantly due to COVID-19, in some cases by 10 to 15 percent.
"So we're seeing merchant prices right now lower than was projected, in fact, lower than has been experienced in quite some time," Copeland said.
DESROCHES: So larger operations are also seeing some effects for right now. What's hard to say is what the long term effects will be.
OUELLET: During the pandemic furloughs, layoffs have been kind of, you know, across industry is affecting everyone. And that's true for the coal world as well. Navajo Transitional Energy Company laid off 130 workers at Montana mines in April. What about for renewable energy? Have we seen the same sort of job losses there?
DESROCHES: State data show that there have been around 25 claims for unemployment insurance in the solar, hydro and wind industry between early February and late May. There's nothing definitively linking those numbers to COVID-19, even if they're related. But it's a possibility the pandemic could be contributing. Also, the number of residents who use renewable energy right now is pretty small. Montana Renewable Energy Association executive director Andrew Valainis makes a distinction between large and small scale renewable energy. So large scale is hydro or wind. Small scales, mostly solar. And he's saying that only around three thousand or thirty five hundred small scale net metering customers are actually in Montana. And that's compared to tens of thousands of customers in California or Massachusetts. So that's it's tiny in Montana in comparison. And Montana is still a coal state. And that's what Andrew Valainis said. You know, federal data backs that up. Data show the state's production is 50 percent coal and 50 percent renewables, and a large percent of that is hydro. So nationwide, renewables are catching up to coal. A report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration says renewable energy consumption recently surpassed coal for the first time in over 130 years. But Montana just isn't there yet.
OUELLET: You know, thinking as Montana continues through its economic reopening plan. What are you hearing? Kind of looking forward in terms of how energy producers are going to be doing?
DESROCHES: It can be hard to tell with renewable energy what's going to happen moving forward as a result of COVID-19. But there are some resources we can look at. So I spoke with Northwestern Energy, which is the largest electric utility in the state. They say they're not really changing their position towards renewable energy during this time. And construction of renewable energy operations does seem to be going forward as planned. As of right now, if we look at projects that were planned before the pandemic Pacific cause building Pryor Mountain Wind there, Bridger. And that seems to be on track. At least that's what a spokesperson recently told me. He said it'd be in service by the end of the year. So it looks like the larger operations are pretty secure at this point. As far as we know.
