Seeking green power

More businesses looking at alternative energy sources

By Cathy Spaulding

Underneath Muskogee Community Hospital's parking lot and grounds, nearly 35 miles of pipe channel energy that helps keep the building cool and warm.

“The earth is our radiator, and our water tower and our cooling coil,” hospital President Mark Roberts said as he pointed out piping that feeds 70 heat pump units in the four-story building. Roberts says MCH is the first hospital in America to use geothermal energy, a sustainable way to cut down on use fossil fuels such as oil and natural gas.

Oklahoma businesses and schools are looking for cleaner energy sources, such as geothermal, wind, solar and biomass. However, such renewable energy sources have a long way to go before they can be as prevalent or as economical as the fossil fuel sources of coal, oil and natural gas. The woodsy hills of Green Country make sources such as wind energy even more unlikely around Muskogee.

“We looked at solar energy and wind energy, but we just couldn’t get a payback for them,” Roberts said. “With advances in technology, solar energy has a better outlook than wind, except in Oklahoma. For us, the return was just not great enough.”

Instead, the hospital opted to save energy with a geothermal system, which involves running pipes into 280 wells, 300 feet deep. Roberts said the system cost less to set up than a standard electric system with giant boilers and chillers.

“It was not more expensive up front,” he said.

A Web site for the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit science-based environmental advocacy group, said geothermal energy could help the United States move toward cleaner energy. The Web site explained that geothermal energy is captured when cooler water seeps or is pumped into the ground, where it is heated. Heated water then returns to the surface. Ground-source heat pumps take advantage of the constant year-round temperature of 50 degrees underground.

Even with the citations and awards the hospital has received for using geothermal energy — as well as other environmentally sound practices — Roberts said he doubts the outlook for geothermal energy is that strong.

“We were fortunate to have had an engineer who knew what geothermal energy is about,” he said. “He had designed a system before.”

However, geothermal heating and air conditioning has been available for Muskogee area homes for at least 10 years, said David Hix, owner of Hix Heating and Air Conditioning.

University of Oklahoma geography professor Dr. Mark Meo, president-elect of the Oklahoma Renewable Energy Council, said there is not much public research going on about renewable energy in Oklahoma.

“But that’s a lot more promising than no research,” he said. “The private sector has taken an interest in finding energy solutions to such problems as chicken litter. A lot of the folks at the University of Arkansas as well as Oklahoma State University are looking at energy through poultry waste.”

Poultry waste, as well as corn or switchgrass, are examples of biomass energy. Biomass is organic material from plants or animals. Meo said such companies as Conoco-Phillips and Syntroleum of Tulsa also are looking at biomass possibilities.

“The question is that you can lay out a half a dozen alternatives that are either available or in development, but they are not yet marketable or commercially viable,” said Meo, who did his doctoral thesis on fuel ethanol programs for the University of California at Davis.

According to the Energy Information Administration, geothermal energy and other renewable sources accounted for only 7 percent of the nation's energy supply in 2008. Of that, more than half was biomass, 34 percent hydroelectric, 7 percent wind, 1 percent solar and 5 percent geothermal. Compare that with 24 percent of America's energy supply coming from natural gas, 23 percent from coal and 37 percent from petroleum.

The outlook for some forms of renewable energy, especially wind, looks a lot different in northwest Oklahoma, where wind turbines extend for miles on the high plains. OG&E; operates more than 80 wind turbines on its Centennial Wind Farm in Harper County.

OG&E; spokesman Brian Alford said wind is the most economical form of renewable energy available in Oklahoma, although “solar energy is gaining in application.”

However, solar energy also works better in northwest Oklahoma than in the east.

“In eastern Oklahoma, we are looking at biomass,” he said.

Water also is an abundant renewable resource, Alford said, citing the Grand River Dam Authority as an example. The GRDA operates two hydroelectric dams: Pensacola, with a generation capacity of 120 megawatts, and Robert S. Kerr, with a generation capacity of 114 megawatts of energy.

Even though Muskogee OG&E; customers likely won’t see any wind turbines in the area, they still could be wind energy customers, Alford said. The wind power is sold in the form of renewable energy credits. Customers can purchase wind power for 25, 50 or 100 percent of their usage.

“As the price of natural gas rises, wind power becomes a natural hedge against natural gas price increases,” he said.

Don Sherry, manager of communication for Oklahoma Natural Gas, touts natural gas as the best “bridge fuel” as the state seeks renewable sources.

“It produces less particulate matter, smog or other types of pollution,” he said. “When it combusts, it does create carbon dioxide, but produces less than other sources. That’s what makes it a good bridge fuel as we transition to less dependence on fossil fuel and more on solar and wind energy.”

Sherry said people tend to think a total electric home uses cleaner energy because they see the gas flames in their homes.

“But what people don't realize when people are looking at fuel from the source, natural gas creates far less emissions than electricity,” he said. “In Oklahoma, electricity comes largely through burned coal. By the time you generate the power and run it through the grid, you see more emissions with electricity.”

Alford said OG&E; also is seeking to be a cleaner source of electricity.

“We have set a goal of not adding fossil fuel generators to our system until 2020 — that would be coal or natural gas,” he said. “We use a low sulfur, cleaner-burning coal from Wyoming in our generator units. And, our generator units are among the most efficient in the country.”

Reach Cathy Spaulding at 918-684-2928 or Click Here to Send Email

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