2002-10  DISTRIBUTED ELECTRIC POWER GENERATION

Historically, electric power generation was distributed, with small power plants located near where the electricity was needed, and where local energy sources such as water power were available.  Over time such dispersed small power stations were replaced with large centralized power plants to achieve the economies of scale needed to make the available technology cost effective. This concentration of power generation sources brought with it heavy pollution, the need to transport fossil fuel over long distances, and the need to build massive electric transmission networks.

Today, technological advances are dramatically impacting the means by which we can generate electricity.  For example, the aerospace industry has developed highly efficient, inexpensive, quickly constructed turbine-based technologies used in natural gas combined cycle-peaking facilities.  Even more dramatic is the military development of small and micro-scale power plants known as microturbines.  The auto industry is developing the fuel cell, which may have potential in the same micro-scale generation markets.

The availability of such technologies, and the development of efficient wind powered generation may offer better overall efficiencies than large central station power generation when lower transmission energy losses, and the ability to operate combined cycle generation systems are considered.

Generation based on wind and photovoltaics is inherently less polluting than burning coal. Natural gas used in combined cycle turbines or fuel cell applications is far cleaner than coal or oil.

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED  that the Minnesota Division of the Izaak Walton League of America, in convention April 28, 2002, at Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, declares its support for increased reliance on distributed generation technologies that use natural gas, renewable resources and other efficiencies to provide cleaner, more efficient and competitively priced electricity to customers.

Minnehaha Chapter
MN Division of the IWLA