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New Study Finds Breaching Snake River Dams Would Derail Decarbonization Goals by RaeLynn Ricarte Center Square, July 7, 2022

"The analysis demonstrates that if we are serious about reaching our climate goals,
dams on the lower Snake River must remain operational,"
-- Kurt Miller, executive director of Northwest RiverPartners

A newly released study about the effects of breaching the four lower Snake River dams has found that costs to replace lost energy would be $15 billion. In addition, greenhouse gas emissions would likely increase.

"The analysis demonstrates that if we are serious about reaching our climate goals, dams on the lower Snake River must remain operational," said Kurt Miller, executive director of Northwest RiverPartners, in a statement this week.

The member-driven organization commissioned Energy GPS Consulting to study what would happen if four dams from Ice Harbor near the Tri-Cities upriver to Lower Granite Dam near Lewiston, Idaho, were breached or removed.

RiverPartners is made up of agencies dependent on the dams, including Tri-Cities area utilities such as the Benton and Franklin Public Utility Districts and the Benton Rural Electric Association.

Energy GPS released its findings less than two weeks before the comment period ends on a draft report commissioned by Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and Sen. Patty Murray. Their report released June 9 found that breaching the dams could be done. The cost to replace the hydropower energy and stabilize the grid, as well as replace irrigation and shipping by barge, was estimated at $10.3 billion to $27.2 billion.

Inslee and Murray, both Democrats, pushed for the study to determine if breaching or tearing down the federal dams would be feasible to help endangered salmon runs. Washington also has a goal to decarbonize the electric grid by 2045.

The report compiled by consultant and expert support retained by Inslee's office concluded that removing the dams would not only benefit salmon but maintain tribal treaty obligations.

RiverPartners points out that the Inslee-Murray report noted that dams have multiple benefits, including clean energy production and maintaining a stable electric grid. There was no consideration in that report about whether enough land will be available for significant expansion of wine and solar production to replace hydropower generation, says the organization.

Breaching the dams would require an additional 14,900 megawatts of new generation and batteries, the analysis said. That equates to 23% of the Pacific Northwest's current generation capacity and enough to power 15 cities the size of Seattle, according to RiverPartners.

The Energy GPS study attributed the high generation capacity estimate to the need to have power available when demand peaks and the inefficiencies of wind and solar electricity production, which is intermittently produced.

Even if the region doubles its pace of adding renewable energy infrastructure, it is unlikely that state goals regarding greenhouse emissions can be met until 2076, the analysis concluded.

The change from hydropower to other energy sources would cause emissions in the Pacific Northwest to increase by 145 million tons of carbon dioxide to maintain grid reliability, the analysis said. That includes an additional 5.5 million to 8.4 million tons released into the atmosphere should the four hydroelectric dams be breached, according to the study.

"The current risk in not meeting our region's decarbonization goals is high," Miller said. "Removing the Snake River dams increases that risk to the breaking point."