Labor groups want to make aluminum smelters energy self-sufficient
NORTHWEST: Alliance says plan would save jobs and protect the environment
April 04, 01
The Associated Press
SPOKANE - Northwest labor organizations have launched an effort to make electricity-dependent aluminum smelters energy self-sufficient within five years.
The United Steelworkers of America, which represents most of the hourly workers at Northwest aluminum smelters, made the proposal in a letter to the Bonneville Power Administration last week.
If adopted, the measures would bring about voluntary reductions in energy use, "save jobs, protect the environment and ratepayers, and improve the long-term social and environmental health of the Pacific Northwest," labor officials said.
A key to the plan is to make smelters - users of vast amounts of federally produced electricity - completely energy self-sufficient by 2006.
"This is what we felt ... was the approach BPA ought to take to try to balance all the interests," David Foster, director of the Steelworkers' District 11, said Tuesday from his Minneapolis office. "It's a historic step on the labor movement's part ... to advocate setting up a system in which the aluminum industry is no longer dependent on federal power in the Northwest."
The labor alliance proposes a two-tiered rate structure that would sell BPA customers about 75 percent of the power allocated for the 2001-2006 period at $23.50 per megawatt hour, with additional power requirements selling at a higher rate.
The plan would encourage conservation and provide rate caps to protect low-income residential customers, the alliance said.
It calls for development of new sources of energy generation, with an emphasis on renewable resources, such as wind power.
Scott Lamb, a spokesman for Kaiser Aluminum Corp., said the idea "sounds nice in theory," but is difficult in practice.
"It's a concept that sounds good, and we've been looking at various options that might help us bring generating capacity to bear," Lamb said. "The problem is, if you are talking about nonhydro resources in the Northwest ... you would end up with a plant that would be generating electricity that is still prohibitively expensive for the manufacture of aluminum."