But in linking recent spikes in electricity price to efforts to save endangered Snake River salmon, Brunell is fear mongering and deflecting attention away from the real causes of rising power costs, which begin with change and uncertainty in the electricity industry. Shortly after Congress deregulated the industry at the wholesale level in 1992, the Bonneville Power Administration and most Northwest utilities began slashing their world-class investments in energy conservation, which captured approximately 200 average megawatts of savings in 1994, a peak year. About 1,000 average megawatts of electricity is required to power Seattle. Ironically, many of the industries bitten recently by rising power costs are the very players that pushed hardest to abolish regulated pricing. Northwest aluminum smelters were so confident the new power market would yield low prices, in 1995 they sharply reduced the amount of electricity they had historically received from BPA, choosing to rely on the market instead.
Aluminum smelters provide relatively few jobs and ship their product raw out of the region.
The limited economic value they bring to the Northwest, in light of the enormous quantity of electricity they consume, raises the question of whether they should receive any federal power at all. Aluminum factories and other large power users, by virtue of the sheer volume of electricity they consume, wield enough market clout to negotiate good deals from private power suppliers. We may not be able to turn the clock back on deregulation, but we can take steps to alleviate the electricity shortages and high prices predicted to occur in the Northwest at times of peak power demand. A recently completed assessment of the energy savings potential in Seattle, for example, found as much as 260 average megawatts of conservation can be delivered in the city over a twenty-year period for about the same price as BPA power. Northwest aluminum smelters, which collectively consume some 3,000 average megawatts, rely on outdated, inefficient technologies.