100% Committed to Clean Energy
The Benefits of a Clean
Energy Community
Choosing renewable energy is a choice for a better future—for your family, your community, and our planet.
Adding Reliable, New Energy to the Grid
As underscored by Operation Gigawatt, Utah is facing a worrisome energy shortage, as our energy supply is projected to decrease while demand continues to rise. Thankfully, URC is part of the solution: The program will add tens of megawatts of new clean energy to the Rocky Mountain Power grid in the 2020s, with the aim of adding even more in the next decade to support our communities’ clean energy goals and growing energy needs. By adding new clean energy to our electricity mix, URC is part of the solution of creating a more reliable energy supply for Utah.
Health and Environment
The electricity used to power our homes and businesses comes from a collection of power plants connected to our grid. This includes natural gas, coal, wind, solar, hydropower, and more. Throughout the day, power plants are dispatched to generate enough electricity to meet the demand. Wind and solar power plants have no fuel costs, so they are generally dispatched before coal and gas plants which do have fuel costs. When coal and natural gas plants generate electricity, greenhouse gases and air pollutants are emitted into the atmosphere as a byproduct. Renewable electricity generation does not come with harmful fossil fuel emissions.
By adding more renewable energy to the grid, the URC program may reduce how often fossil fuel plants need to run. This reduces pollution, improving our air quality, water quality, and climate on a local and regional scale.
In particular, there are several natural gas plants along the Wasatch Front, owned by Rocky Mountain Power or other entities. Due to our state’s increasing electricity demands, these pollution-emitting gas plants need to run more often, which is a particular concern for the Gadsby power plant, given its age and location in the Fairpark neighborhood of Salt Lake City.
Adding new, clean energy to the grid helps alleviate overall electricity demand which can result in less air pollution from local fossil fuel power plants. This benefits the neighborhoods immediately next to power plants and those living throughout our inversion-prone valleys.
Similarly, the Hunter and Huntington coal plants in central Utah are large fossil fuel plants that contribute to air pollution in other parts of the state and reduce visibility in our national parks. The URC program aims to bring more clean energy to reduce pollution throughout the state.
The program ultimately aims to bring online about 500 MW of clean energy over the coming years, based on current participating customer projections. This amount of clean energy, which would occur over several different resource procurements, would result in an estimated reduction of 1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide pollution annually, and 1,000 pounds of criteria pollution annually (source: EPA’s AVERT model).
Economic Growth
The Utah Renewable Communities Program supports economic growth by bringing new energy development to areas of the state that are hotspots for solar, wind, or other clean energy development. New projects create construction and operational jobs; provide resources to public schools via the Trust Lands Administration if projects are sited on certain state land; support private landowners if sited privately; and add to local counties’ tax base.
Supporting a healthy environment is also core to many economic drivers in Utah– whether that’s the local ski and snowsports industry, national park visitation in gateway communities, or the upcoming 2034 Olympic & Paralympic Games. Reducing pollution to protect the future of snowpack or improving visibility in national parks has a direct connection to the economic well-being of many of the URC communities. Businesses that have sustainability goals are also more likely to locate or expand in communities which reflect their values.
