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Dean Boyer, Director of Communications
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November 30, 2007
Greenpeace co-founder, now nuclear advocate, to address public utility district commissioners

Dr. Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace and now an advocate for nuclear energy, will deliver the keynote address at the Washington Public Utility Districts Association annual meeting on Thursday, Dec. 6, at the Renaissance Hotel in Seattle.

More than 200 PUD commissioners, managers and staff from are expected to attend the meeting, which will also feature presentations by Dr. Tom Karier, chairman of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, Alan Hamlet, a researcher with the Climate Impacts Group at the University of Washington, and Steve Wright, administrator for the Bonneville Power Administration.

Gov. Chris Gregoire will address the group during the annual President’s Reception on Wednesday evening.

Public utility districts are community-owned, locally regulated utilities that provide electricity, water and sewer services, and telecommunications to more than 1.7 million customers across the state.

Moore, who refers to himself as the “sensible environmentalist,” left Greenpeace in the 1980s to pursue a career in aquaculture, eventually becoming president of the fledgling BC Salmon Farmers Association in British Columbia.

An advocate of sustainable forestry, Moore also served as a director of the Forest Alliance of BC from 1991 to 2000. In 2000, he co-founded Greenspirit Strategies Ltd., a consulting firm focusing on sustainability and communications, and now serves as the company’s chairman and chief scientist.

In addition, he now co-chairs, with former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Todd Whitman, the Nuclear Energy Institute’s Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, and is on the board of directors of NextEnergy Solutions Ltd., which produces geothermal heat pumps.

He is a frequent contributor on environmental issues to newspapers and magazines, and often appears as a guest on national news programs.

In the early 1980s, Moore led protests against the spread of nuclear technology. However, in a recent column for The Washington Post, Moore noted that he is not the only “seasoned environmental activist” to change his mind about nuclear energy.

In an interview this month on MS/NBC, Moore said that “climate change has changed the whole climate of the environmental debate on this planet. The one technology that is contributing most to reducing greenhouse gasses in America today is nuclear energy. We could do a tremendous amount to increase that.”

Moore’s presentation for the Washington PUD Association is titled, “Nuclear Power and a Carbon Free Future.”

Dr. Tom Karier will follow with his own assessment of “Power in a Carbon-Constricted Northwest.”

Appointed to the Northwest Power and Conservation Council in 1998 by then Gov. Gary Locke, Karier is a professor of economics at Eastern Washington University and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College in Annandale, New York.

Funded by BPA wholesale power revenues, the council was authorized in the Northwest Power Act of 1980 and approved by the legislatures of Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington. The governor of each state appoints two members to the council.

The council is charged with developing a 20-year electric power plan that guarantees adequate and reliable energy at the lowest economic and environmental cost to the Northwest. It is also responsible for developing a fish and wildlife program that protect and rebuild species populations affected by hydroelectric dams in the Columbia River basin.

Dr. Alan Hamlet, a researcher and water resources engineer with the Climate Impacts Group, has written several papers on the potential impact of climate change on water resources in the Columbia River basin.

He will discuss “Challenges in Our Water Future” for both water utilities and electric utilities that rely on water and hydroelectric dams to meet the region’s growing demand for power.

Steve Wright joined the Bonneville Power Association in 1981 after receiving a master’s degree in public affairs from the University of Oregon. He was named administrator in January 2002.

BPA is a federal agency that markets wholesale electricity and transmission services to public and private utilities the Pacific Northwest, as well as to some large industries.
It provides about half the electricity used in the Northwest and operates over three-fourths of the region’s high-voltage transmission lines.

With BPA soon to be negotiating new long-term power contracts, Wright’s presentation is titled, “BPA Powers the Future.”

The Washington PUD Association represents 26 public utility districts and Energy Northwest, a coalition of public power utilities that operates the Columbia Generating Station, the state’s only nuclear power plant, as well as wind, solar, hydroelectric and biomass generating facilities.