Climate and Electrical Solutions with Katie Pfennigs

A conversation with Katie Pfennigs, who is the Director of External Affairs and Energy Services at the Flathead Electric Cooperative. This episode was recorded in May 2024.

Headwaters is created by Daniel Lombardi, Gaby Eseverri, Peri Sasnett, and Madeline Vinh.

Glacier Conservancy: glacier.org/headwaters Frank Waln music: www.instagram.com/frankwaln/ Stella Nall art: www.instagram.com/stella.nall/

Climate change in Glacier: www.nps.gov/glac/learn/nature/climate-change.htm

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TRANSCRIPT:

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Lacy: Headwaters is brought to you by the Glacier National Park Conservancy.

Peri: This is Headwaters, a show about how Glacier National Park is connected to everything else. My name is Peri, and I'm speaking into a microphone pretty much entirely powered with renewable electricity. That's because the Pacific Northwest has a lot of big hydroelectric dams, but also because Glacier has been installing rooftop solar to supplement the power we draw from the grid. This episode is part of our Climate Conversations series about how the world is being altered by the burning of fossil fuels. Over the past century and a half, human activity has emitted enough greenhouse gases to warm the Earth's climate more than one degree Celsius, with more warming on the way. Daniel has been sitting down with experts to talk about how that warming is altering Glacier National Park, our lives and our futures. Like a lot of places, we are transitioning away from fossil fuels here at the park. That means swapping fossil fuel appliances and vehicles with electric alternatives. [mellow beat beginsto play ] As you'll hear in this episode, this is not an easy transition. To do it, we're going to need a lot more electricity -- something like three times more than we currently generate in America. But according to the nonprofit Rewiring America, the good news is that because electricity is so much more efficient, will only need about half as much energy as we're currently using. These climate conversations don't have to be listened to in any order. Each one stands on its own. This one was recorded in the spring of 2024 when my co-host, Daniel, talked with Katie Pfennigs from Flathead Electric Co-op, which is the organization that provides power to the west side of the park. I think I might have learned more from this one than any other in the series, so I hope you enjoy it.

Daniel: Welcome to Headquarters. We're going to talk about climate and electricity and electrical solutions to climate change. Could you introduce yourself? And I'm curious what you like about your job at Flathead Electric Co-op.

Katie: Sure. I'm Katie Pfennigs. I am the community relations manager at Flathead Electric Co-op. It's a lot of fun.

Daniel: Yeah. What do you think's kept you there for almost a decade?

Katie: You know, I grew up in the Flathead. I came back after my undergraduate work, and I just-- I love this area. I love this community. And working at a co-op is so community based. Really, it's just it just feels like a way for me to to have a really positive and significant impact on the community that I love.

Daniel: Yeah, say more about that. What is an electric co-op?

Katie: So kind of a unique, a unique business model. But a cooperative is actually owned by all of the members that we serve. So if you pay a bill to Flathead Electric for your electricity, you are in fact, an owner of the co-op. There is no-- no profit. There are no shareholders. So really, it's just a really neat way to operate a business. Very, very member centric.

Daniel: So nationally there are for-profit electric companies, I assume?

Katie: Yes.

Daniel: And they they create electricity and send it to their customers in order to generate a profit. But that's not what Flathead electric Co-op does.

Katie: Exactly.

Daniel: It's community owned.

Katie: Exactly. Yes. Yep. We were, you know, when we we were very first started it was during the time right after the Rural Electrification Act, which, you know, that act was landmark legislation that that really changed the way that rural America looked in that it provided opportunities for some of the rural parts of our country that had no access to electricity. You know, Flathead Electric is is like all other co-ops in that we had a group of farmers who who came together and pooled resources and got some funding through the Rural Electrification Act to start Flathead Electric Co-op and started very, very small. And we've grown today to serve just over 58,000 members.

Daniel: So the Rural Electrification Act, REA, it was a New Deal, Great Depression-era program. 1936.

Katie: Yes. And then Flathead Electric was was founded in 1937. Following that.

Daniel: My understanding was basically rural areas like this one, like Montana, there wasn't enough money to be made for for-profit electric companies to string power lines out to ranches and small towns.

Katie: You've got it. Yeah. At the time. At the time, a lot of people thought that electrifying the rural parts of our country just was not economically feasible or just could not happen. So it did take legislation to accomplish that, that goal.

Daniel: Wow. And now so that was it was about 90 years ago. And Flathead Electric Co-op has been here ever since then.

Katie: We have. And we've grown and, you know, since then went through a fairly large acquisition. And and we're somewhat unique in that we don't only serve rural areas. A lot of the co-ops in the country just serve the the rural areas, the outskirts of the the municipalities. But Flathead Electric actually serves the municipal areas of, you know, Kalispell, Whitefish, Columbia Falls, Bigfork, and then all the way up to Libby as well, which does make us a little bit unique in the co-op world and also contributes to us being the largest co-op in in the state of Montana by a long shot and second largest utility to Northwestern Energy that's an investor owned utility.

Daniel: Okay. Do you think Flathead Electric, is it also a an energy utility? Is that the category you'd put it in or is that a little different?

Katie: I would put us in the category of an electric utility.

Daniel: Okay.

Katie: Energy really is a much broader concept than electricity. You know, energy really is just the ability to to do work. And electricity is a form of energy where you're taking that work and running it through some sort of a generation facility, you know, whether that's hydropower, so-- which is what powers most of our area, you're right. But that's, you know, taking that that running water, that motion and running it through a hydroelectric dam to generate electricity and then transmitting that to power homes to do a different type of work. Right? In homes and businesses.

Daniel: Yeah. Okay. Here in Glacier, we are then dealing with multiple utilities because we use we're using propane or using natural gas often to heat our buildings. But then we're working with Flathead Electric Co-op. We're getting electricity to run our computers and turn the lights on and everything.

Katie: You know, when someone has access to natural gas, typically that's what they're using for their home, home heating and water heating, which are the two biggest users of electricity or energy in a home, and then the park is very similar. So you might have electrically powered lights and outlets and, you know, whatever whatever else your needs are that aren't hooked to natural gas, aren't hooked to propane.

Daniel: Yeah, exactly. We have a combination of both in Glacier. And one of the downsides to that is that there's quite a bit more greenhouse gas emissions associated with burning fossil fuels like gas and propane. But before we get into that, a big thing that you deal with then is the grid. What is the grid?

Katie: Right. So the grid, if we're just talking about the physical grid, is everything from the generating facility -- so again, I'll use hydropower as as my example here because that's the world I live in. And so everything from the hydroelectric dam, And then that power is then transmitted, right? You have to always have to get power from where it's generated to where it's needed. And the way that that's done is through the rest of the grid, which is a transmission system of of high voltage transmission lines and then a series of substations and transformers that transform that, that high-voltage electricity into a lower voltage that can be carried over a series of distribution lines. And that's what Flathead Electric does as a-- we're a distribution co-op. So we build the distribution system, which is the part of the grid that carries it carries that power to homes and businesses in our service area where that power is again stepped down. So that it can be served right into your your home or your business or whatever that need may be. So there's another another step in that grid.

Daniel: Okay.

Katie: So everything from the generating facility through the transmission system in the substations and then our distribution system and right to where it gets to your your home would be considered the grid.

Daniel: Well, then let's go to the first step in that process. Generation, electrical generation around here, we have several hydroelectric facilities and like regionally, there's a lot of hydroelectric power. So where does Flathead Electric get its electricity?

Katie: Yeah. So the vast majority of our power comes from the Bonneville Power Administration, which is the federal power marketing agency that was formed to market the power coming from federal projects. Most of those federal projects are the federal Columbia River Hydropo