Utah may buy an energy research lab in Emery County for $2 million
Alixel Cabrera
Utah News Dispatch
Utah is considering purchasing an Emery County lab that researches — among other industries — innovative technologies in different sources of energy, including nuclear, solar, coal and wind.
Titled San Rafael State Energy Lab, HB410, making its way through the Legislature, currently in session on Capitol Hill, would establish the laboratory as a state-owned facility, create the San Rafael State Energy Board and appropriate $2 million to buy the lab from Emery County along with $1 million for salaries, building maintenance and supplies to keep the operation running through 2025.
The bill, sponsored by Rep. Christine Watkins, R-Price, passed unanimously in a House Public Utilities, Energy and Technology Committee hearing and now goes on to the House for consideration.
“This is taking a really good lab that’s been working and doing energy development looking at coal, looking at nuclear and other innovations,” Watkins said in her presentation to the committee Thursday. “But it is time for us to have it grow up and be ready for the world.”
The bill also creates a fund specifically for the lab, which would be administered by the state’s Office of Energy Development and would allow the lab to pursue money from the federal government.
The goal of the board is to “conduct innovative energy technology research and development projects that” could be commercialized, and also support state energy policy goals of finding and prioritizing energy solutions that consider “cost effectiveness, dispatchability, sustainability, reliability and environmental impact,” Watkins said.
The lab would also collaborate with universities, research entities and other industry actors, in addition to providing analysis and recommendations to policymakers “regarding energy system planning, infrastructure needs and the value of different energy initiatives being considered within the state.”
Three Emery County commissioners have put in a lot of work in this facility in their effort to “hang on to the coal plants,” Watkins said. But they all have or are planning to move on.
Rep. Phil Lyman, R-Blanding, supported the initiative, saying that “it’s much more than an asset to Orangeville or to Emery County. It’s an asset to Utah. It’s really an asset to the western United States.”
He also said that he worried about turning the lab into a state-owned facility because local authorities would lose control of it, but Watkins said the state purchase might be the only solution.
“They don’t want it anymore,” she said. “That’s why it’s either we buy it or it’s gone.”
This story originally appeared on Utah News Dispatch and is republished under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.