Could Greater Adoption of Solar Power Save Utah From Dirty Air?

Utah has some of the very worst air quality in the world for the size of our population. In Utah, childhood asthma rates are some of the highest in the U.S. Our abnormally high rates of lung cancer, cardiovascular disease, emphysema are all linked to our particularly high-particulate matter dirty air. Today, there are three…

Richard Markosian

March 20, 2021

Why aren’t Utah’s political leaders using our budget surplus to expedite our transition?

Today, there are three emerging technologies that could dramatically improve our air quality in the next 2-5 years, if our political leaders choose to use some of our budget surplus to expedite the process to convert us away from fossil fuel energy production.

Electric Vehicles / Solar Arrays / Battery Technology

Those technologies are EVs (electric vehicles); extremely cheap QW/H solar arrays; and battery backup reserves that could drastically improve our solar power generation capacity by storing far more solar-generated power than was ever possible.

Currently, EVs are still expensive compared to ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) vehicles, but not so much when the decreases in maintenance and no fuel costs are included. But Utah is actually cutting back on subsidies for electric vehicles and solar power. Why? Could it have anything to do with special interests who give our political leaders political campaign contributions who are in the oil, gas, mining and coal businesses? We cannot say so for certain, but just from an overall health perspective, if Utah’s political leaders were as concerned with Utahns health as they were helping their buddies in big energy, they would subsidize the adoption of EVs and solar in an a major way.

But of course, what matters just as much as transitioning our vehicles from ICE engines to emission-free vehicles is how we generate our electricity in Utah.

Currently Utah still predominantly generates our electricity by burning fossil fuels. Around 66% of our power is generated from burning coal and natural gas according to the US Department of Energy. It’s for good reason: Utah has huge reserves of coal; Utah has also huge supplies of natural gas and oil, and the infrastructure for this power generation is already in place.

But the impact of burning these fossil fuels is evident not only from our dirty inversion-day cities along the Wasatch Front but also in our National Parks. In hot summer months, the smog in Canyonlands and Arches National Parks settles into the canyons hazing the views for the millions of visitors who come there to escape the cities and witness some of the most spectacular natural beauty on earth. If we expedited the transition to solar, the coal-burning plants could be used for reserve power only and far less frequently.

The limiting factor of solar power has always been storage. It’s easy to generate plenty of power on sunny days, but on cloudy days the effectiveness of solar is dramatically reduced. Tesla’s new battery technology and their Megapack division is already solving this problem.

A Tesla subsidiary registered as Gambit Energy Storage LLC is quietly building a more than 100 megawatt energy storage project in Angleton, Texas, a town roughly 40 miles south of Houston. This project started not long after Texas was hit with a winter storm that left hundreds of thousand of consumers without power. This program allows for existing energy companies to partner with Tesla and their technology to alleviate and expedite the transition away from fossil fuels.

So What Could Utah Be Doing To Improve Air Quality and Adopt Cleaner Energy?

Very soon our Utah State Legislature will be meeting for a special session to decide what they should be doing with the several billion dollars that the Federal Government is handing out to states for their “Covid relief packages”. Utah’s State Legislature could help us all breathe easier and sooner by offering more solar subsidies, and especially subsidies for low-income residents who drive gas-guzzling vehicles to switch to EVs; and residents who would like to invest in solar arrays on their homes.

There is no doubt that Utah will transition to green energy in the next ten years with the rest of the world. But why not alleviate our growing pains now by expediting this transition?

State leaders have all the power and money to push forward greater subsidies. This could help our air become cleaner, our outdoor recreation to become more healthy and safe, and we could get more people out of cars and on bicycles.

It’s always been my contention that far more people would be willing to ride bicycles to commute to work; use Trax and Frontrunner and bike share programs if we had cleaner air. Taking measures to expedite this process would be an excellent investment into both Utah’s health and the best mitigating measure we could take to decrease the impact we are feeling from our rapid population growth. Growth is something we all need to live with, but dirty air and lung problems need to end now.

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utah air quality, Utah environment, Utah health, Utah solar enerty

Richard Markosian

I am a story teller and journalist. I have a passion for farmers, local craftspeople, and folks who aspire to create, build and grow their business in the local marketplace. Why local? By supporting locally-owned businesses we create more opportunity for entrepreneurs, and we claim our sovereignty to shape our communities how we want to see them. I aspire to build Utah Stories Magazine into a household Utah name, and assist Utah businesses and makers with marketing. On the journalism side of things my passion is investigative journalism that offers true insight into issues. I believe strongly in the forth estate: strong, meaningful, insightful journalism is essential to a free market Democracy.

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Cottonwood Heights Corruption Allegations: A Case That Never Reached a Courtroom

A year ago, we here at Utah Stories recorded a podcast episode that we never published. We were revisiting corruption allegations from ten years ago. We decided not to publish the video, so it sat there on YouTube for nearly 12 months.

Then somehow the video was published. How? We are not sure, but once it got out there, the comments came pouring in.

Dozens of viewers, then hundreds, supported the video with their comments on our examination of allegations of police misconduct in Cottonwood Heights. The video recounts how the Police Department was reported by business owners as focusing enforcement on customers of the former Canyon Inn bar. These allegations did not result in a publicly documented, full investigation by Utah’s Justice Department nor the FBI (at least to our knowledge). So why rehash the past?

We believe the story of The Canyon Inn (and other area business owners) vs. CHPD and Cottonwood Heights Mayor Kelvin Cullimore raises questions about what can happen when allegations surface and do not move forward through a formal legal process with state or federal oversight.

In 2012, Cottonwood Heights business owners at the mouth of the canyons began publicly objecting to police activity whereby up to seven cruisers were pulling over 711 and Canyon Inn bar customers on their busiest evenings.

According to those accounts, drivers leaving the bar were frequently pulled over by police and were given DUI tickets, sometimes even after passing a sobriety examination. The volume and concentration of those stops led residents and business owners to complain about the “heavy-handed treatment” of CHPD toward motorists, especially in and around the Canyon Inn and neighboring 711, and eventually the Porcupine Pub.

Customers responded in predictable ways. Some chose not to return and avoid the area. Others went to different establishments. Over time, the owner of the Canyon Inn, Jim Stojack, stated that his revenue declined by 70% and that he believed police activity near his business was the main contributing factor.

Utah Stories reported on these concerns by conducting interviews; gathering video documentation provided by those involved; and making public records requests. Through our GRAMA requests, we reviewed DUI citations issued by the Cottonwood Heights Police Department and examined how those cases were resolved in Holladay Justice Court. During that period, we observed a higher number based on our review of DUI cases dismissed in court due to lack of evidence compared to other jurisdictions. One DUI attorney, Tyler Ayers, went on record saying that CHPD was issuing a high volume of DUI citations that were later dismissed.

That observation raised questions about how cases were being documented and prosecuted. It did not, on its own, establish intent or misconduct, but it became part of a broader set of concerns raised by multiple sources.

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People scream at invisible enemies. Some believe they are prophets. Others wander through traffic carrying conversations with voices nobody else can hear. To passersby, it can look theatrical, bizarre, and absurd. But behind many of those episodes is a darker reality few people want to confront directly: methamphetamine-induced psychosis, prolonged sleep deprivation, trauma, addiction, and the slow destruction of a person’s ability to distinguish reality from delusion.