The Inland Northwest faces some interesting energy and water-related challenges. For example, will the region continue to be able to generate enough hydropower to meet the demand, especially if companies build a bunch of data centers? How will the region’s continued drought affect water supply, even in places like the Spokane County-Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer, which is considered stable?
Three Spokane area companies (Avista, Itron and McKinstry) have created the Novara Energy Alliance to consider these problems and find solutions. We talk with Kim Pearman-Gillman, its interim chief executive, and Dale Silha from McKinstry, one of its board members.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Kim Pearman-Gillman: Novara within the name itself means new horizon. So if we're looking out to the horizon, we're looking to the future, not looking behind us. We're building off of what's come before us, respectful of that, but saying there's new stuff that needs to get done. Alliance because this is allies. These are people working together, right? Let's bring people together to solve the most pressing energy issues.
Dale Silha: We're really thinking about some of the energy challenges that we have today around affordability, reliability, and just the impact of increasing demand across the region. So things like the rise of AI, the buildout of data centers. We're thinking there might be a 30% shortage in energy over the next five years. Compounding that with weather impacts, electrification, and so many things contributing to this means we need big solutions, and we need a lot of solutions in a pretty short time frame.
DN: So what's Novara's role in that? Are you more of a consultant?
DS: Yeah, we're envisioning Novara in being a combination of a bridge builder, bringing people together, and more than a convener, a catalyst to actually get people together, but initiate action to ultimately create innovation, research, but not just theoretical, building out bench scale tests, building pilots, and then actually enable scaling to happen to make measurable impact within the energy industry.
DN: Who do you want to convene? Who needs to be at the tables for these conversations?
KPG: It's really the ecosystem. At the end of the day, you want the whole energy ecosystem. We also want to note that we're also talking about the related water challenges, because a lot of this goes hand in hand.
We want to bring everybody to the table that's willing to be part of what I call the party of the willing, who wants to help solve the big, audacious problems of the future that are energy and related water. Our community thrives based on how energy does and how water does. They're fundamental to everything and so it's like all the big users should be involved, as well as all the big providers and those that work in the in-between space, the innovators that can say, hey, we could do this in a more efficient way. Are we wringing out the efficiency in buildings? Are we bringing nuclear on as we should? What are the big conversations and how do we say that we're going to have a Spokane of the future that can meet the demands of the businesses that want to be here?
DN: As you look at the list of potential challenges, what are at the top for you? Is it a water-related issue? Is it a waste-related issue?
KPG: What we want to do is convene everyone to figure that out together as opposed to...
DN: So you don't have an answer to that.
KPG: Well, everybody has an answer, but is it the collective will of an answer that will get us to where we are? The summit that we will do next fall is really about getting everybody together to define what those big issues are. What are we seeing, and what do people have passion around solving? What has to get solved?
We know that people care about affordability, right? We've had the value of that proposition for a long time as an economic hug. We've got to see, can we keep that? Can we keep that for people? And how do we deal with what McKinstry does so well, which is wringing out the efficiency in buildings and building microgrids that share energy between each other? There's lots of ideas, but until we can get everybody together to agree on what they want to work on together, I think we would misstep by saying what those are.
DS: I think ultimately there's some broad challenges that we're trying to solve. There's energy supply and having enough energy. There's capacity constraints. How do you get energy from point A to point B? It's not easy to do that if those lines are already constrained. We need to be able to work on how we have enough energy and how we have energy at the right time and the right place. There's a really important element around time of use and it's both that and energy supply that come together to create this challenging situation today. There's water impacts to how we create and use energy and we want to make sure that we're very thoughtful about how we minimize impacts on our existing water resources.
So when we think about what does this mean, I think we're thinking in terms of how do we ensure that we have an affordable energy solution, a resiliency to that solution so that we have enough energy when we need it. And there's a story in Spokane and a history of all kinds of innovation that maybe don't even get told that well. Our hope is to tell those stories, share the expertise and the innovation to create something special in Spokane that could actually be a platform to leverage and share with others across the country. We just happen to have some unique situations here with an innovative utility, a set of conditions that are creating a very important problem to be solved today. Through that, the natural outcome will be economic development and so that is a part of us bringing together academics, local government, research, innovation, utilities and private enterprise.
DN: Is this the time right time for this? Do people want to be brought together for this? Sometimes it doesn't work unless everybody thinks that we have a big problem we've got to solve. This happened with the Safe and Healthy Task Force where a group of community members said this has become an acute situation here. Is it the sort of a parallel situation in the energy and water area?
DS: I think there is today. You know, funny enough, three years ago I had conversation with a lot of leaders around Spokane and outlined this idea for this broader energy strategy. And everybody said, great, we're in. What is it? The whole idea is bringing clarity to what the issues are, the challenges are, and they're front and present today.
We know there's problems that need to be solved to ensure we maintain affordability and resiliency in the energy supply, but there's an opportune time to solve the problems today and create an economic development impact within the Spokane community. We have key partners that are headquartered here or have major offices here and we have the ability to bring that together with our university partners to engage in research, to engage in new development, and be able to bring the rest of the community in terms of the innovative sector, the funding sector, to be able to launch something that we think could scale over time.
DN: We're in the Catalyst Building, so I'll make a bad pun. What was the catalyst for getting there from three years ago where people said, great, but we don't know what we're talking about, to where they are now?
DS: I believe the catalyst is motivated individuals and organizations that feel like now is the time to do something important and bringing together to make that happen. So the three founding mission partners of Novara were Avista, Itron, and McKinstry, and we all believe in the future. We all believe that if we don't act now, who will? That was to some degree the impetus of how we began to form the ideas around what Novara should be and how we might approach making a difference in these issues long term.
KPG: Without a direction set by somebody, you don't get movement. And what's beautiful about what's coming about with Novara is there's clear direction. We want to be problem solvers. We don't want to just convene to convene, right? That is not our point. We know that the investments that all of our firms have made and other firms and many public pieces too, have been what have set us to where we are today. Where are we going next, and are we being thoughtful about that trajectory? And also there's economic abilities here, right? We've done well in these communities. This is our ability to give back, but also to launch the next innovations for us to keep growing as a community. And those three organizations, they're all interested in being part of solution makers.
