Michael Butler: Gas & solar together benefit Pittsburgh Airport

The decision to marry solar energy and natural gas to power the Pittsburgh Internationl Airport with a self-contained “microgrid” is the rarest kind of union: one where the partners together create something bigger than the sum of the individuals.

Too often, natural gas and renewable energy like solar are presented as an either-or choice. The Allegheny County Airport Authority’s groundbreaking move to make its international airport the first in the country to be powered entirely by a microgrid — an independent energy source that operates on its own, without external power like the kind that supplies our homes — is proof that they’re better together.

The microgrid will help the Pittsburgh airport avoid problems such as several high-profile power outages that led to thousands of canceled flights and ruined travel plans. It will power the terminals, the airfield, a Hyatt hotel and Sunoco gas station.

What’s going to power it besides the sun? Natural gas drilled on the airport’s grounds. Allegheny County opened up the airport and other public lands to drilling under a 2013 deal. Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald, a Democrat, credits the move with saving the airport by preventing it from defaulting on its bonds.

Not only did it save the airport, it’s helping to fund a $1.1 billion renovation. Imagine, going from near failure to renovation in the space of a few years? Fitzgerald, who opened the airport and other county lands to drilling, deserves credit for advocating a solution that some in his party vehemently oppose, putting the broader interests of Pennsylvanians first.

The airport’s survival-to- revival tale is just one of the fruits of Pennsylvania’s shale revolution, which has reinvigorated a state suffering from industrial decline, and powered families, farmers and small businesses forward with a booming economy and inexpensive energy prices.

Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto recently trashed investments in shale as putting money into “a 19th-century industry that costs us the opportunity to bring 21st-century industry to this region.”

The airport microgrid is an ingenious solution that demonstrates exactly how wrong Peduto’s pronouncement is. The microgrid shows how an inclusive vision — one that does not exclude one energy source to benefit the other — contributes to solving problems.

Too often, reliable and inexpensive natural resources like natural gas are vilified by certain interests, including those who view the use of natural gas as competition to the growth of renewable energy use.

Pittsburgh International Airport’s ambitious plan is proof positive that such a viewpoint is shortsighted and flat-out wrong. To make headway on our environmental challenges while preserving the strength of our economy and our energy independence, we need renewable and traditional energy working together.

Here’s to their long and happy marriage in Pittsburgh.