Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., came to Columbia on Monday as part of her statewide energy tour to visit the Columbia Municipal Power Plant and hold a roundtable discussion with regional stakeholders and researchers. She is focusing on getting feedback on government regulations and wants to hear about initiatives to make energy production in Missouri cleaner, cheaper and more reliable.

“We are fortunate in that our energy costs are lower than in most states, and I’d like to keep it that way,” McCaskill said.

At the roundtable discussion were several researchers from the University of Missouri, including Vice Chancellor of Research Robert Duncan and Director of Energy Management Paul Hoeman. Also present were Todd E. Culley, CEO and General Manager of the Boone Electric Cooperative and Tad Johnsen, Columbia director of power and light.

Local energy stakeholders like Culley expressed concern over federal policies requiring power plants to shut down and upgrade in order to meet EPA regulations.

Floyd Gilzow, director of member relations and public affairs for the Missouri Public Utility Alliance, said it will be a challenge updating current power production facilities without affecting costs and reliability.

Culley said keeping power cheap and reliable is a priority, given how many fixed-income customers his co-op has.

“One third of our members outside of Columbia are 65 or older, and 80 percent of those are on fixed incomes, so affordability and efficiency are important,” Culley said.

The participants then discussed various measures to better implement clean and reliable alternate sources like solar, wind, biomass and nuclear energy. They agreed that it would not be any one of those solutions but rather a mix of them all.

“There is no silver bullet,” Missouri Energy Initiative Executive Director Josh Campbell said. “We need silver buckshot.”

McCaskill said the only way to solve energy-related problems is to invent new technology. She called those who advocate cutting federal research funding “short-sighted” and was interested in researchers’ discoveries in the field of energy technology.

One researcher, MU’s Sheila Baker, is currently working on ways to capture carbon dioxide and harness it for energy production. Another MU chemical engineering professor, Galen Suppes, told McCaskill that used fuel rods from nuclear reactors could power Missouri for the next 150 years.

“Don’t let the federal government ever take those out of Missouri,” Suppes said. “We’re going to need those.”

Hoeman said due to all of the research going on at the university, it is able to use a great deal of renewable energy. He hopes to have one third of MU’s energy sources be renewable within a few years.

Many people present also agreed that consumers have to be educated on energy production and consumption if future improvements to the system are to be made.

“The key is to provide consumers with information,” Johnsen said.