Monday, August 07, 2006
Response to Commentary on I-937
Dear Editor
In his Guest Commentary last week entitled, Three Words: Location, tradeoff, cost, Don Brunell cautions moving ahead too quickly on Initiative I-937 for Clean Renewable Energy. Never-mind the 3500 people who volunteered to collect signatures, the 336,000 that signed the initiative and the Washington Public Utility Districts Association, League of Women Voters, former BPA Administrator Randy Hardy, U.S. Reps. Jay Inslee and Adam Smith, Audubon WA, NW Energy Coalition and the state's Lutheran Public Policy Office who all thoughtfully endorsed it.
Washington State voters are not alone in wanting cleaner energy. 20 other states (including Texas) have already passed similar initiatives and are either meeting or exceeding their goals with no more than 1% fluctuation of prices.
The initiative would require we get at least 15% of our energy from renewable sources like wind, solar and conservation by 2020. That gives us FOURTEEN years to do this!
Brunell mentions that Hydropower is excluded from the Initiative. That was done for a reason. We need other sources of energy because snow-pack levels are fluctuating, and with population growth, hydropower is under pressure.
Location: As for ruining scenic vistas, I doubt that conservation groups like the Audubon Washington would have endorsed the Initiative if they felt wind farms would cause an environmental nightmare.
Tradeoff: We will definitely need more energy. Apparently littering the landscape with pollution-spewing coal plants is more environmentally friendly! Personally, I would rather see a vista of majestic wind turbines using free energy than huge offshore oil rigs.
Cost: Puget Sound Energy recently purchased two wind farms after determining that doing so would save $170 million over the next cheapest new power source of any kind - so much for penalizing ratepayers.
Clean coal technology is very expensive, the government is dropping the ball on funding it with only one prototype planned to be up and running by 2008 -- and it cannot be used everywhere. The ground under some coal mines won’t take the carbon being pumped back into it. Nuclear sounds clean, but it’ll take 10 years, a lot of subsidies and dirty energy to make it happen and then what do we do with the spent fuel. (Whose back yard can we dump it in for 10,000 years and whose going to pay for it to be guarded? Oh, I know, let’s use it as depleted uranium and fire it at unarmed civilians in other countries and ruin their DNA and our troops DNA while we’re at it - not printed).
I-937 will not “force” any utility to buy tidal or ocean power. It is an option that has plenty of time to work, along with wind power, solar, biomass, landfill gas, geothermal, biofuels and most importantly “conservation”.
Can we do it? I should think so. There’s a huge surge in businesses looking to get into the field. That will mean lots of new good paying jobs for Washingtonians. Farmers can earn $5,000 per windmill per year and they can farm the land below if they want. There are solar water heating & electricity technologies that homeowners and businesses can use that will cut their need for power. These technologies will be very appealing as they come with rebates, no sales tax and will cut electricity bills and thanks to I-937 they can sell electricity back to the grid. This is already happening in Germany and other countries. How about local communities creating their own solar collector stations where they can create energy for their towns and again sell unused energy units back to the grid, keeping money in the local economy. The PUD’s will be able to count on those sources of energy.
Let’s not give in to a “sky is falling” attitude when we have 14 exciting years to create this new technology.
In his Guest Commentary last week entitled, Three Words: Location, tradeoff, cost, Don Brunell cautions moving ahead too quickly on Initiative I-937 for Clean Renewable Energy. Never-mind the 3500 people who volunteered to collect signatures, the 336,000 that signed the initiative and the Washington Public Utility Districts Association, League of Women Voters, former BPA Administrator Randy Hardy, U.S. Reps. Jay Inslee and Adam Smith, Audubon WA, NW Energy Coalition and the state's Lutheran Public Policy Office who all thoughtfully endorsed it.
Washington State voters are not alone in wanting cleaner energy. 20 other states (including Texas) have already passed similar initiatives and are either meeting or exceeding their goals with no more than 1% fluctuation of prices.
The initiative would require we get at least 15% of our energy from renewable sources like wind, solar and conservation by 2020. That gives us FOURTEEN years to do this!
Brunell mentions that Hydropower is excluded from the Initiative. That was done for a reason. We need other sources of energy because snow-pack levels are fluctuating, and with population growth, hydropower is under pressure.
Location: As for ruining scenic vistas, I doubt that conservation groups like the Audubon Washington would have endorsed the Initiative if they felt wind farms would cause an environmental nightmare.
Tradeoff: We will definitely need more energy. Apparently littering the landscape with pollution-spewing coal plants is more environmentally friendly! Personally, I would rather see a vista of majestic wind turbines using free energy than huge offshore oil rigs.
Cost: Puget Sound Energy recently purchased two wind farms after determining that doing so would save $170 million over the next cheapest new power source of any kind - so much for penalizing ratepayers.
Clean coal technology is very expensive, the government is dropping the ball on funding it with only one prototype planned to be up and running by 2008 -- and it cannot be used everywhere. The ground under some coal mines won’t take the carbon being pumped back into it. Nuclear sounds clean, but it’ll take 10 years, a lot of subsidies and dirty energy to make it happen and then what do we do with the spent fuel. (Whose back yard can we dump it in for 10,000 years and whose going to pay for it to be guarded? Oh, I know, let’s use it as depleted uranium and fire it at unarmed civilians in other countries and ruin their DNA and our troops DNA while we’re at it - not printed).
I-937 will not “force” any utility to buy tidal or ocean power. It is an option that has plenty of time to work, along with wind power, solar, biomass, landfill gas, geothermal, biofuels and most importantly “conservation”.
Can we do it? I should think so. There’s a huge surge in businesses looking to get into the field. That will mean lots of new good paying jobs for Washingtonians. Farmers can earn $5,000 per windmill per year and they can farm the land below if they want. There are solar water heating & electricity technologies that homeowners and businesses can use that will cut their need for power. These technologies will be very appealing as they come with rebates, no sales tax and will cut electricity bills and thanks to I-937 they can sell electricity back to the grid. This is already happening in Germany and other countries. How about local communities creating their own solar collector stations where they can create energy for their towns and again sell unused energy units back to the grid, keeping money in the local economy. The PUD’s will be able to count on those sources of energy.
Let’s not give in to a “sky is falling” attitude when we have 14 exciting years to create this new technology.
# posted by Florence Vincent @ 10:12 PM 
