{"id":21,"date":"2013-03-20T16:40:16","date_gmt":"2013-03-20T20:40:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/03\/renewable-portfolio-standards-ga-nc-and-alec.html"},"modified":"2013-03-20T16:40:16","modified_gmt":"2013-03-20T20:40:16","slug":"renewable-portfolio-standards-ga-nc-and-alec","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/03\/renewable-portfolio-standards-ga-nc-and-alec.html","title":{"rendered":"Renewable Portfolio Standards: GA, NC, and ALEC"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nRenewable Energy Portfolio Standards (RPS) are being proposed\nin Georgia and ALEC is trying to do away with them in North Carolina.\nIf ALEC doesn’t like them, there must be something good about RPS.\nLet’s get on with real renewable energy in Georgia.\n<\/p>\n

\n\n<\/a>\nIn Georgia,\n\nHB 503<\/a>,\nsponsored by Karla Drenner, Carol Fullerton, Debbie Buckner, Scott\nHolcomb, Spencer Frye, and Earnest Smith,\nwould create a Renewable Energy Credits Trading program as part of\nrenewable portfolio standards,\nas Kyle wrote for Spencer Frye’s blog 10 March 2013,\n\nLet the Sunshine In.<\/a>\nUnfortunately, HB 503 includes biomass as a renewable energy source.\nMaybe they just mean landfill gas, which I consider a special case\nsince it’s being produced anyway, and since methane is worse as\na greenhouse gas than CO2, burning landfill gas makes some sense.\nNope, in\n\nthe actual bill, 46-3-71 (1)<\/a>:\n<\/p>\n

\n‘Biomass material’ means organic matter, excluding fossil fuels and black liquor,\nincluding agricultural crops, plants, trees, wood, wood wastes and residues, sawmill\nwaste, sawdust, wood chips, bark chips, and forest thinning, harvesting, or clearing\nresidues; wood waste from pallets or other wood demolition debris; peanut shells; cotton\nplants; corn stalks; and plant matter, including aquatic plants, grasses, stalks, vegetation,\nand residues, including hulls, shells, or cellulose containing fibers\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nThe barn door in there is “harvesting”, which can mean whole trees,\nbut the rest isn’t much better.\nWe don’t need to be burning things that increase atmospheric CO2\nand end up stripping our forests.\nIn\n\nNorth Carolina they staretd with just tops and limbs and then tried to escalate\nto whole trees<\/a>.\nWe already\nfought off the biomass boondoggle here in south Georgia;\nlet’s not have it encouraged statewide.\nEspecially when we have better solutions: solar and wind power.\nHB 503 isn’t going to get passed this year, since it didn’t make\ncrossover day, so maybe its sponsors can clean up that biomass mess\nbefore they submit it again.\n<\/p>\n

\nSpeaking of North Carolina,\n\n\none key to\n\n91% of NC voters wanting more solar power<\/a>\nis not renewable energy credits, rather renewable energy transparency,\n\n<\/a>\nnamely the 2007\n\nRenewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Portfolio Standard (REPS)<\/a>,\nwhich requires power utilities to get certain percentages of their\nenergy from “renewable energy resources or energy efficiency measures,”\nplus frequent, detailed, public reporting, called the\nRenewable Energy Certificate (REC) Tracking System (NC-RETS).\nIt’s such a good thing that of course the fossil fuel industry\nis trying to nuke it.\n<\/p>\n

\nJohn Downey wrote for the Charlotte Business Journal 13 March 2013,\n\nBill to eliminate renewable-energy requirements introduced in NC House<\/a>,\n<\/p>\n

\n\n<\/a>\n

\nState Rep. Mike Hager and three co-sponsors have introduced a bill\nin the N.C. House of Representatives that would eliminate state\nmandates for utilities to produce a small portion of the power they\nsell in North Carolina from renewable sources.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nDowney says Hager has little chance of getting his backwards bill passed,\nand even Duke Energy hasn’t taken any position on it.\nBut the forces behind that bad NC bill are the same as the forces\nstopping Drenner’s HB 503 in Georgia, namely ALEC.\n<\/p>\n

\nSue Sturgis wrote for Facing South 14 March 2013\n\nMeet the ALEC-connected lawmakers behind bill to kill NC renewable energy law<\/a>,\n<\/p>\n

\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nYou remember ALEC’s Don Parsons was\n\nbehind the two just-failed bad telecommunications bills<\/a> in Georgia,\nand ALEC’s Ronnie Chance\n\nreplaced ALEC’s Chip Rogers<\/a> as Senate leader after\n\nthe statehouse Agenda 21 flap<\/a>,\nand Chance and Rogers\n\nwere behind both the charter school referendum and the multi-year contract referendum<\/a>.\nAnd of course ALEC admitted in response to a LAKE blog post about\n\na Sierra Club expose of ALEC’s role in promoting fossil fuels<\/a>\nthat\n\nALEC is indeed opposed to renewable energy portfolio standards<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

\n\n<\/a>\n\n<\/a>\nWe don’t need ALEC’s fossil fuels and we don’t need ALEC getting in\nthe way of renewable portfolio standards.\nWe have Georgia Power and Southern Company for that!\n\nSouthern Company’s Service Territory<\/a>\nand “Competitive Generation Opportunities” states\neerily resemble the southeastern states with no renewable energy\nstandards or goals.\n<\/p>\n

\n\n<\/a>\nSouthern Company is at it again.\n\nMississippi just approved<\/a> Construction Work in Progress (CWIP)\ncharges to MS Power customers for the alleged “clean coal” Plant Kepmer,\njust like\nthe GA leg. approved CWIP charges for SO’s new nukes at Plant Vogtle.\nNobody has gotten any electricity from either, and the nukes are\nalready a billion over budget and 15 months behind.\nTime to stop the boondoggles!\n<\/p>\n

\n\n<\/a>\nWe know how to\n\npower North Carolina on sun, wind, and water, with much less natural\ngas than NC uses now.<\/a>\nFor that matter, we know how to\n\npower the entire world on sun, wind, and water<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

\nTEPCO, owner of the broken Fukushima nukes, has even shown us\n\n<\/a>\n\nhow to build tsunami-proof offshore windmills that would probably work fine\nin hurricanes\noff the Georgia coast<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

\nLet’s get on with real renewable energy: sun and wind,\nconservation and efficiency.\nLet’s leapfrog botched biomass and failed nuclear and half-open\ntrading schemes and open up a real market for renewable energy in\nGeorgia and the southeast.\n<\/p>\n

\n-jsq\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Renewable Energy Portfolio Standards (RPS) are being proposed in Georgia and ALEC is trying to do away with them in North Carolina. If ALEC doesn’t like them, there must be something good about RPS. Let’s get on with real renewable energy in Georgia. In Georgia, HB 503, sponsored by Karla Drenner, Carol Fullerton, Debbie Buckner, […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97,140,120,47,141,142,14,16,8,18,2,19,20,21,22,32,23,24,53,3,36],"tags":[164,8744,8738,148,163,156,8719,8745,8746,149,161,143,152,8704,8706,160,165,167,8701,8708,8699,146,8709,170,147,171,8702,154,8710,12,7,157,158,8737,8711,107,8712,8715,8713,153,144,162,145,150,34,8714,108,151,159,8725,166,8700,155,169,6,8716,168],"class_list":["post-21","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-alec","category-biomass","category-climate-change","category-co2","category-cwip","category-economy","category-environment","category-georgia","category-georgia-power","category-government","category-history","category-law","category-planning","category-politics","category-pollution","category-renewable-energy","category-solar","category-sustainability","category-transparency","category-wind","tag-agenda-21","tag-alec","tag-biomass","tag-carol-fullerton","tag-chip-rogers","tag-clearcut","tag-climate-change","tag-co2","tag-cwip","tag-debbie-buckner","tag-don-parsons","tag-duke-energy","tag-earnest-smith","tag-economy","tag-environment","tag-facing-south","tag-fossil-fuels","tag-fukushima","tag-georgia","tag-georgia-power","tag-government","tag-hb-503","tag-history","tag-hurricane","tag-karla-drenner","tag-kemper-coal","tag-lake","tag-landfill","tag-law","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-mike-hager","tag-north-carolina","tag-nuclear","tag-planning","tag-plant-vogtle","tag-politics","tag-pollution","tag-renewable-energy","tag-renewable-energy-credits-trading-program","tag-renewable-energy-portfolio-standards","tag-ronnie-chance","tag-rps","tag-scott-holcomb","tag-sierra-club","tag-solar","tag-southern-company","tag-spencer-frye","tag-sue-sturgis","tag-sustainability","tag-tepco","tag-transparency","tag-trees","tag-tsunami","tag-valdosta","tag-wind","tag-windmill"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-l","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}