Editorial on energy efficiency. This week in the Wichita Eagle, Randy Scholfield asked an excellent question - what is Kansas doing to maximize its energy efficiency resources?
In terms of concrete state policy, that answer is - as yet, not much. Other energy issues overshadowed the energy efficiency legislation, which crashed and burned in the last hours of the 2008 session. The KCC has yet to offer any findings on the energy efficiency (in effect, decoupling) docket currently before it.
As Randy observes:
Kansas has been locked in a bitter controversy about whether a proposed coal-plant expansion in western Kansas is needed. Largely overlooked in the debate is the untapped promise of energy efficiency and conservation to reduce our state’s energy needs.
All sides should agree that energy conservation is a goal worth pursuing.
Kansas has hardly begun realizing the potential — the state ranks near the bottom of the nation in energy efficiency programs. It’s one of just 10 states that in 2006 reported zero net savings from efficiency. Zip.
Coal prices rising. You know how gasoline prices rise during the summer months, when more people are driving? Something similar happens with coal - because of increased demand (mainly for air conditioning), electric generators have to start stockpiling coal in the spring to make sure they have enough for summer.
However, due to increasing exports of U.S. coal, domestic supplies are decreasing. Thus they are also rising in price (Reuters - story one and two.)
Greenhouse gases in atmosphere higher than any other time in past 800,000 years. In a study of Antarctic sea ice, researchers discovered that “‘today’s concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane are 28 and 124 percent higher respectively’” (Reuters). Quotable:
Before the Industrial Revolution, levels of greenhouse gases were guided mainly by long-term shifts in the earth’s orbit around the sun that have plunged the planet into ice ages and back again eight times in the past 800,000 years.
The U.N. Climate Panel last year blamed human activities, led by burning of fossil fuels that release heat-trapping gases, for modern global warming that may disrupt water and food supplies with ever more droughts, floods and heatwaves.
“The driving forces now are very much different from the driving forces in the past when there was only natural variation,” Stocker told Reuters of the study in the journal Nature by scientists in Switzerland, France and Germany.
Sierra Club has filed suit over eight coal plants in six different states. The legal claim is that the plants violate the Clean Air Act (Reuters). States involved are Arizona, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Texas and Wyoming. Sierra is considering suing additional plants in Kentucky, Louisiana, Texas, Wyoming, Iowa, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Pennsylvania and South Carolina.
As of right now, Kansas is not on that list.
— Maril Hazlett, www.climateandenergy.org
Leave a Reply