Live Blogging – notes from the Kansas Energy and Environment Policy (KEEP) Advisory Group, August meeting in Lawrence KS
August 6, 2008
Led by Lt. Governor Mark Parkinson and Chair Jack Pelton of Cessna, the Kansas Energy and Environmental Policy (KEEP) Advisory Group held its second meeting on Tuesday, this time in Lawrence.
What KEEP is and how it works
Governor Sebelius has charged KEEP with coming up with a climate action plan for Kansas. The KEEP group is composed of a wide variety of interests and stakeholders, and allows room for public participation as well.
A climate action plan provides states a blueprint for reduce contributions to greenhouse gases. Ideally it also helps states prepare for upcoming carbon regulation on the federal level, and stimulates economic development in terms of promoting a transition to a renewable energy economy.
Twenty-six other states have these plans already. Nine others (including Kansas) are under way, and two additional states are revising existing plans.
The Center for Climate Strategies (CCS) is facilitating the KS process. KEEP’s final report and policy recommendations will be due in 2010.
Basically, this is how the KEEP process works. It starts out with CCS providing well over 300 climate policy options that have been used in other states. Participants then add more options that seem to suit Kansas especially well. (Options can still be added as the process moves along.)
Then the group starts prioritizing. Those recommendations receive further study. Actual proposals are designed, so that cost-benefit studies, etc., can take place. Policy options are further winnowed down, and what’s left standing is further developed. The result is the final report.
The criteria for evaluating policies has four major components: (1) effectiveness in removing GHGs from the atmosphere, (2) cost/ benefit, savings, etc., (3) feasibility (political, economic, technological, etc.), (4) Co-benefits, also known as externalities – clean air, water, human health, energy security (you know, all those quality of life things that might not have clear dollar values, but turn out to be kind of important).
How the meeting went
The Lt. Gov. kicked things off with a message of calmness, reassurance, and deliberation about the KEEP process itself. House Speaker Melvin Neufeld, among others, has questioned its validity.
The Lt. Gov. simply noted the need for Kansans to reduce their carbon footprint, which is one of the largest per capita in the world. He said that there’s lots of ways for us to do that. Some will work and some won’t, but above all we want to make sure that our recommendations help prevent harm to ag and business.
He also mentioned that originally in KS we went for the cheapest reliable energy, which at that time was coal, but times are now changing and we need to look at other options.
And then it got started. The purpose of this meeting was to review the recent additions to the “catalogs,” or the giant, giant lists of policy options. KEEP is at the inclusion phase, it’s not excluding anything yet, so suggestions to knock things out were noted for later meetings but not acted on at this time.
