Environmental news update
• There's good news from the North Carolina Legislature regarding a proposed renewable energy bill. The bill would require utilities to get 12.5% of their power from renewable sources and efficiency measures by 2021. The bill was passed today by the Senate Agriculture, Environment and Natural Resources Committee. The bill's sponsor, Sen. Charlie Albertson, D-Duplin, is the committee chair.
The bill gained support of utilities such as Duke Power owing to a compromise that allows utilities to charge customers for generating facilities before they come online. The next stop is the Senate Finance Committee, then on to the full Senate and the House. If it passes, North Carolina would be the first Southeastern state to require use of renewable resources.
• In other good news from Florida, Gov. Charlie Crist vetoed a $62 million energy bill last week that included funding for a variety of alternative energy measures. Why is this good news? Gov. Crist vetoed the bill because it didn't go far enough in creating a comprehensive energy policy for the State of Florida.
In vetoing the bill, Gov. Crist said it would "result in further delays to advance an energy policy that addresses conservation, energy efficiency, and greenhouse gas emission reductions. We can do better. We must do better." Funding for the alternative energy programs had already been approved in the budget so it will remain intact.
• In other news, renewable energy provisions in the CLEAN Energy Act passed by the U.S. Senate last week met with opposition from somewhat surprising quarters. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), usually a an outspoken advocate for conservation and environmental issues, opposed measures that would require utilities to generate 15% of their power from renewable sources. The renewable energy mandates were dropped from the bill before it passed. Sen. Alexander was pleased with this outcome, saying the provisions would have "raised our taxes, run away jobs and ruined our mountaintops."
The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy said earlier that Sen. Alexander's remarks were misleading, and questioned which was worse -- ruined mountaintops as a result of mountaintop removal coal mining or windmills. They also noted that the clean energy technologies would bring thousands of good jobs to the State of Tennessee.