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Energy debate & switch
Beshear's energy plan needs work
January 26, 2009
At issue: Nov. 21 Herald-Leader news story:
"Goal: more jobs, less gas; Energy plan
revives nuclear issue."
By Rick Clewett
The fiscal and economic meltdowns have created serious and even heart-wrenching problems for many of us. They also afford us certain opportunities. It is getting harder and harder to argue that "business as usual" approaches are what we need.
Gov. Steve Beshear's recently released energy plan includes a welcome commitment to energy efficiency programs on a significant scale. It also includes some half-hearted support for renewable energy. We are eager to work with the governor and legislators to move his energy efficiency proposals into law. We have already begun urging the administration to take the potential of distributed renewable energy courses more seriously.
Trying to figure out how best to meet the state's energy needs projected for 2025 is a difficult business. Those of us who study energy issues sympathize with Len Peters, secretary of the Energy and Environment Cabinet and the state government professionals who try to form energy policies.
That the governor's plan calls for a full and open discussion of using nuclear energy in the state is evidence of this difficulty. Perhaps the main attraction of nuclear is that producing electricity from nuclear energy does not add to global warming the way coal-based electricity does. It is time for us to bone up on the issues surrounding nuclear power plants, if only to argue effectively against them. But that's not the most urgent concern in the Governor's Energy Plan.
The governor's plan lists "protecting the coal industry" as one of its main purposes. This leads to an all-out support of coal-to-liquid and coal-to-syngas plants. The plan is long on claims that coal-to-liquid and coal-to-syngas form the best basis for the state's economic development and it includes a number of ways to shift the risk involved in building such plants away from private companies and onto the state and the taxpayers. Environmentalists will be opposing this section of the plan as effectively as we possibly can.
The Midwest region of the Sierra Club's coal campaign and a number of club leaders and activists from Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Pennsylvania and even from North Dakota and Montana, met in early December to learn about and strategize against the rash of proposed coal-to-liquid and coal-to-syngas plants in the region. Close to 50 people, including allies such as Kentuckians for the Commonwealth and Kentucky Waterways Alliance, participated. We are gearing up to combat this latest boondoggle of the coal industry.
But there are many things upon which we and the coal industry can agree. We all want the lights to stay on (when they need to be on). We all want, or should want, the citizens of Kentucky to have good, rewarding jobs that sustain them and their families, financially, psychologically and even spiritually.
Ideally, work should be a source of dignity and personal development. At the least, it should allow the worker to sustain his or her family and contribute to improving the world. While we are busy arguing with each other about what the best sources of economic development are and whether there is such a thing as clean or even green coal, let's remember the needs and aspirations we all share in common. And, to honor those common desires and dreams, let's try to listen to each other. Let's try to see beyond our own habitual rhetoric and assumptions.
We've gotten to the beginning of 2009. That's where we are; let's be there together and work for the healthier and more sustainable future we all want.
Rick Clewett of Lexington is co-chairman of the Cumberland Sierra Club Political Committee.