In a Boston Globe op-ed by Governor Deval Patrick entitled A clean break from the fossil fuel age , the Governor writes:GreatPoint Energy, a Cambridge firm now demonstrating its innovative technology for turning coal and biomass into clean-burning natural gas at the Brayton Point power plant in Somerset.
The author of the title needs to be informed that coal is a fossil fuel. This hardly sounds like a clean break when the use of coal sanctions mountaintop removal of coal, but then this from a Governor who has spent more time and energy presenting misinformation about casino gambling is not surprising.
Today's Globe goes further in explaining some major provisions of the law that are significant for consumers:
A requirement for utilities to invest in energy efficiency when it is cheaper to do so than it is to buy power. ... Now, utilities will have to invest in energy efficiency if to do so is equal to or cheaper than buying power. The law will also use at least 80 percent of the revenue from the regional effort to cap power plant emissions for efficiency programs, such as home energy audits to identify how to save on energy bills.
Utilities would have to enter into 10- or 15-year contracts with renewable energy developers, an effort to help those developers get financing from banks. The Patrick administration is particularly proud of a provision that lifts a prohibition on utilities owning solar electric panels and allows them to rent the panels to customers.
Utilities will have to purchase a greater amount of their electricity from renewable power sources than under current law. By 2030, utilities would buy 25 percent of their power from renewables.
Governor, you continue to diminish your image when you misstate simple facts both on energy and the casino issue. You continue to rely on lobbyists and the commercial entities involved to present their facts and create your sound bytes, instead of accurately assessing the information, just as you have in the casino gambling issue.
Maybe you need to set aside that book you're writing and pay attention to the elected position you sought.
While the legislation is a major step in the right direction, long overdue and widely supported by environmental groups, informed folks hold their noses at the inclusion of coal in any form. It's nothing to be proud of. Maybe you should have been embarrassed to even mention it.
Greenwashing Dirty Coal Energy
Let's End the Myth of Coal Energy
Wind is already more competitive than electricity generated from new nuclear and coal-fired power plants.
Energy Resources #2
More Wind Mills or Hot Air?
UCS had this to say about DIRTY COAL:
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Coal generates 54% of our electricity, and is the single biggest air polluter in the U.S.
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A typical (500 megawatt) coal plant burns 1.4 million tons of coal each year. There are about 600 U.S. coal plants. Coal pollutes when it is mined, transported to the power plant, stored, and burned. Click on the pictures above left to see more about the kinds of environmental damage caused by coal.
Judge Robert Chambers of a federal court in West Virginia curbed the government's allowance of the controversial practice of mountaintop removal, a form of strip mining in which coal companies use explosives to essentially remove entire mountains, and "the resulting millions of tons of waste rock, dirt, and vegetation are then dumped into surrounding valleys." (See a satellite picture of mountaintop removal here). Chambers ruled that the U.S Army Corps of Engineers "violated the [Clean Water Act] by issuing mountaintop removal mining permits that allowed headwater streams to be permanently buried." In a "victory for environmentalists," Chambers ruled that "more thorough reviews of the mines’ potential impacts must be done before permits can be approved."
Buildings account for 43% of the nation's carbon emissions and the consumption of 39% of our total primary energy, 71% of our electricity, and 55% of our natural gas.
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