By The Kansas City Star Editorial Board
After years of inaction, Missouri has finally moved forward on an ambitious energy agenda.
It should help consumers use less electricity and save money, spur utilities to produce more renewable power and better control harmful emissions from coal-fired power plants.
Voters last November jumpstarted the push by endorsing the Missouri Clean Energy Initiative, which requires utilities to provide more electricity from renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power.
This month, the Missouri General Assembly followed up by sending a solid energy efficiency bill to Gov. Jay Nixon. He should sign it, and then utilities ought to push ahead with new plans to save energy.
A large number of businesses, utilities and environmental groups supported the legislation.
Utilities want to be able to charge slightly higher rates, in part to cover the costs of programs designed to promote energy efficiency.
Consumers benefit with more access, for example, to programmable thermostats or to rebates on more efficient air conditioners.
The new bill recognizes that utilities have few incentives to offer energy-efficiency programs if they simply cut into revenues and profits. That’s where the slightly higher rates would come in, after a thorough review by the Missouri Public Service Commission.
Ultimately, utilities and consumers win if there’s less need to build big, costly power plants, especially those that use coal and harm the environment. As David Warm, executive director of the Mid-America Regional Council, put it, “Every megawatt of energy saved through efficiency is a megawatt utilities don’t have to produce, resulting in fewer emissions.”
Meanwhile, utilities need to also move ahead in following up the good decision by voters last November to back the Missouri Clean Energy Initiative.
The goal for utilities is to use renewable power to produce up to 15 percent of the state’s needs by 2021; the current figure is less than a measly 1 percent. The plan will help trim the state’s use of dirty coal. For that to happen, utilities such as Kansas City Power & Light — which backed the initiative — must fulfill a commitment to build more wind energy farms.
Missouri is embarking on more wisely using energy in the future. The results should be long-term savings on electricity bills and cleaner air throughout the state.
Delicious
Digg
Once again
Yet another unsupported assertion from Grinchy.
IT is playing with his teabag and listening to NASA. Let's all just ignore IT. That will drive IT even more crazy than IT is now.
hmmm.
Yet another unsupported assertion from Grinchy.
GrinchForPrez
You......
.............are a measure of grace.
Consumers win?
I don't think so.
Although reduced energy usage and renewable energy sources are good ideas in themselves, they will not save the consumers any money.
Reduced energy usage on the part of consumers will only result in the utility providers going to the public utilities regulators and asking for rate increases to offset the fixed costs that do not change regardless of usage. Likewise, renewable energy sources, being much more expensive than coal, oil and natural gas, will not reduce anyones utility bills.
The Star Editorial Board needs to back up their opinions with facts, not liberal wishfull thinking.
Yes, I have something to contribute
Your latest post is a perfect example of the idiocy inherent in a lot of the stuff people like you post.
Why? Because you cannot explain, if your grandiose "posit" is desirable and achievable, why don't you people fund it yourselves, or why can't you convince private industry to back you until it's efficient enough to compete with the current energy sources, all of which I'm perfectly happy with? The competitiveness of your alternative sources always seems to be a decade or more away, perpetually. Why do you need my tax dollars to fund your research and development, any more than any other company wishing to sell a product? Answer - because you want to force me to pay for your irrational and non-realistic enviro-Nazi desires. Period.
You're a moocher, you're not a producer. You're a parasite, unable yourself to achieve the solution but more than eager to force others to fund your childish wishes that someone, somewhere, somehow will make your wishes come true - even though you personally haven't a clue as to the science nor the unrealistic and uninformed expectations you've developed in this fanatical goal of achieving them.
You mouth and cut-and-paste technobabble that you think will impress people, but I'm sorry to say that we can see through that garbage, simply because if it already made economic sense to do whatever it is you're babbling on about, we'd already have done it. You also don't seem to understand that solar and wind and geothermal sources cannot possibly produce the amounts of energy this country needs, while coal, oil and nuclear CAN and DOES.
Drop dead, moocher, in an epistemological sense.
--> Global warming is the new eugenics <--
moderatemouth
Another post contributing nothing?
Boring....
Posit:
The creation, storage and release of electricity from renewable energy sources will be the future of the energy industry.
Problem:
The unpredictable power generating characteristics of renewable energy sources will require the need for new regionalized energy storage facilities.
Concept:
Build new or upgrade existing hydro kinetic power plants and use renewable energy sources to pump the water used to generate power back to the source of the power plants kinetic potential.
Benefits:
• Eliminates the unpredictable power generating characteristics associated with renewable energy sources such as wind and PV by storing generated power as hydro kinetic power for use when the power grid demands it.
• Large energy companies are uniquely positioned to handle the engineering requirements to build such a project.
• Insures economic viability of current hydro kinetic power infrastructure.
• Enhances the abilities of hydro kinetic power plants to act as “spinning reserves”, and there by increasing the reliability of the power grid.
• Allows hydro kinetic power plants to adapt to the growing, distributed micro-generation of electrical power from commercial and residential renewable energy systems.
• Increases the economic viability of large scale wind and solar farms.
• Could achieve profitability in less than a decade and sustain profitability throughout the life of the power plant.
Why are big energy companies perfect for this concept?
Energy companies such as ConocoPhillips etc are uniquely positioned by their experience, manpower and intellectual property to take on such engineering endeavors. Simply put, who knows better how to dig a big hole in the ground, install some big pipes and massive pumps, and build platforms for wind turbines capable of surviving the rigors of the open sea?
Any thing to contribute?
w00t - another liberal going
w00t - another liberal going on the attack when they are put in their place... nice job Apostacy.
GrinchForPrez got nothing to contribute?
Lots of words but no solutions.
Lots of opinion and tragedian rhetoric, but no desire to join the conversation.
Nothing novel about what you wrote, but you did write a novel of sensationalist terminology.
I guess to some people the future energy, is only a conservation of energy policies of the past.
Apostasy, your post is a joke
1 - hold your breath underwater - how long do you think you are going to last?
Meaning, what a false example you pose - why would anyone other than a suicidal (or homicidal) person be dumb enough to do that? What has THAT got to do with ANYTHING??? Hey, run into a wildfire and see how long you last - Nature kills, too.
2 - You're a zealot, at least in terms of your overexcited, hackneyed sound-bites: "the green economy is coming". You think somehow that by using a phrase that implies inevitability that it will simply happen? Only if you are flat-out uninformed enough to believe the liars like AL Gore and the U.N. (oh yeah, THEY have no agendas here - lol) on the fantasy called 'global warming', which you fanatics morphed into 'climate change' when the world started cooling.
3 - Finally, I got ALL excited reading your techy-geeky ecobabble at the end. Hey, knock yourself out with the alternative sources, I'm not against it, all I'm against is stealing MY tax dollars in the form of subsidies for your money-losing energy sources which apparently most private industry doesn't want to develop using private funds because they can't compete against conventional sources like coal, oil and nuclear. You can't compete economically on your own two feet, so like some kind of parasite you latch onto the taxpayers to fund your faux utopian vision of a 'green' Earth. You and the likes of you could not care less what you do to people who don't agree with you - here's an idea: why don't you people simply fund it yourselves? Why use the political process to fund your lies with other people's money?
I don't respect Al Gore, the U.N., the politicians who have jumped onto the GW bandwagon so their careers can hitch a ride, and I particularly loathe the mealy-mouthed platitudes regurgitated by greeniacs. Forget proof of concept, forget competing on economic terms, you can't - all you can hope to do is push the Big Lie and hope not enough people notice what accepting that Lie is going to do to their standard of living and their descendant's standard of living.
I will repeat: I can't stand those people running around yammering about 'going green' and 'helping the environment' and yet, when you ask them for specifics, their dull eyes roll up into the backs of their heads because they've never bothered to investigate the claims themselves. Those are just the deluded - you also have the true believers who will accept NO contradictory evidence, even snowstorms in April, but the absolute worst are those who KNOW it's BS but use it for either profit or power.
I am no longer polite when people hand me a petition having anything to do with the environment, or ask for donations for a related cause, or try to engage me in conversation about what they're doing for the environment. I tell them exactly what I think and I tell them to get lost - try it, it feels great and it sure helps MY environment!
--> Global warming is the new eugenics <--
By all means, park in the
By all means, park in the garage and close the door - do the world a favor.
"Green Energy" is rediculous. It is a fantasy thoguht up by the left (along with global warming) to promote their agenda. It is one more tool that the left is using to take control of more government. Force utilities to use "green energy sources?" Sounds like socialism to me. Why not clean coal energy? With all this coal in the area, and the US alone, why not use what we have in front of us? Because a few polar bears may die? Please... go hug a tree, global warming is a hoax. Wake up people! The government is using this "Green Energy" initiative to grab for more power... why else is it something being led by the left?