Prop 23 Update: Shutting down the Green Energy Sector

Russ Steele

The UK Climate Policy Newwork points to an interesting story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, by Don  Hopey: Corbett quietly turning off the lights on renewable energy.

Quietly but systematically, the Pennsylvanian administration has all but shut down the state Department of Environmental Protection's Office of Energy and Technology Deployment -- the state's primary energy office -- and removed directors and reassigned staff in the Office of Energy Management in the Department of General Services and the Governor's Green Government Council. It has also forbidden state executive agencies from signing contracts that support clean energy supply. One former DEP employee said of the Energy Office, "it's being taken apart piece-by-piece and the pieces are being thrown away.

ooo

Pennsylvania is not the only state reassessing or reducing green policies. Governors and legislators have voiced similar concerns in Connecticut, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Oklahoma and Wisconsin, according to the Pew Research Center

While other states are folding up the green energy tent while California is prompting a dangerous dependency on renewable energy. This dependency will drive up energy costs for business  and citizens. As California energy prices climb higher and higher, those states with lower costs will begin to attract California business and those with high paying portable jobs. 

I find it interesting that Pennsylvania is benefiting from extensive shale gas drilling, which is producing cheap easily transportable fuel for power plants and the heating of homes and factories. This is exactly what the EPA and the environmentalist wackos were concerned about. They are trying to shut down shale gas drilling by banning "fracking" which an essential tool for securing this cheap energy.  The sooner we put EPA in a political coma the better off we will all be.