Winds of Change Newsletter, December 2005     See sidebar for table of contents

RENEWABLE FUTURE (excerpted)

by Alan Tweddle

One of the biggest customers for West Virginia's coal has already said "Enough!" The government of Ontario has studied alternative energy costs for the past two years and has concluded that they cannot afford coal. In May, they announced that they were shutting down and phasing out all their coal plants and beginning an ambitious program of switching to renewable energybiomass, wind, and solar.

The government of Ontario pays for all the health care for its citizens. They added up the cost of coal pollution-triggered health care (children's asthma, heart and lung diseases, cancers, mercury poisoning). They looked at the TOTAL picture they determined that renewable energy is cheaper.

Ontario also looked at the future and realized that global warming is quite real and they must accept their share of the responsibility to reverse that trend. The hard fact is that global warming demands that we slow down and drastically reduce our burning of fossil fuels, and burning coal is the largest source that has been identified.

Alternative renewable energy is the answer. If the billions of politically-motivated investment dollars currently poured into 'clean coal" technology were instead used for solar research, we and our children would be a lot better off. After all, the sun delivers enough energy in one day to give us all the power that we need for a year. Yet, another $50 million is being thrown at carbon sequestrationa fancy word for shoving the greenhouse gasses way down into the ground or the ocean bottom, and telling it to stay there! Why not invest in the one consistent and free energy that is now, always has been, and will be in the foreseeable future ready and available...the sun!

Visionary technologies are already available. For instance, you can buy photovoltaic (pv) cell roof tiles. When you re-roof your home or build a new one, these tiles will provide most of the power that you need. At certain times of the day, normally at peak summer heat, they will generate more than you can use. In states that have developed a net-metering plan, you sell your surplus to the local utility and they avoid burning fossil fuel. The Sacramento Municipal Utility District, for example, where there has been exceptional economic and population growth, avoided building any new generating capacity by making their customers their partners instead of their victims. (Look up www.SMUD.com)

But West Virginia doesn't have net metering....unless you are a huge corporate user with a cogeneration plant on site. The WV Public Utilities Commission is "studying" net metering. Net metering has been studied to death everywhere else, and been adopted in many states as a reasonable method of gaining added generating capacity while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Looking at the Ontario decision and the "Renewable Energy Plans (REP)" of many states is critical to any discussion of West Virginia's energy future. When I wrote a draft proposal to just study an REP for West Virginia in the Legislature earlier this year, I was told by open-minded senators that there is definitely "No Interest."

Many studies have determined that renewable energy creates more jobs than the fossil fuel industries. As mountaintop removal has mechanized the mining of coal while wrecking the landscape, it has also wrecked the number of jobs available for miners.

Mr. Tweddle is a Canadian born engineer who has resided in his "retirement" here in Charleston since 1998. He is the state coordinator for www.REPAmerica.org, Republicans for Environmental Protection, COEJL, the Coalition on the Environment in Jewish Life, a member of the West Virginia Environmental Council's lobby team and a board member of the West Virginia Environmental Institute. , sponsors of the WVCOE in Flatwoods. The above is his personal opinion.

This is OVEC saying we envision the United Mine and Renewable Energy Workers of America!