North Carolina is known for being a relatively progressive state and leads the South in many policy areas. So why doesn't North Carolina have a renewable energy portfolio standard yet? Twenty other states do. A renewable energy portfolio standard is a state policy that requires electric companies to provide a certain percentage of their power supply from renewable sources. Maine currently requires 30%, New York requires 24% by 2013, and even a red state like Montana requires 15% by 2015.
According to the News & Observer,a bill died in the General Assembly last year that would have required a 10% standard. Instead of pushing North Carolina to the forefront of renewable energy development, Progress Energy argued that they couldn't meet the state's energy needs with renewable energy. Instead, the power companies want to build expensive, new nuclear plants. Nuclear power is certainly clean when it comes to air pollution. But what happens to the radioactive waste when concrete liners leak underground? Why leave behind hazardous waste for future generations to deal with when we could develop clean solar and wind power? Utility officials also argued that it would hurt the NC economy to require a 10% renewable energy standard. Twenty other states would apparently disagree.
Comments
Good questions, adam
And you hit the nail on the head with the title -- Montana!?
On the topic of nuclear waste, why the hell aren't we catapulting it into space (and preferably into the sun)? We can put a man on the moon, but we can't flush the global toilet? C'mon.
Just what the Puppets wanted
all that excitin' innovation comin' outta the private sector! Whoooeee. Those big power companies sure are makin' progress on the sustainable energy front.
West Vs. South
While both regions are conservative, they are conservative in different ways. The west has more of a libertarian and the South is more social/religious conservative. However, the West always has had more environmental consciousness. So I would in no way be surprised that Montana is pushing ahead on this before NC, but I voted for this to go to the front page anyway since we need to push NC to using these initiatives.
An idea.
I came up with an idea that I was hoping to see if it had legs. I was wondering if we could talk to GreenNC and Duke Power to have a "contest" in Chapel Hill/Carrboro. Each neighborhood tries to get as many people as possible to buy $4 units of GreenPower, then the neighborhood with the most units/person average gets their purchase doubled or the cost cut in half or something like that.
I'm wondering how much impact one $4 unit per house in Chapel Hill/Carrboro would have on Green Power in NC?
Jesus Swept ticked me off. Too short. I loved the characters and then POOF it was over.
-me