News Release
Citizens Action Coalition

Two leading Indiana citizen/environmental groups -- Citizens Action Coalition of Indiana and Concerned Citizens of Scott County -- filed as joint interveners in Liberty Green Renewables Indiana LLC's request to the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission (IURC) for declination of jurisdiction.

Liberty Green is requesting that the Commission decline to exercise any jurisdiction over the construction, ownership or operation of, or any other activity in connection with, the Scottsburg Renewable Energy Center -- stating in the petition to the IURC that "encouragement of this type of facility by its declining to exercise jurisdiction over Petitioner will be beneficial to the State of Indiana."

In the request, Liberty Green LLC claims that the Scottsburg Renewable Energy Center will specifically generate electricity from woody biomass, a renewable, environmentally benign and energy efficient resource.

News Release
Consumer Federation of America

A new report from the Consumer Federation of America by Dr. Mark Cooper, "Building on the Success of Energy Efficiency Programs to Ensure an Affordable Energy Future," shows that federal energy efficiency policies can leverage real and largely untapped potential to save consumer's money and create a cleaner, healthier environment with lower carbon emissions.

This report also concludes that incorporating energy efficiency programs in federal climate and energy legislation would substantially reduce the cost for consumers.

When the Indiana Gasification (IG) plant was proposed for Rockport by the Mitch Daniels administration in November 2006, the price of natural gas was on the rise at around $9 per million BTUs (mmbtu). Suddenly taking coal's hydrocarbons and converting them to usable "syngas" (synthetic gas) seemed to make sense, at least until you got to the details.

That is, presumably, why the legislature passed a law telling the state's gas utilities that they had to negotiate 30-year contracts with IG on a "take-or-pay" basis that forced Indiana ratepayers to use its syngas no matter what the cost.

Then, while negotiations were still taking place, IG trotted before the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission (IURC) with its proposal. Sadly for them, the utilities soon discovered that even with prices for natural gas on the rise, the required price for syngas was just too high to be competitive with even volatile natural gas, which by early 2008 had risen to $13-plus.

It's time for the oldest and dirtiest power plants to clean up their act. Fossil fuel-fired giants have dominated our electricity for decades and have been allowed to pollute without license. In order to stop global warming and reap all the benefits of clean energy, we must require old clunker power plants to meet modern standards for cutting global warming pollution.

The Gibson Generating Station in Gibson County near the Wabash River is the dirtiest power plant in Indiana based on carbon dioxide (CO₂) pollution, ranking as the fourth dirtiest plant in the country for 2007, according to a new analysis of government data released this month by Environment America.

Power plants currently do not have to meet any global warming pollution standard, meaning that they are unchecked contributors to global warming. In fact, power plants are the nation's single largest source of global warming pollution.

Internationally known climatologist James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies and a professor at Columbia University, calls coal-fired power plants "the single greatest threat to civilization and life on our planet."

Coal burning is responsible for 40 percent of global carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions each year. And Hansen says all of the country's more than 500 coal plants must be shut down by 2030 to avoid the worst effects of global climate change.

Coal-dependent Indiana is seventh among the states in CO₂ emissions, having released 8,950 megatons between 1960 and 2005, according to a recently released Greenpeace report, America's Share of the Climate Crisis: A State-By-State Carbon Footprint. The study used data from the Carbon Analysis Indicators Tool maintained by the World Resources Institute.

In 2008, Indiana citizens saved 11.7 million gallons of gasoline by riding transit in record numbers -- the amount consumed by 20,200 cars. Transportation is responsible for more than two-thirds of our dependence on oil, and about one-third of our carbon dioxide pollution Environment America outlined in a new report "Getting On Track: Record Transit Ridership Increases Energy Independence."

People are voting with their feet by driving less and taking more public transportation. Congress should listen to these voters and invest more in public transportation, which will increase our energy independence and reduce global warming pollution.

In Indiana, transit ridership increased by more than 9 percent above 2007 levels.

As business owners, we examine every cost with a critical eye. Our bottom line -- our ability to make a profit, and the livelihoods of millions of families in America who depend on us demand an honest appraisal of the realities confronting us.

No one would dispute, for instance, that a business that does not budget for rent increases or rising fuel costs for a commercial fleet in the coming years is in for a rude awakening. Businesses will fail if we don't plan with creativity and care.

That is why it is troubling to us as business owners to watch the reaction of some in our great country to the current debate over the climate legislation that will be taken up by the Senate in September. Meaningful climate legislation, not industry bailouts or the status quo, is necessary now for two principal reasons.

News Release
Environment America
Richard Lugar Center for Renewable Energy

INDIANAPOLIS -- Experts from across the state came together on July 9 in Indianapolis to discuss clean energy solutions to global warming that will have a positive impact on Indiana's economy and businesses, the environment and national security. The panel was convened by Environment America and the Richard Lugar Center for Renewable Energy in response to the recent U.S. Global Change Research Program report showing that Indiana is already experiencing more extreme storms, drought and flooding due to global warming.

"In Benton County, our primary goal is the preservation of our great agricultural soils," said Benton County Extension Director Jimmy Bricker. "We also need economic development. We found that commercial wind energy has been a win-win for our landowners/farmers and our local economy, which translates to everyone in the county."

What's missing from the climate/energy debate in Congress and the U.S. Senate is any discussion on cost. It's amazing that these worshippers of the "free" market have neither debated the merits of the Waxman-Markey Bill (HR 2454) or the Senate energy bill based on the relative costs of their preferred technologies, nor in the context of least cost -- to ratepayers and the economy as whole that is.

The concept of least cost in terms of our electric energy mix is extremely important if we're going to make utility bills affordable, create the jobs we need to, improve public health and effectively address global warming. Even for those who question global warming, least-cost analysis would bring you to the same conclusion with respect to the energy mix.

To illustrate the point, compare the construction costs of the following technologies based on 2007 data from a paper titles "Business Risks and Costs of Nuclear Power," by Craig Severance. Keep in mind that these costs do not include the public health costs associated with coal and nuclear power.

Jesse Kharbanda's experience with "very, very bad resource management" while doing college field work in India proved to be apt training for environmental activism in a third-world state like Indiana. Few places exist in the industrialized world where educated people mismanage their resources more flagrantly than in the Hoosier state. West Virginia, perhaps.

Energy is the prime example. As they did once again during the 2009 General Assembly, Hoosier "leaders" simply refuse to embrace the role that truly renewable energy sources can play in the Indiana economy and in cleaning up its toxic environment.

Kharbanda, the Hoosier Environmental Council's (HEC) executive director, said it's a problem of priorities: "We get about 95 to 97 percent of our electricity from coal. ... The presumption on the part of key people -- key, powerful, elected officials -- is that we are a coal state, and that's all we are."