KY Dead Last In Renewables, Faces High Energy Costs, But Grandpa Coal Minin' God Something Something [View all]

[hatrack]

Andy McDonald recalls a decade-old Kentucky legislative hearing on an energy diversification bill with the same sense of frustration that he felt back then, when he testified before a panel of lawmakers who were mostly coal industry loyalists. McDonald, a clean energy advocate and energy policy consultant, was armed with a study by Synapse Energy Economics of Boston that made an economic case for requiring utilities to invest in renewable energy and energy efficiency. Lawmakers opted to maintain the status quo.

“After testifying about this, the legislature went on a rant about how high energy bills were and why we can’t do anything about that,” said McDonald, founder and director of Apogee, a firm in Frankfort, Kentucky, that provides technical assistance, education and policy research toward advancing a renewable energy transition. “I was banging my head on the table, saying we just told you what you can do about that.”

A decade later, the latest figures from the U.S. Energy Information Administration show that Kentucky is dead last among states for wind and solar production in the United States. And while state officials note an uptick in the last couple of years in proposed utility-scale solar power projects, Kentucky experienced what could be described as a lost decade of renewable energy investment, while wind and solar power have soared in other states—including some other coal states.



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The problem persists. One example, he said, is the recent decision by Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, not to veto a bill passed by the Republican-controlled General Assembly intended to prevent the closing of half-century-old and uneconomical coal-fired power plants. On March 16, before the House voted to pass SB4, Rep. Richard White, a Republican from eastern Kentucky, argued for coal as a matter of religious faith. “When God created this Earth, he provided us with natural resources … and coal is one of them,” White said, adding that God intended coal for people “to make a living, to survive in this world.” The bill is part of a pattern in Kentucky of sticking with coal despite overwhelming evidence of the fuel’s environmental hazards and high financial costs. It is an allegiance so strong that even the state’s utilities are imploring lawmakers to take a different course.

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/31032023/kentucky-coal-wind-solar/