PennFuture Releases Santa's Naughty and Nice List on Energy Policy

HARRISBURG, Pa.--(Business Wire)--PennFuture announces "Santa's Naughty and Nice List," detailingthe progress of the Energy Independence Strategy through thePennsylvania General Assembly, at 11 AM each workday morning to thePennsylvania Capitol Newsroom. The letter reads as follows: Days left for passage of EIS: 20 The elves came to me with a new project yesterday, inspired bythose very nice boys and girls at Google. The gurus at Googleannounced they were going to invest millions into renewable energytechnologies, with a goal of driving down the cost. Google aims toproduce one gigawatt of power from renewable energy, enough to supplyall of San Francisco, at prices below the rates of electricitygenerated at coal-burning plants. And the company expects to do it in"years, not decades." Well, Santa doesn't have Google's billions. So what was the elves'brainstorm? "Methane, Santa, think methane," they yelled. "Thosereindeer are practically an endless supply!" The more the elvestalked, the more excited they got. They convinced me that we couldn'twaste any more time - we needed to clean up our own pollution rightaway. So I moved 10 percent of the elves off the toy shop floor andthey are now busily creating a methane digester (with a portablecollector for Christmas Eve). And speaking of no time to waste - it's now been 10 months sincethe Energy Independence Strategy was proposed, but the GeneralAssembly still hasn't acted. And State Senator Mary Jo White

(R-Venango) told Public Radio Capitol News' Jen Rehill that therereally wasn't any urgency. "We know that electric rates are going togo up, we know that gasoline prices are high, we know that we haveinfrastructure needs in our transportation, and none of these bills isgoing to solve any of those problems in the short run. Maybe a longway down the road..." Santa confesses that he has a warm spot in his heart for SenatorWhite. But Senator White is wrong. For families that have to decidebetween paying their heating bills or buying Christmas presents, theten month delay means they won't have help for this winter or thenext, since the EIS programs will take a few months to ramp up.Families who are paying a dollar more a gallon for gasoline wouldwelcome the PennSecurity Fuels Initiative, so that more ethanol, andcheaper fuel, would soon be in sight. Families who could use smartmeters to reduce their electricity bills still don't have them,although about 400,000 of these meters could have been installed inthe past ten months. Pennsylvania has lost nearly $1 billion inprivate investment in our growing renewable energy industry -investments that are now going to New Jersey, New York and otherstates that had the foresight to act. The longer we wait, the moreserious our energy problems become, and the harder it will be to digout. Santa doesn't want to put Senator White on the naughty list -he's hoping that maybe she just didn't think this through. Earlier this week, some senators made the nice list with theirvotes against Special Session SB 25 in the Energy Policies committee.This is the bill that would allow paper mill waste to be added to theinadequate 8 percent Tier 1 renewable mandate of the AlternativeEnergy Portfolio Standards Act, crowding out wind and other trulyclean energy technologies. These nice boys and girls - Senators LisaBoscola (D-Northampton), Andrew Dinniman (D- Chester, Montgomery)Edwin (Ted) Erickson (R-Chester, Delaware), Jim Ferlo (D-Allegheny,Armstrong, Westmoreland), Wayne Fontana (D-Allegheny), and LeannaWashington (D-Montgomery, Philadelphia). But there is a very naughty company trying to cash in on the EIS -Conoco Phillips, the world's fifth-largest refiner and thesixth-largest reserves holder of nongovernment-controlled companies.Conoco Phillips wants a piece of the biofuels business, but it doesn'tactually want to make biofuels. Instead, the company is pushing for anamendment to the PennSecurity Fuels Initiative to add "bio-baseddiesel fuel" to satisfy the biodiesel mandate. Biodiesel is a clearlydefined and accepted term; bio-based diesel is not. So what doesConoco want to provide? Regular diesel with up to 5 percent renderedchicken fat. This bogus plan would kill Pennsylvania's burgeoning biodieselindustry, crowding out our homegrown true biodiesel. Pennsylvania'sfarmers would be denied a new cash crop - one that may make the verydifference in survival for a family farm - and the definition ofrenewable would be turned on its head. As always, send me your own naughty and nice list atSanta@PennFuture.org. Look for my next list on Friday at 11 AM in theCapitol newsroom.Citizens for Pennsylvania's FutureJeanne K. Clark, 412-258-6683 or 412-736-6092Copyright Business Wire 2007