Western Govenors Plan for Energy and Climate

June 11, 2006 – Vol.11 No.12

WESTERN GOVERNORS PLAN FOR ENERGY AND CLIMATE.

The Western Governors Association, which represents the governors of 19 western states and three US flag islands in the Pacific, approved of recommendations that would lead to the development of 30,000 megawatts of new clean power by 2015, increase energy efficiency by 20 percent by 2020, help develop cleaner transportation fuels and encourage the federal government to tackle climate change.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the most well-known member of the association, gave the thumbs up to the proposals but said that on global warming the proposals still came up short.

While there are no specific plans (such as where the next solar or wind farm would be built) the plan titled Clean Energy, a Strong Economy and Healthy Environment serves as a series policy recommendations for governors to follow and, hopefully, pass on to their successors. Over 700 people contributed to the report which took two years to complete.

The plan has hundreds of recommendations to chew on. For instance:

--- Create incentives for and to promote energy efficiency that go beyond standard energy efficiency codes for new homes and commercial construction: upgrade building codes for state-of-the-art energy efficiency .

--- Consider property and sales tax incentives and credits for energy efficiency, conservation, and clean energy developments.

--- Provide regulatory incentives such as full and accelerated cost-recovery for emerging clean energy technologies.

--- Encourage Washington to extend production tax credits and investment tax credits across all clean energy technologies. (The states represent a large voting block and thus yield considerable weight in national policy making.)

--- Ask Washington to extend the 30-percent investment tax credit for solar energy systems to a ten-year term and remove the $2000 cap on residential solar systems. (That would knock almost a third off the cost of a home solar system.)

--- Exempt centralized solar power plants and distributed solar systems from state and local sales taxes and property taxes.

--- Pursue smaller-scale wind projects for self-generation through the use of net metering - selling power back to the grid.

The wide-scoping recommendations also include those for clean coal, hydroelectric power, combined heat and power, bioenergy, grid connections for renewables and grid reliability. Visit the Western Governors Association at http://www.westgov.org/