To the Editor:
You could, like me, resolve to lose some weight this year and never quite get there. Or you could do something far easier and make our state a better place to live at the same time. All that is needed is to contact your local state representative and request that she or he vote down three regressive energy bills that will substantially harm New Hampshire’s ability to move forward with the energy model we need in the 21st century.
Our state is in a struggle between a century-old energy industry and a new energy vision. The old model relies heavily on carbon-based fossil fuels brought here from afar. In the new vision, much of our needed energy will be generated in state from the sun, wind, and forests. We also will use less by increasing our energy efficiency.
The old model has us exporting some 4,000,000,000 energy dollars out of state each year. The new vision puts many of these dollars to work right here in New Hampshire through local capital investments and job creation. These are investments and jobs that will continue to grow as energy production moves closer to points of consumption.
The old model is changing our climate causing rising sea levels and increasing occurrences of extreme weather events. Impacts from these changes can already be felt in your home insurance bills and local taxes as communities begin spending more in protecting shorelines and dealing with stormwater systems under stress. The new energy vision would moderate this trend.
The old model is bad for your health. The American Lung Association will tell you that model has put sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, particle pollution, and ozone pollution into the air your children breath. The new vision is so much cleaner.
The old model is not well suited to protect us from new threats. The old model consists principally of very large power plants and networks of exposed pipelines and transmission lines for fuel supply and power distribution. Living in an age where physical and electronic sabotage must be considered a real possibility, and wind damage from extreme storms a probability, putting all of one’s power eggs in big baskets seems unwise. The new energy vision creates a far more robust, distributive production infrastructure less susceptible to single point failures and harder to attack due to the very diversity of the model.
New Hampshire’s has three important building blocks to nudge us toward this new energy vision, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), the Renewable Energy Portfolio (RPS), and the Systems Benefit Charge (SBC), and all are under attack. House Bill 592 would strip RGGI of all funding for energy efficiency. House Bill 114 would curtail the expansion of green energy under RPS. House Bill 317 places a legislative hurdle on the SBC imperiling the very future of a newly created energy efficiency program.
How can this be? Mostly it is money. Owners of our old energy industry are doing quite well, thank you, and would like to keep doing so. They have not been shy about spending big money on propaganda, lobbyist, and political campaigns. The new energy industry is too young and diverse to compete head-to-head.
If you want a future where New Hampshire makes more energy locally from clean renewable sources while creating good paying local jobs, you are going to have to ask for it. Ask your representative to vote down HB 592, HB 114, and HB 317. To find your legislators contact information, Google “NH House who's my legislator” or write to all at hreps@leg.state.nh.us.
Bill Baber, Dover