Wednesday is Earth Day, and with that in view three local experts talked about climate, energy efficiency and energy jobs during a statewide webinar last weekend.
The webinar was hosted and organized by WV Climate Action, a Morgantown volunteer group that helps coordinate communication, publicize and mobilize climate actions. The webinar was one of 50 held simultaneously across the country coordinated by The Center for Environmental Policy at Bard College in New York.
The speakers were Robert Duval, a WVU associate professor in WVU’s School of Public Health Department of Health Policy, Management and Leadership; Delegate Evan Hansen, D-Monongalia and a principal of Downstream Strategies; and James Van Nostrand, WVU law professor and director of the Center for Energy and Sustainable Development.
Duval talked about the public health aspects of climate change. “The problems are tremendous and they affect every aspect of our life,” he said.
Various weather anomalies reflect a trend when viewed together, he said. Hurricanes, for instance, have become more powerful.
And we are seeing and will continue to see human and political effects, he said. India has built a wall between itself and Bangladesh in view of the time when its neighbor floods and its citizens want to flee. At some point, the Nile Delta will flood, wiping out Egypt’s farmlands and send global food prices soaring.
In the U.S., he suggests weighing the cost of a carbon tax and higher electricity costs against inevitable higher costs of food and medicine.
“Climate change is ultimately a population problem,” he said. But we can’t regulate population growth.
“As long as fossil fuels are cheap we will keep burning them.”
Webinar moderator Amy Hessl, a WVU geography professor, said Bard College is holding these webinars as part of its goal to solve climate change by 2030.
Van Nostrand said he regards 2030 as a little ambitious. But West Virginia is missing out on a nationwide clean energy revolution because it has failed to diversify its energy portfolio. Because we remain highly coal dependent, our electricity prices have risen four times the national average.
Other states are taking advantage of gas and renewables, he said. Meanwhile, West Virginia is missing out on jobs offered by big companies that want renewables in their portfolios.
Van Nostrand said 29 states have renewable portfolio standards; West Virginia repealed its legislation — dubbed cap and trade and widely viewed as another blow to the state’s coal industry — in 2015.
He also recommends setting clean energy standards — including even nuclear — into statute. “We need to have some policies in place to say, ‘We’re open for business for renewable energy developers.’”
One such piece of legislation would be third-party solar panel agreements that allow a developer to come in and put panels on a home’s roof in exchange for some of the power production, he said.
Other states require utility companies to offer energy efficiency programs for their customer, he said; but not West Virginia. Under those programs, the utilities pay customers to install energy efficiency measures. The measures control energy costs and save the customers money.
“We have a truly dreadful set of energy efficiency programs in West Virginia,” he said.
Hansen said it’s difficult to deal with climate and energy efficiency issues at the state level because of the dependence on and influence of the coal industry.
But last session, House leadership joined with Hansen to pass SB 583, which allows the state’s two electric utilities to build or buy and then own and operate solar plants. Any single plant may produce up to 50 megawatts of power (until a certain sales threshold is reached), with a limit of 200 MW for each parent company and 400 MW statewide.
Until such time as an interested company or companies sign on to buy the solar power, the utilities would recover the facility’s costs by raising consumer rates by about 18 cents per month. Once 85% of a solar plant’s 50 MW capacity is contracted for, consumers would have the rate increases credited back.
Hansen said the bill should drastically increase the amount of solar power in the state; there’s only about 10 MW now.
Hansen reported at the webinar on Commerce Secretary Ed Gaunch’s remarks to several committees that his agency fields regular calls from major companies looking for new sites that want to know about West Virginia’s solar portfolio.
“We’re missing out on solar-related jobs in West Virginia,” Hansen said. “We shouldn’t let these new energy jobs pass us by” and lose the opportunities to diversify the state’s economy.
Legislators, he said, don’t hear from constituents who are concerned about climate change and have concrete suggestions to offer.
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