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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

EPA Clean Power Plan Should Actually Ease Electric Bills

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Monday, July 27, 2015   

CHARLESTON, W.Va. – An Environmental Protection Agency plan to cut carbon pollution should actually save families money, if meeting it includes energy efficiency, according to two separate analyses just out.

Critics of the Clean Power Plan charge it will sharply raise the cost of electricity, but research by
Georgia Institute of Technology and Synapse Energy Economics, an environmental consulting firm, finds the plan could actually cut utility bills by using conservation and renewables.

Professor Marilyn Brown from the Georgia Tech School of Public Policy says efficiency and shifting to wind, solar and biomass should make a typical utility bill somewhat smaller.

"We see a reduction of, depending on the state, anywhere from 5 to 10 percent rather than an increase," she states.

Brown says business as usual would mean bills 9 percent higher by 2030.

The EPA is expected to announce exact details of the plan in the next month or two. The plan to reduce carbon emissions from existing power plants is part of the agency's strategy to help address global climate change.

The big coal and oil corporations, and their allies in Congress, are waging an all out fight against the Clean Power Plan because they say it will cost jobs in energy states, including West Virginia.

Still, several opinion polls have found the EPA’s plans to cut carbon remain overwhelmingly popular nationally.
And Brown says researchers found energy efficiency under the Clean Power plan would mean greater employment.

"You spend a lot more on labor when it comes to energy efficiency and renewable systems than you do in the generation of electricity for large power plants, whether it's nuclear, coal or natural gas," she explains.

The Georgia Tech projections are very similar to those from Synapse Energy Economics. And they are broadly in line with what was found in a report on the impact in West Virginia from researchers at Downstream Strategies and the WVU Law School.




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