Monday, July 23, 2018

Dear Governor Northam and Director Christopher:

I'm writing to share my opinion about the Virginia Energy Plan.  I am strongly in favor of the following: 

•     Funding university research on carbon sequestration, clean energy, energy conservation, etc. 

•     Eliminating barriers to customer-owned and third-party financed solar power?

•     Encouraging customer-owned battery storage?

•     Developing citizen-based programs to maximize energy conservation and minimize waste.

•     Prohibiting off-shore drilling, mountain-top removal, coal-burning power plants

•     Encouraging major tree-planting programs to mitigate against climate change

•     Developing pumped hydroelectric storage facilities to store wind and solar power -- not fossil fuel generation -- and constructing them on brownfields, not greenfields?

•     Requiring utilities and regulators to reduce retail electricity consumption 10% by 2020

•     Placing a moratorium on new fracked gas pipelines because existing infrastructure can already meet our energy needs? and because adding more carbon-based infrastructure at this late date in the trend toward global warming is crazy

•     Eliminating the $20 million mining pool bond cap, so that funds will be there to clean up land previously mined for coal?

The bottom line is this:  Everything in the Virginia Energy Plan needs to start with the following question:  “How will this policy affect our air, water (including groundwater), soil, employment, economy, and sea-level-rise susceptible cities in 20, 50, and 100 years?  We must focus on long-term consequences when making such important policy decisions.  Another way to phrase the question we should ask is, “How will this affect our great-great grandchildren?” 

Time flies and it will be 2030, 2050, and 2100 before we know it. Will Virginia be an environmental mess because of short-sighted policies we created in 2018, or will it be a well-functioning, healthy, beautiful state because you and others did the right thing for the state — and for your great-great grandchildren?  Will Virginia be a leader in the inevitable move toward intelligent, clean, non-carbon based energy and environmental policy, or a laggard? 

Please do not let the entrenched interests of the energy industry cause the state of Virginia to make policy decisions that essentially make the rich richer while dooming current and future generations to a degraded environment and low-wage, outdated economy. 

Sincerely,

Pete Greider, Blacksburg, VA