You can read a good summary of the issue here by the good folks at the Oregon Citizens Utility Board. I just left this comment, which they are holding in a queue somewhere:

Not to mention, the public power coops in Oregon all fought like hell to get exempted from or weaken the renewable electric standard (SB 838), apparently because they like living off the investments made in the 1930s but don’t plan on making the same kinds of investments for the future.

I’m a staunch public power advocate, strongly backing the idea that PGE ought to be condemned and turned into a true public utility–but the point of public power is having leadership to do the right thing, not to protect their little slice of pie and to hell with everyone else.

Rather than reopen the Act, which risks having the benefits leave the Northwest entirely, Governor K and the Democratic leaders ought to get all the public power interests together and tell them that they have one last chance to come to an agreement over the residential exchange and, if they don’t, they will not get the lower requirements of SB 838, which will be amended toot sweet to make them meet the 25% by 2025. That’s still not enough (check out what Minnesota just passed that their Gov will sign: 80% greenhouse gas reduction across ALL sectors by 2050), but it’s a start.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 31st, 2007 at 10:32 pm and is filed under Economy, Energy Future, Environment, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.