Thank you for coming and welcome to the second annual Kansas Clean Energy Day.

My name is Scott Allegrucci and I am the director of the Great Plains Alliance for Clean Energy or GPACE.

I am honored to share this platform with individuals representing more than a dozen Kansas organizations – labor unions, environmental groups, health advocates, community activists, people of faith, farmers and ranchers, and advocates for good government and policy in the public interest.  We will hear from them today.

The hundreds of people gathered here today represent those and many other organizations; dozens of communities from across Kansas; hundreds of Kansas families, businesses, and farms and ranches; and hundreds of thousands of individual Kansans statewide who have been anxiously waiting for policy that maximizes the tremendous clean energy resources and the top-notch workforce that our state is blessed with.

Some of us may not be here in opposition to the proposed new coal plants.  Some of us will oppose more coal-fired generation under any circumstances.  Some of us have land to lease for wind turbines or to use to produce biomass.  Some of us make hybrid automobiles.  Some of us work with the materials needed for solar panels, wind turbines, or transmission lines.

To be clear – and speaking on behalf of GPACE – we feel that the proposed legislation is really good energy policy … for Colorado and Texas utilities (who will get at least 85% of the electricity and get to use our water).  And it’s really good economic policy … for Wyoming coal mines (who will get 99 million Kansas dollars every year).   We suggest it would be cheaper and cleaner to put Kansans to work building a pipeline to Colorado if we’re just going to give them our water.

To GPACE, the whole thing sounds a lot like the famed miner’s divorce settlement – they get the mine, and we get the shaft.

When we look at the latest “energy” bill, we see a curtain of bogus concerns about “regulatory uncertainty” and “the rule of law” and “tyranny”.   We see a curtain of bogus “green energy provisions” that are neither “green” nor do they produce much energy.  What’s behind the curtain?  Coal plants.  And that’s it.  We say:  get rid of the curtain.  If the coal plants are such a good idea, give them their own vote.

But this is not just about coal plants.  Or rather, it shouldn’t be.  Two legislative sessions have been spent on the coal argument.  The result for Kansas has been … absolutely nothing.  Real, comprehensive energy policy has been held hostage for two years now, just to advance a political argument by special interests in the building behind us.

But right here, right now all of us gathered at our capitol have this in common:
We know tens of thousands of jobs, hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, and billions of dollars of investment can be created all across Kansas from the renewable energy economy.
We know this can happen without jeopardizing our air, our water, and our health.
And we are tired of the political games that continue to deny us much needed economic development and a 21st-century energy policy.

The administration has done their part:  they offered a compromise proposal last year that was ignored.  They offered a renewable energy package this year that has been ignored.

Fifty-four legislators have done they’re part:  they have withstood hundreds of thousands of dollars in ongoing phone banks and direct mail and advertising based upon missing and mis-information, and more than two dozen special interest lobbyists and they said “not good enough” to three bogus “energy” bills last year and another one this year.

Now we must continue to do our part.

This is bigger than one political party or another.  This is bigger than one economic sector or another.  This is bigger than one governor or another.

Kansas has renewable energy resources that are the envy of the world.   The federal government is counting on at least 7100MW of wind energy to come from Kansas in order to meet the goal of 20% of the nation’s electricity from wind by 2030, as proposed by former president Bush.  There are over 11,000 potential jobs with existing Kansas companies that could manufacture renewable energy components.  To say nothing of attracting and creating new companies.  To say nothing of the jobs required to create energy efficiency and generate renewable energy.

So we say:  get on with it!  Kansans want public policy that provides the greatest good, for the most people, over the longest time – not junk policy designed by and to benefit special interests.  This is too important.  And too long-lasting.

We are asking for an end to political games and special interest peddling.  We are asking for policy that puts the resources and the people we already have in Kansas to work for Kansas, and for the benefit of our children.  We are asking for a clean vote for clean energy.  It’s not too much to ask and it’s long overdue.