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.

by Chris Green, Harris News Service, for the Hutchison News Online

TOPEKA – Kathie Moore of rural Hutchinson delivered a message Thursday to both the Kansas Legislature and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

Speaking at a rally of renewable energy supporters on a sun-drenched Statehouse lawn, Moore touted the state’s potential for reaping both environmental and economic gains from harnessing the state’s wind for power.

A member of the Reno County Wind Energy Task Force, Moore said lawmakers were heading in the wrong direction in trying to pave the way for two coal-fired power plants in southwest Kansas.

“I would say to those legislators this is a pivotal movement. Your legacy can be a clean, bright, productive, economically viable future or something else,” Moore said.

“And to our governor up in Alaska, I would say it’s not drill, baby, drill. It’s blow, baby, blow.”

Moore joined a couple of hundred other clean energy boosters urging lawmakers to push forward with initiatives that would bolster the development of the state’s wind and solar energy resources and promote conservation.

Kansas, with the nation’s third-greatest wind resource, already has installed wind farms capable of churning out 1,000 megawatts of electricity. But some energy experts say the state has only just started to tap its potential.

Environmental and conservation groups attended the rally along with labor unions, the American Lung Association and the League of Women Voters.

The “Clean Energy Day” event comes at the same time negotiators in the Legislature are finalizing another bill that would allow Sunflower Electric Power Corp. to build two 700-megawatt generators at its existing plan near Holcomb.

Gov. Kathleen Sebelius vetoed three similar measures last year and has threatened to reject the most recent version as well.

The measure seeks to strip the authority of Health and Environment Secretary Rod Bremby, who blocked the plants in 2007 over concerns that their carbon dioxide emissions would contribute to global warming.

Although the legislation contains several green energy provisions, renewable energy supporters question whether they’re strong enough. They also want lawmakers to pass them on their own merits – a “clean vote on clean energy,” as several speakers said Thursday.

“It’s very frustrating when legislators can’t move toward the future,” said Ann Zimmerman of Salina, who also attended the rally. “And a coal plant is not a move toward the future. It’s a part of the past.”

Supporters of the $3.6 billion project have frequently touted its economic development potential, particularly at a time when the state and national economies are reeling.

But those on hand Thursday said they believed more workers, farmers and small towns in the state would reap benefits from a greater focus on promoting renewable energy and energy efficiency.

Nancy Jackson, executive director of The Land Institute’s Climate and Energy Project, said growth in those areas would do more than just help the environment.

“In the year 2009, in the face of one of the greatest economic crises in our memory, clean, renewable energy also means economic prosperity,” Jackson said. “In fact, I would say what we’re all standing for together today is to bring prosperity to the Plains and recovery to Main Street.”

But some, like Curt Miller, the mayor of Pretty Prairie, say they’re concerned that the state could miss out because of the focus being put on building the coal plants.

“The thing that bothers me is that I think we have an opportunity to promote this and if we don’t this, it’s going to fall to this wayside,” Miller said.

submitted to Primebuzz by David Klepper

TOPEKA | A couple hundred Kansas rallied on the Statehouse grounds today to protest legislation that would resurrect those two Western Kansas coal plants.

And they came up with an alternative energy alternative to Drill, Baby Drill: Blow, Baby, Blow. (They’re talking about wind, people. Wind.)

The rally brought together an eclectic bunch: environmentalists opposed to coal, steelworkers who want to build wind turbines, a Christian minister and rural advocacy groups.

Speaker Scott Allegrucci of the Great Plains Alliance for Clean Energy called on lawmakers to reject legislation that would strip the discretion the state’s top regulator used to reject two coal plants in 2007.

“We are asking for an end to political games and an end to special interest peddling,” Allegrucci said.

The bill has passed both the House and Senate, but lawmakers haven’t yet crafted a compromise version to send to Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. She’s vowed to veto the measure, so supporters are trying to lock in the necessary two-thirds majorities in both chambers needed to override the veto.

The bill contains some “green” provisions designed to encourage energy efficiency and

renewables. But the speakers at Thursday’s rally aren’t biting.

“What’s hidden behind the curtain? Coal plants. That’s it,” Allegrucci said. He called the bill “really good energy policy – for Colorado and Texas utilities…. Really good economic policy – for Wyoming coal…”

Kim Hanson, a Leawood resident and a member of the Democratic group True Blue Women, spoke about the need to confront global climate change head on. She said federal regulations and public opinion will likely doom any new coal-fired power plants anyway.

“The writing is on the wall for coal,” she said. “… We don’t need your pollution and we don’t need your power. Quit wasting our time trying to force these coal plants.”