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Transition to Clean Energy bumps along the road for natural gas
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Transition to Clean Energy: bumps along the road for natural gas. Around the country states and local governments are mandating local utilities to purchase more renewable energy power. In La Plata County, Colorado solar is the Clean Energy of choice. Tax credits, rebates, abundant sunlight and Climate Change control desires are slowly increasing the role of solar in Colorado.
La Plata did a Greenhouse Gas inventory and found its biggest source was methane from natural gas pumps and associated equipment that bountifully fill the landscape. And the county coffers with tax revenue.
Natural gas faces a double whammy, reducing GHGs from its production equipment increasingly expensive and as the nation's biggest electricity buyer, its energy cost will go up as local utilities pay the full external impact cost of carbon coal pollution.
Christi Zeller, Executive Director of La Plata Energy Council, a methane capture association, says, "Being able to put solar systems on homes is great, you take something off the grid, it is as good as conserving. But the reality is we still need natural gas, so embrace our industry like you are embracing wind, solar and renewables."
In the past year the natural gas industry has formed a new lobbying group, America's Natural Gas Alliance. The group stresses natural gas as cleaner than coal and the transition fuel to a zero carbon energy economy.
Political leaders in energy rich states with numerous fuel types have to avoid getting pinched by the competing fuels. The Waxman-Markey Bill passed in the late spring largely shuts natural gas out of Federal subsidies. Senator Mark Udahl (D-CO) aims to make sure the final Bill on Climate Change does not prefer some home state energy sources over others.
The natural gas industry pays half the property taxes in La Plata County and provides hundreds of jobs. Around 6,000 residents with mineral rights on their land get a monthly royalty check from oil and natural gas companies. "Solar can not do that," Zeller says. Solar costs money.
(AP photo)
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