WVU College of Law Center for Energy and Sustainable Development, one of our coalition members, published a report showing that West Virginia's electric utilities can create jobs and maintain cost-effectiveness while ramping up renewable energy and energy efficiency over the next 15 years to achieve 78% emission-free energy by 2035.
Legalizing on-site Power Purchase Agreements would be helpful in reaching those numbers. Email lawmakers today and ask them to support our #PPAs4WV campaign.
The report cites “at least five reasons electric utilities in West Virginia urgently need to consider a major ramping up of renewable energy and energy efficiency that begins today.
Renewable energy is now cheap, and it’s continuing to get cheaper.
Customers — both businesses and individuals — overwhelmingly are demanding renewable energy.
Diversifying our power resource mix is critical to competing in the growing regional renewable energy economy and, more broadly, securing a place in the 21st-century energy economy.
The financial risk posed by emissions from power plants is growing due to majority public support for bipartisan proposals to address climate change by charging fees for carbon dioxide emissions. These fees would necessarily hit coal-fired power plants hardest because those plants emit the most carbon dioxide.
Major lenders and investors increasingly are withholding capital from utilities that aren’t transitioning away from emission-heavy resource mixes.”