Renewable Energy Requirement Urged in KY

THE COURIER-JOURNAL-James Bruggers- JANUARY 31, 2010

FRANKFORT, Ky. — Kentucky should join 27 other states that have adopted laws requiring that at least some electricity be generated from renewable energy sources, a governor's task force recommends.


The task force also suggests the General Assembly establish a fee on all electricity sold in Kentucky to fund start-up of biofuels businesses.
But both of the recommendations appear to lack political support — at least for now — in the General Assembly, according to two legislators who served on the task force.

It would be hard for some lawmakers who are skeptics about human-caused climate change to go along with renewable energy mandates, said Sen. Joey Pendleton, D-Hopkinsville. In an interview, he said legislators are preoccupied with the state budget shortfall, and that he would not vote for any new fees on power bills.

Still, he said, he hopes the task force “won't just walk off and let it die.”

At a recent House Agriculture and Small Business Committee meeting, Rep. Tom McKee, D-Cynthiana, said he doubted the prospects for new biofuels legislation this year. But he said he supports the concepts raised in the report and efforts to encourage the tapping of Kentucky farms and forests for fuels that could supplement coal-fired power plants and help fill the tanks of cars and trucks.

“There is so much potential,” he told members of the committee that he heads. “We are poised to really move forward.”

No legislator has introduced a bill to act on the task force's recommendations, which also include centralizing the state's push for biofuels under the newly established Division of Biofuels and developing a “sustainability standard” that would protect the environment and existing farm and forestry businesses from an expanding biofuels footprint.

Kentucky is more than 90 percent dependent on coal — a major source of carbon dioxide. And the state will have to address its carbon dioxide emissions, said Don Pasley, D-Winchester, another member of the agriculture committee.

“It does us no good to put our head in the sand,” he said.

In part to address global warming, the federal government is poised to impose a national renewable fuels mandate, said Frank Moore, biofuels director in the Department of Energy Development and Independence, a state agency. If Kentucky doesn't have a standard of its own, Kentucky utilities will have to import renewable electricity from other states at greater expense, and those other states will get the renewable energy jobs, he said.

“We are fortunate to have an array of biomass sources,” he said.

According to the study, they include trees, branches and wood chips from forests or tree farms; farm wastes such as corn stalks, husks and cobs; and the potential for new crops such as switchgrass and miscanthus. The use of corn for ethanol is pretty much tapped out, Moore said, because of federal limits.

He said biomass production and processing in Kentucky could produce $3.4billion of net economic output annually along with 10,000 jobs.

The report pegs potential biomass production by 2025 at up to at 25 million tons per year — more than double current capacity. But that could mean new uses for 2 million acres, or 15 percent of Kentucky's farmland. About 20 percent of the volume would come from forests or tree plantations; 60 percent from crops grown for their energy; 10 percent from wood wastes; and 10 percent from agricultural wastes.

Terry Cook, Kentucky chapter director of the Nature Conservancy and a member of the task force, said in an interview that the emphasis should be on land already converted from natural habitat but not used for farming.

“We have to ramp up, in our ability to use renewables,” he said. “But there are significant impacts.”
Reporter James Bruggers can be reached at (502) 582-4645.