New Report Says Appalachian States Should Look Beyond Coal

Downstream Strategies, an environmental consulting firm, recently released a report that urges Appalachian states to invest in developing their renewable energy infrastructure. According to an ABC News story the report:

predicts production in West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee will fall nearly 50 percent within a decade and urges those states to adopt laws, low-interest loan programs and other measures to support the development of renewable energy sources.

The report goes on to say that this decline will be in part due to competition from cleaner burning natural gas but it also points to a dramatic decrease in easy to recover coal and increasing environmental controls.

Studies have shown that local ownership of renewable energy projects generates greater jobs and local revenues than corporate-owned projects. Therefore, support for local ownership of energy development will help to maximize the potential economic benefit of developing renewables.

Improvements and investment in energy efficiency can also generate new jobs and revenue, while saving businesses and residents money on energy consumption. Supporting measures include: energy efficiency resource standards, expanded demand response initiatives, building energy codes, low-income efficiency programs, and research and development support.

Finally, policy attention must be focused on developing workforce programs that will provide the skills and knowledge required for emerging and potential renewable energy industries, and should be coupled with energy-and investment-related policies aimed at spurring project development. 

According the the Energy Information Administration web site, power plants reduced their coal consumption by ten percent last year and the projections are for demand to continue to be low in 2010.

As Senator Byrd said late last year, "West Virginians can choose to anticipate change and adapt to it, or resist and be overrun by it. The time has arrived for the people of the Mountain State to think long and hard about which course they want to choose." (Byrd, 2009)

You can download the report here. And a link to the ABC News story about the release of the report is here.