New Energy and Transition News

On Wednesday, May 19, 2021, KFTC members hosted a virtual launch event for The Just Imagine Art Show: Healing harm, sharing grief, envisioning the Kentucky we deserve. 

The idea for this art show emerged from a small crew of KFTC members and staff from the Empower Kentucky Leadership Network – Mikaela Curry, Trinidad Jackson, Tona Barkley, Lisa Abbott, and Nikita Perumal – who have, since late 2019, been working together to deepen KFTC’s understanding of Just Transition.

Anyone in the U.S. under the age of forty and paying attention has lived their entire life aware of the existential threat caused by the global climate crisis. In recent years, Americans of all ages have expressed increased levels of alarm and urgency about climate change. According to Pew Research Center, in 2020 nearly seven-in-ten Biden voters (sixty-eight percent) said climate change was very important to their vote; six-in-ten Americans viewed climate change as “a major threat to the well-being of the U.S.” A Tufts University study found that young Americans named climate change as one of their top three concerns motivating them to vote in 2020, behind COVID-19 and racism.  

You’ve made an impact during the 2021 General Assembly. Some of these impacts have been on legislation – a key meeting with a legislator that changes the course of a bill, or a push of calls and tweets that makes the will of the people more visible and harder to ignore. We also set a goal this session to continue to build the power we need. So many impacts have been in our own communities, talking with neighbors and networks about the bills that impact us, and the work of our legislators. 

(T)he Ky Public Service Commission (PSC) is considering a requested 80 percent reduction in the KU/LG&E credit paid for rooftop solar power and a 75 percent drop in the KPC service area (drops in the same prices they sell power to us).