Pennsylvania Doubles Clean Electricity Buy To 10 Percent
Pennsylvania has doubled its purchase of electricity from cleaner sources to 10 percent, Environmental Protection Secretary Kathleen McGinty said Thursday. The 10 percent purchase was announced at PennFuture’s fifth annual GreenPower: Turn It On! awards ceremony last fall.
The Department of Environmental Protection received the PennFuture award for a 100 percent green energy purchase that cut energy costs by about 35 percent at the new Southeast Regional Office, which opened earlier this year.
Under four year contracts with Community Energy Inc. and Strategic Energy LLC, the state will purchase 100,000 megawatt hours a year, or 10 percent of the state government’s electricity needs, from sources such as wind, waste coal and hydroelectric energy, at a rate of 0.34 cents per kilowatt hour.
Thirty-five percent of this purchase will come from new wind sources and 10 percent from burning waste coal in circulating fluidized bed facilities, which produces lower air emissions than conventional coal plants.
The reminder will come from low impact run-of-river hydroelectric power from the Susquehanna River, McGinty said.
The new purchase more than triples the amount of wind certificates purchased in the state.
McGinty said the coal power purchase helps to clean up a major source of water pollution and reclaims otherwise useless land through the purchase of waste coal certificates.
The action embraces one of the main environmental themes of the administration of Governor Ed Rendell,–viewing environmentally harmful material as a potential resource that can be re-used rather than remain as a liability, McGinty said.
McGinty, who headed the White House Council on Environmental Quality in the Clinton administration, said the purchase help to use state resources to develop a sustainable energy infrastructure that will help create jobs, enhance homeland security and register environmental improvements in Pennsylvania.
The state Department of General Services and the Governor’s Green Government Council collaborated on contracts, which came in $163,690 below budget.
“This contract proves that Pennsylvania has everything to gain and nothing to lose by investing in clean energy,” said General Services Secretary Donald Cunningham.
Provided by the Environmental News Service.