Here is a great example of what New Power looks like in Kentucky!

that makes energy efficiency upgrades affordable and doable for customers of rural electric co-ops in eastern Kentucky. The video describes how the Big Sandy Rural Electric Cooperative is helping its customers in Floyd and Johnson counties save money by saving energy.

How$martKY - Energy Efficiency for Everyone from Appalshop CMI on Vimeo.

How$mart is an innovative way to finance energy efficiency upgrades. Designed by the good folks at the Mountain Association for Community Economic Development (MACED), it is a currently in a two-year pilot phase. Participating rural electric cooperatives include Grayson Rural Electric, Big Sandy Rural Electric, Fleming-Mason Electric, and Jackson Energy. 

If you live in a county served by one of these co-ops, give them a call today to ask for your home to be evaluated for energy savings through How$mart!

KFTC members have long urged utilities in Kentucky, especially our rural electric co-ops, to invest more in energy efficiency programs. Our members are helping to spread the word about this promising approach, and continue to nudge and encourage the co-ops to do everything they can to make this program successful in the pilot stage so it can expand in the future.

If you like this video, be sure to check out other similar stories produced by Appalshop and shared on a new website called Making Connections News. There you will find a growing collection of videos and radio stories about efforts to "build a healthy future for Appalachia's land and people."

Document

Fifteen KFTC members from across Kentucky, from Bowling Green to Whitesburg and Louisa to Louisville, gathered in Lexington to begin providing leadership for KFTC’s New Energy and Transition work, which includes our rural electric co-op reform, sustainable energy policy and organizing and Appalachian Transition campaigns.

KFTC’s Steering Committee decided earlier this year to more closely align these three projects, which have similar goals of promoting energy efficiency and renewable energy, passing clean energy legislation, transitioning away from our dependence on coal, creating new jobs, and saving money for low-income families.

Most of the folks in the room had been involved with one of the three campaigns. Participants got an overview of all three and will have the chance to choose a workteam that focuses on one of the three.

“It was exciting to see these different areas of KFTC work for a better, more sustainable future brought together so that we could learn from each other and understand how so much of our efforts are interrelated,” said Mimi Pickering, a long-time KFTC member from Whitesburg. “I think this is going to be a great way to organize and build momentum for a transition away from coal mining and burning to renewable energy and a just and sustainable economy in eastern Kentucky.”

Members discussed trends, opportunities and challenges to achieving a clean energy vision. Among the trends was the growing acceptance of energy efficiency, even among utilities and politicians who support the coal industry. Renewable energy, on the other hand, won’t gain a foothold unless it’s connected with economic development, members said.

Among the opportunities discussed was the Clean Energy Opportunity Act, which does connect renewable energy with economic development by proposing a Renewable and Efficiency Portfolio Standard (REPS) and a feed-in tariff that would create clean energy jobs and industries by requiring the state to meet benchmarks by a certain time. (Introduced in the Kentucky legislature in 2010 and 2011 by the Kentucky Sustainable Energy Alliance, of which KFTC is a founding member, the bill has not passed but did get a favorable hearing in committee this year and will be re-introduced in 2012 with the hope of getting a vote).

A lack of public understanding of energy issues was listed as a challenge, as were Kentucky’s legislature and congressional delegation, which are reluctant to support anything they perceive might threaten the coal industry. Kentucky is behind surrounding states in passing legislation that encourages clean energy development and the jobs it would bring.

Members worked hard but also had fun getting to know each other and playing a game that focused on the “alphabet soup” of acronyms in the world of energy – such as "EE" for "energy efficiency" and "RE" for "renewable energy."

Adam Strobel Barr (pictured left, with wife Rae) first had the idea of putting solar panels on his farm when he learned that he would need to supply power to his farm’s pond to pump out irrigation to his crops.

“The first motivation for me getting this system is that it broke my heart to think about another power line running across the farm.”

And, electric costs are rising. The farm is served by Meade County Rural Electric Cooperative, which just saw a 30% increase in rates this year. With the help of grants from both the state and the county, Adam, his father and uncle installed a solar-powered irrigation pump on their family farm – Barr Farms - earlier this fall.

While these are the first solar panels they have installed on the farm, Adam and his wife, Rae Strobel Barr are no strangers to sustainable practices. They work hard to build healthy soil and reduce the farm’s carbon footprint by using small machinery and draft horses when possible. And, they use these practices as a marketing advantage when selling farm products, which include beef, chicken, eggs and vegetables, to a largely urban, environmentally-sensitive consumer base.

Adam was excited to show off the solar pump (pictured above) to his neighbors at the house party he hosted on November 13th, to benefit Kentuckians For The Commonwealth and Community Farm Alliance.

“I know that the sun is the greatest source of energy we have available to us,” he told 20 guests as they peeked inside the pump to see how it works. “Growing plants is the most efficient way to harness the sun’s energy and we just don’t yet know how to harness it well for other uses, but we’re getting there and I wanted to try this out – to know, does it work? Will it last?”

The pump should last for 20-30 years with minimum repairs and pump 3000 gallons per day even with some cloudy days mixed in, Strobel Barr said. It cost $7000, $1700 of which was supplied from money available for on-farm clean energy projects through the Governor’s Office of Agricultural Policy and $2500 of which came from the Meade County Agriculture Investment Program.

“When I was in Finland travelling, I noticed that everyone had solar panels – they were everywhere, powering part of all the electricity use you could see,” said Brandenburg resident Beverly Furnival.  She wondered why we don’t have more of these in Kentucky.

Guests also learned about how the geo-thermal heating and cooling system works at Adam’s father’s house, which is located on the farm.

The system’s installer – Chuck Dever of Dever Enterprises in Elizabethtown, KY (pictured right) – told guests that geo-thermal systems are both efficient and have a quick payback. When replacing propane or heating oil the payback time is as little as 4-5 years.

Dever installs the systems in homes of all kinds, including homes as small as 1000 square feet, noting that the average system costs about 1 to 1.5 cents per square foot. He said that through word of mouth Kentuckians are starting to catch on about what an economic bargain it is to heat and cool through geo-thermal.

“I put in the first geothermal system in Hardin County. That was more than 22 years ago. And now, business is booming. It had been increasing and then the federal tax credit really helped it to grow.”
At the end of the party, Adam and Rae asked guests to join KFTC and CFA and then facilitated a discussion about what issues people care about locally. Folks mentioned interest in garnering support for the Meade County farmer’s market and getting more farm-fresh food in area schools.

The group also discussed how advocating for state energy policies that support the growth of renewable energy, such as the Clean Energy Opportunity Act, could make the clean energy systems on Barr Farms more widespread. This bill is supported by both KFTC and CFA through their partnership in the Kentucky Sustainable Energy Alliance.

“But what’s the grand vision? What can we do to change the world, to change our situation?” asked guest Roger Furnival.

“We want to use this conversation as a starting point for talking about sustainable energy in rural Kentucky…I believe everyone changes through a conversation, just like the one we are having tonight. It’s about citizen politics – regular people using their voices,” Adam replied.

Rae highlighted why she and Adam wanted to host a friend-raiser for KFTC and CFA.  She noted that they are interested both in building community in Meade County and connecting these local issues to the larger movements effected by KFTC and CFA’s work.

“Both organizations have been transformative for us because through them, we can have a voice in changing things we care about.”

If you live in Meade or Breckenridge counties and are interested in joining this local conversation, contact nancy@kftc.org.

As part of our Renew East Kentucky work, KFTC participated in a Clean Energy Collaborative with the East Kentucky Power Cooperative, 16 local electric cooperatives, and other parties. The Collaborative will hold it's third meeting tomorrow, and KFTC members are welcome to attend. Each meeting concludes with a time for the Collaborative to accept public comments.

About tomorrow's meeting:

The East Kentucky Power Cooperative Demand Side Management and Renewable Energy Collaborative will meet Tuesday, November 15, from 1 to 5 p.m. at the Marriott Griffin Gate Hotel on Newtown Pike in Lexington. The meeting is open to the public.

This will be the group’s third meeting.  During this meeting, the Collaborative will discuss a set of preliminary recommendations presented by the Demand Side Management (DSM) Subgroup addressing such issues as marketing DSM; measuring and verifying energy savings; and overcoming barriers to DSM programming.

Also, the Collaborative members will hear a report from the Renewable Energy Subgroup on progress since the last meeting.
Members of the public will have an opportunity to make comments at the end of the meeting.

The Collaborative is a joint project of East Kentucky Power Cooperative (EKPC), its 16 member cooperatives, the Sierra Club, the Kentucky Environmental Foundation (KEF) and Kentuckians For The Commonwealth (KFTC).

The group is meeting quarterly through the spring of 2013 to evaluate and recommend actions for EKPC to expand deployment of renewable energy and demand side management, and to promote collaboration among the Collaborative members in the implementation of those ideas. Demand side management refers to programs designed to encourage consumers to improve energy efficiency and modify their pattern of electricity usage.

The mountain of coal ash at LG&E's Cane Run Power Plant in Louisville. Photo by Beth Bissmeyer

WFPL-FM, a public radio station in Louisville, aired a three-part series on coal ash this week. Reporter Erica Peterson helped document the health problems that coal ash, escaping from Louisville Gas & Electric's coal-burning power plant and coal ash landfill located in residential neighborhoods, are causing for area residents.

The series can be accessed in whole or individual parts:

Part 1      Part 2      Part 3

The series is available to other public radio stations in Kentucky through the Kentucky Public Radio network. If your local public radio station has not broadcast the coal ash series, please ask them to do so.

Kentucky has the fourth-most toxic air among states, a newly released report found.

Toxic Power: How Power Plants Contaminate Our Air and States found that 77% of the toxins overall and 89% of mercury emissions in Kentucky air come from coal-burning power plants. The analysis was jointly released by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) and based on self-reported data from the polluters.

Exposure to toxic pollution from power plants, including hydrochloric acid, fine particulates, mercury and other metals, is known or believed to contribute to or exacerbate a wide variety of health conditions, the report reminds us, including one or more of the following:

• Asthma and other respiratory ailments,
• Developmental disorders,
• Neurological damage,
• Birth defects,
• Cancer, and
• Premature mortality.

The NRDC / PSR report is consistent with a number of other studies, including one released in March by the American Lung Association that concluded, “Particle pollution from power plants is estimated to kill approximately 13,000 people a year.”

Source: Toxic Power: How Power Plants Contaminate Our Air and States, NRDC, 2011

By Steve Boyce

KFTC Chairperson

How many times have you heard “experts”—folks from the coal and energy industries, and even our own legislators—say that people supporting renewable energy may mean well but are misguided since renewables can’t provide “baseload power,” whatever that means. After all, the sun doesn’t shine at night and the wind doesn’t blow all the time.

David Brown Kinloch has written what strikes me as an excellent and very important op-ed aimed at debunking “The Myth of the Baseload.” It’s well worth the read. Find it here.

Part of the reason I think it’s so good is that it explains in understandable terms some of the main challenges of generating and distributing electricity and why the traditional approach to addressing them—reliance on large centralized coal and nuclear generation plants for baseload—is not necessary. Along the way he makes clear the meaning of such terms as baseload, dispatcher and grid, and how current arrangements will have to change for distributed renewable generation to become a substantial part of the generation mix. Rarely if ever have I learned as much from reading an op-ed.

It’s the clarity of his myth busting that makes this piece seem so important. As Brown Kinloch concludes:

Clearly customer load can be met, hour by hour, primarily with renewables, without today’s baseload plants. … The problem here is not the nature of renewable resources or any technical hurdle, but rather it is getting utility planners and dispatchers to think outside the “baseload” mindset that they have been stuck in for so many years. … The need for large, centralized baseload capacity is not some requirement of the electrical power system, but rather a desire to continue to do things as utilities have done in the past, the way they know.

The transition to decentralized, clean power sources is crucial and feasible! And it’s coming! As I said, this op-ed is well worth reading.

KFTC members are encouraged to attend the next meeting of the the clean energy Collaborative, of which KFTC is a member along with several of our allies, the East Kentucky Power Cooperative (EKPC), and their 16 distribution co-ops.

Officially named the Demand Side Management and Renewable Energy Collaborative, the group will meet Tuesday, July 19, starting at 1 p.m. at the Marriott Griffin Gate Hotel on Newtown Pike in
Lexington. The meeting is open to the public.

The Collaborative was established upon the cancellation of the proposed burning Smith plant, and is an important step in our work to bring more energy efficiency measures and renewable energy to the co-ops through KFTC Renew East Kentucky campaign. Click here to learn more about the the Smith plant cancellation and the establishment of the Collaborative.
 
This will be the group’s second meeting. In March, the Collaborative established working groups to focus on renewables and demand side management. Those groups are expected to report on their activities since March.  In addition, a representative of the Kentucky Public Service Commission will make a presentation to the Collaborative.  
 
“Collaborative members expressed a need to better understand statutes and precedents related to demand side management and renewable energy proposals,” said Tona Barkley, vice chair of the group. “We are very appreciative that the PSC has agreed to further the group’s understanding through their presentation.”
 
Members of the public will have an opportunity to make comments at the end of the meeting.
 
The Collaborative is a joint project of East Kentucky Power Cooperative (EKPC), its 16 member cooperatives, the Sierra Club, the Kentucky Environmental Foundation (KEF) and Kentuckians For The Commonwealth (KFTC).  
 
The group is meeting quarterly for the next two years to evaluate and recommend actions for EKPC to expand deployment of renewable energy and demand side management, and to promote collaboration among the Collaborative members in the implementation of those ideas. Demand side management (DSM) refers to programs designed to encourage consumers to improve energy efficiency and modify their pattern of electricity usage.

My name is Cindy Shepherd and I live on a small organic farm in Clay County with my husband and 5 year-old son. We have been members of Kentuckians For The Commonwealth for 10 years. Recently I have started to become more active with KFTC as strip mining has started to affect my community. I am also a Jackson Energy cooperative member and was first introduced to KFTC's work in the rural electric co-ops through Randy Wilson's campaign for the Jackson Energy board a couple years ago.

My son loves our farm and the woods and the mountains surrounding us. He says he wants to stay right here and be a farmer himself someday. And so I know: we have to work hard for solutions that will transition Appalachia to a more sustainable economy with good local jobs and opportunities, and we have to protect our mountains and streams for ourselves and for future generations.

So, on April 26 – 29 I was able to make an incredible first visit to Washington, D.C. to speak with decision-makers about the importance of KFTC's work and our vision for the future. With organizer Sara Pennington by my side, we made new friends, contacts, support, and waves.

The general purpose for our visit was to attend an Environmental Justice conference hosted by federal agencies such as the EPA, Department of Energy, and others. Before the conference, though, we spent the day attending lobby meetings with staff from the offices of Congressmen Ed Whitfield, Ben Chandler and Hal Rogers.

We asked the legislators for their support in reintroducing the Rural Star Bill, which is legislation that would allow the federal government to give monies to the rural electric cooperatives who would then use that money to perform energy audits and money-saving upgrades on customers’ homes. The customer would slowly pay back the money to the co-op with the savings from the upgrades as a service on their bill, and the co-op would then give the money back to the government. New jobs would be created, customers would save money, and energy consumption would decrease. In the last Congress, Rural Star passed the house, but did not move in the Senate.

While we gathered verbal support for the bill in the current Congress, we also reminded everyone we talked to that the creation of jobs for eastern Kentucky is important, but in order to ensure a future for the region, the destruction of our mountains and streams through the practice of mountaintop removal mining must be stopped.

Another highlight of the trip is that we met with administrators and staff of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC).  As I introduced myself and told the agencies about my home and the love and connection my son has to it and the joy he finds in playing in the creeks and hiking the mountains, it was impossible for me to hold back the tears. The thought that my son's home place, a place that we all hold so dear, could one day be destroyed, was too much for a mother to fathom.

And so we told the agencies how important it is for them to invest in coal-impacted communities and about our overall plan to Renew East Kentucky—that the rural electric co-ops of eastern Kentucky should make aggressive investments in energy efficiency, weatherization and local renewable energy in order to create local jobs and to help those who need it most to save energy on their bills. A big part of the plan is to finance this work the way that the Rural Star bill proposes. We also told them how we need a concentrated effort in job training so local folks will be the ones getting the jobs created by this plan. We developed good initial relationships and will have to opportunity to carry on this conversation with the agencies in the coming months.

The next day we attended the Environmental Justice conference itself. Though many of the presentations did not necessarily apply directly to our situation or work, the true power came with the ability for me to look people with incredible power in this country in the eyes and tell them my story and to demand environmental justice for Appalachia. The general response to my plight was that there was money available for rural projects, where I would have to remind them again that all the programs and money in the world will only make a difference in our communities if we stop the destruction.

One of the most memorable and inspiring parts of the conference was when I stood before the Environmental Justice Interagency Working Group and told them that we needed them to stand with Appalachia and enforce protection of our mountains and waterways. The response was that they needed community members to come up with the solutions for their area. Right there on the spot, we were able to walk up to the committee sitting behind the podium and give them all a copy of the article that KFTC had published last summer in the Solutions Journal about KFTC's Renew East Kentucky plan. And the committee sat there and started reading it! Every one of them! And then made a point to have personal conversations with us at the end of the conference.  We were given an amazing opportunity to show the human connection to mountaintop removal and to show our vision for a renewed Appalachia.

What a powerful feeling comes from fighting for your community, children and future in Washington, D.C. I'm hooked. I'm addicted. I've got the D.C. bug, and I want to thank the Alliance of Appalachia for their support and KFTC for putting their faith in me and giving me this amazing opportunity. I hope that I have served you all well and I can't wait to do it again!