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ALLIANCE FOR RESPONSIBLE ENERGY POLICY (A.R.E.P.)
You will find us at: www.AllianceForResponsibleEnergyPolicy.com
AREP seeks to educate & mobilize people, media, & officials throughout the United States to join us in saying:
INCREASED LOCAL ENERGY GENERATION AND CONSERVATION IS BEST
INCREASED REMOTE GENERATION / LONG-DISTANCE TRANSMISSION SHOULD BE A LAST RESORT
All Energy priorities are policy-driven. For the past hundred years heavy subsidies and deference to large Energy Companies have prevented consumers from participating in a free energy market. Itâs time for a new energy paradigm where our energy is clean, safe, renewable, reliable, and local - and where individuals are empowered and utilities participate, not dominate. AREP supports wise policy that promotes energy production from renewable sources on previously developed land, and substantial financial incentives to encourage private property owners to produce clean power, but not policies that encourage energy production, from any source, that comes at the expense of our wilderness. Policies which support only conservation and locally produced renewable energy on previously developed land are much better for America than the current model of remote, utility-scale energy generation which requires long distance transmission and enormous, permanent environmental losses, as further illustrated below:
CONSERVING ENERGY: Nobody can dispute that the greenest power is that which is never produced, yet conservation is being ignored because utilities are in charge of most conservation programs. This has led to âlip serviceâ without results. The tried and true models of massive government investment, incentives and regulations should be pursued in much more aggressive âgreenâ and ânet zeroâ building codes, energy efficiency and monitoring technology, and energy/tax pricing structures which encourage responsible behavior and discourage excess consumption, without sacrificing lifestyle. Once established, market forces will prevail.
NATIONAL SECURITY: Distributed generation provides a natural defense against acts of terrorism while the current centralized grids and large power plants provide easy targets which could debilitate large regions.
RELIABILITY AND SAFETY: the more transmission distance, the greater the likelihood of outages caused by earthquake, fire, wind and other forces, as well as the greater the likelihood of wildfires caused by downed or arcing power lines. Distributed generation will be more reliable, safe and stable, and each phase of any RPS can easily be achieved solely by local renewable generation, sited solely on previously developed land.
HABITAT/HEALTHY ECOSYSTEMS/OPEN SPACES: Distributed generation near point of use will not harm or destroy fragile desert ecosystems. Utility-scale generation, which averages 10,000 acres per project, should only be sited on âbrownfieldsâ or blighted industrial/marginal agricultural land, and never in pristine wilderness. Current projects are almost entirely sited in vital habitats with unknown, cumulative negative impacts on millions of acres of balanced ecosystems and cultural resources.
PROPERTY RIGHTS: Solar and âNet Zeroâ structures hold and/or increase their value, even in a housing downturn. Long-Distance Transmission of energy, even if generated from renewable sources, threatens to blight thousands of viewshed acres of protected public lands, virtually destroying nearby rural property values for hundreds of families. Thousands more families will be forced from their homes via eminent domain to accommodate the endless need for more transmission lines for remote, utility-scale projects, while investment in local generation would greatly increase property values, air quality, health and welfare of all residents.
THE ECONOMY: Distributed generation will create hundreds of thousands of skilled labor jobs which cannot be âoutsourcedâ overseas, while 100% buyback and capital incentive programs will reward individual producers for investing in clean energy on their own properties, drastically shortening payback periods, and increasing disposable income for millions of families. Utility scale projects create far fewer jobs, use billions in taxpayer dollars (socializing the costs) and financially benefit only utilities (privatizing the benefits), drain ratepayers, prevent a free market economy in electricity and allow market manipulation as seen with Enron.
RURAL LIFE/HEALTH: Americans who prefer to live time-honored traditions of small towns and farms are disproportionately harmed by giant utility-scale remote projects, which almost entirely serve urban customers. Our homes are being taken, our health is being put at risk, our water, land and skies are being poisoned or taken from us, and our lifestyles are being threatened by unsustainable, unhealthy urban policies. Cities have destroyed outlying areas with their trash, smog, sewage, traffic, water needs and power needs long enough - itâs high time each city became sustainable and self-sufficient for the greater good of ALL of us.
American Energy Corporations should no longer have a monopolistic chokehold over energy production and income in the ârenewable powerâ era. They had their century, now it is the peopleâs turn.
