Draft Sixth Power Plan Comment

Mr. Walker, I applaud the Northwest Planning Council on its decision to take global warming seriously and focus energy planning on conservation, efficiency, and renewables. The Council can still make improvements that will ensure a healthy, sustainable future for our region while taking responsibility for our global warming footprint. To this end I encourage the Council to adopt goals for the reduction in green house gas emissions by phasing out the use of coal. This must be a high priority and it is an achievable goal. I also encourage the Council to investigate strategies for assisting landowners in developing distributed generation facilities. The Council should work with state officials to create a loan program to assist homeowners in installing photovoltaic systems on homes. If we take distributed generation seriously as a supplement to large-scale centralized energy production, we can reduce our green house gas footprint and create a diverse and robust energy grid. Thanks for considering my comments. Richard Till