Draft Sixth Power Plan Comment

Let’s keep coal out of our energy future A draft power and conservation plan from the region’s official power-planning agency gets plenty right in its vision of the next 20 years: The Northwest Power and Conservation Council imagines meeting our region’s rising electricity demand with impressive efficiency standards and new clean energy, all without building new fossil-fueled power plants or increasing emissions. Sounds good, right? Not if we’re serious about cutting our ties with dirty power. The plan needs to go further. The million-ton elephant in the council’s room is coal, which produces 23 percent of the region’s electricity but spews out 87 percent of the region’s pollution. The draft plan, admirably aggressive in its pursuit of energy efficiency and renewable-energy targets, sidesteps the region’s coal use, neither advocating cap-and-trade (carbon tax) policies or CO2 reduction targets that are already on the books in Oregon, Washington and Idaho. Pleaso do more. Sincerely, Mauria McClay