Daily News

S. Lewis Ebert RALEIGH - North Carolina is one of the fastest-growing states in the country. Two of the primary qualities that have fueled that growth are a reliable supply of low-cost electricity and a clean environment.

The state’s leadership has a history of making balanced decisions to ensure that we do not lose sight of the importance of either quality as we deal with the benefits and the challenges of growth. Senate Bill 3 — labeled Promote Renewable Energy/Base Load Generation — is another example of this balanced decision-making.

The North Carolina Chamber, as the advocate for the business community, has a responsibility to carefully evaluate any legislative proposal to ensure that overall it will benefit the economy. There must be a demonstrable benefit for every new dollar of investment and any additional costs. We’ve carefully evaluated the proposed changes in SB 3 and have concluded that they provide a sound, balanced approach to complex environmental and economic issues for these reasons:

Affordable, reliable electricity is the cornerstone of our economy. It creates jobs and fuels growth. This legislation takes a long, comprehensive view of the state’s electricity needs in the coming decades and acknowledges that relying solely on improved efficiency and renewable energy isn’t good long-range planning.

In an increasingly competitive marketplace it is essential that businesses be able to anticipate and plan for cost increases. SB 3 provides cost certainty in a couple of key ways: 1) Annual costs to customers for purchasing renewable energy are capped and 2) the costs of energy efficiency programs can only be assigned to the customers that directly benefit from the program. (more…)

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This entry was posted on Friday, June 29th, 2007 at 4:51 am and is filed under Daily News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.