LEWISBURG -- Wind power, the president of the Seven Mountains Audubon Society said, could be disruptive to contiguous ridge top forests.
Yet if the global warming predicted in the next 100 years comes to fruition, those ridge tops are going to be changed forever, countered the president and chief executive officer of Citizens for Pennsylvania's Future, or PennFuture.
"We're talking about completely changing the forest of Pennsylvania," John Hanger, of PennFuture, told Allen Schweinsberg, the environmentalist, during a private luncheon Wednesday on renewable energy and environmental policy and legislation in Pennsylvania.
"Plant life, a change in the water temperatures of our rivers and streams, to a point where the EPA is predicting that Pennsylvania will lose at least half of its trout habitat, possibly all of it."
There's no perfect way of making energy, Mr. Hanger said, but wind energy has as low an environmental impact as any other energy with the exception of solar.
Both are becoming popular alternatives.
Pennsylvania has 10 wind farms that employ 2,000 families, Mr. Hanger told the 25 people attending the discussion.
In 1999, there were zero, he said.
There are roughly 300 people working in the solar industry in Pennsylvania, and an estimated 3,000 people will be employed by a solar facility planned in Bucks County.
"It's just the beginning," Mr. Hanger said. "Enough wind energy is produced in Pennsylvania to supply 95,000 households. There are 83 other wind farms in various stages of development right here in the state. Enough wind energy is produced in the state to supply roughly 1 million to 1.5 million homes."
Mr. Hanger said he believes energy legislation is of paramount importance for three reasons:
National security
"We now import 60 percent of oil, which is a really nightmarish factor because the folks who have that oil, at best don't really wish us well, and at worse, are actively hostile toward the United States," Mr. Hanger said. "And they have a product that right now can destroy our economy.
"If we don't get that 60 percent, or even if we don't get most of that 60 percent, our economy is going to be literally flattened."
Environment
"What is new is climate (and) carbon," Mr. Hanger said. "Nobody, until 20 years ago, considered carbon to have an environmental impact, that it was an environmental issue. ... There is carbon in the atmosphere and we are incapable of measuring the concentrations in the atmosphere and carbon concentrations are increasing.
"That's a fact and it's not subject to contest."
Fossil fuels
Asian coal is at $150 per ton and Appalachian coal at $75 per ton, Mr. Hanger said.
"When I served on the Public Utility Commission from 1993 to 1998, Appalachian coal was in the $20 to $25 range. We've had essentially a tripling in coal and that happened in a matter really of a few months. ... The odds are prices are going to go higher in a world at peace. You throw a few wars in the wrong places into the equation, and these prices are going to go through the roof."
There are critical bills in the Pennsylvania Legislature right now, Mr. Hanger said.
House Bill 220 is the first that would create major electricity conservation programs, and House Bill 1 -- two funding bills -- comes from the Senate and provides $650 million for alternative energy supplies over 10 years, and from the House, $850 million over six years.
Mr. Hanger said he believes renewable energy is on the rise, and within as soon as five years, someone may be able to walk out of a store with a home solar system. Within 10 years, a battery backup system will be available for purchase, he said.
Stacy Richards, program director of the Energy Resource Center of SEDA-Council of Governments, asked Mr. Hanger what a rural area should expect.
"It is critical that communities start figuring out how to assist families and businesses to use conservation," Mr. Hanger said, "whether it's as simple as providing forums for experts to come and talk and provide education."
n E-mail comments to gmorton@dailyitem.com.
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PennFuture leader touts renewable energy
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