With the release today of the Pennsylvania Climate Change Action Plan by the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), leaders from business and environmental groups urged Governor Rendell and the Pennsylvania Legislature to move forward with its recommendations to protect and promote the state's environment and economy. The plan identifies 52 specific recommendations, as well as several recent state and federal actions, which combined will reduce Pennsylvania's heat-trapping gases to 42 percent below 2000 levels in the year 2020. Many of the recommendations were approved unanimously by the Climate Change Advisory Committee.
"This plan is great for Pennsylvania's economy," said Sarah Hetznecker, chair of the Climate Change Advisory Committee (CCAC) which helped develop the plan, and director of Project Development for Conergy, an international green energy company. "Changing the way we make and use energy is vital to combating global warming, and Pennsylvania's green energy providers are ready to go. For every dollar invested by the state, we expect to provide another eight dollars, creating a tremendous investment in Pennsylvania jobs and communities."
Committee member Nathan Willcox, energy and clean air advocate for PennEnvironment, praised the final plan. "Pennsylvanians demonstrated their support for action on global warming by making the Climate Action Plan's public comment period the largest in state history," he said. "The legislature should recognize that this plan has strong public support, and implement it accordingly."
"The plan includes effective strategies for using forests and farms to help trap carbon and provide renewable sources of energy in an ecologically sustainable way," said Ronald Ramsey, senior policy advisor to The Nature Conservancy in Pennsylvania, who also served on the committee. "In addition, it recognizes the need to help wildlife and people adapt to the impacts of climate change and protect Pennsylvania's natural heritage."
Jan Jarrett, committee member and president and CEO of Citizens for Pennsylvania's Future (PennFuture), urged the Governor and the General Assembly to move quickly to adopt the plan's recommendations. "Our elected leaders should take quick action to adopt the measure that give us the greatest pollution reduction measures and save money. We can adopt this plan, which grows our economy at the same time it reduces our state's production of heat-trapping gases. But if we wait, we may have to take such drastic action that we will be unable to plan for a growing economy. The cost of inaction is too high to delay implementing commonsense, money-saving actions."
The plan released by DEP today is required by the 2008 Global Warming Act, which provided for the appointment of a statewide advisory committee, with representatives from all areas and relevant industries and organizations across the Commonwealth. As part of the process, the committee received extensive comments from citizens and experts. Working from an inventory of all sources of Pennsylvania's global warming pollution, which showed electricity generation as the largest single source of heat-trapping gases, the committee developed the recommendations released today, adopting the report overwhelmingly. The plan contains measures addressing electricity generation, energy efficiency in homes and offices, industrial practices, waste management, land use, agricultural operations, protection and management of forest lands, and transportation systems.
A copy of the state's Climate Change Action Plan is available online at http://www.elibrary.dep.state.pa.us/dsweb/View/Collection-10677
Contacts:
Citizens for Pennsylvania's Future
Jeanne K. Clark, 412-258-6683;
412-736-6092