Energy efficiency

To the editor:

It’s sad to see the lack of leadership in Kansas government create a situation where we are falling farther and farther behind other states in preparing our residents, businesses and industries for the future.

A January 2009 study titled “Assessing the Electric Productivity Gap,” financed by the Henry Luce Foundation, looked at each state’s ratio between its gross domestic product and the number of kilowatt hours consumed, adjusted for climate and economic base. It concluded that if all states adopted the existing energy efficiency standards, incentives and codes of the 10 most efficient states, states like New Hampshire, Alaska, Massachusetts, Hawaii and Colorado, that the entire country could cut its electrical consumption by 31 percent. In Kansas, by setting a modest, achievable goal of improving our energy efficiency by 2.3 percent per year for 10 years, we could save 19,986 gigawatt hours of electricity and 16.4 million tons of CO2 per year.

The so-called “green” package passed by the current Legislature contains almost none of these features. They don’t come close to addressing the outdated heating and cooling, appliance, or home, commercial and industrial energy efficiency standards already adopted by other states. We can see what this kind of attitude has done for our nation’s automobile industry; what do you think it will do for Kansas’ economic future?