GETTING GREEN BY MIXING RED AND BLUE

Blue and red states going green on energy policy

Wendy Koch, September 11, 2014 (USA Today)

’ “Politically ‘red’ and ‘blue’ states are increasingly turning green as they push energy efficiency and renewable power to save money and protect the planet…[and in] the last two years alone, GOP-dominant red states have adopted policies that could serve as models…according to the State Clean Energy Cookbook by Stanford University and the Hoover Institution…George P. Shultz, co-chair of Hoover's Shultz-Stephenson Task Force on Energy Policy and U.S. Secretary of State, Treasury and Labor under two GOP presidents…says the new report shows [what works, such as:]…Mississippi updated its commercial building code last year to a strict international [energy efficiency] standard…North Carolina is rapidly becoming a solar hotbed…Arizona's largest utilities have pioneered time-of-use metering…[and Colorado] was first to allow ‘community solar gardens’ in which people who don't have rooftops viable for solar panels can jointly develop a project…Dan Reicher, executive director of the Steyer-Taylor Center, says some blue, or typically Democratic-voting, states are pushing green energy for environmental reasons, while red states are doing so to save money and to improve the electric grid's reliability…” click here for more

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