Environmental Protection Secretary Kathleen McGinty this week appeared before the House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee to outline steps the Rendell Administration has taken to diversify Pennsylvania’s sources of energy and make them more environment-friendly.

“Governor Rendell is leading the way to decrease our nation’s already dangerous dependence on foreign oil, ramp up efforts to build a diversified energy base, encourage conservation, and build and deploy clean energy technologies,” Secretary McGinty said. “With energy prices rising, these cleaner, home-grown fuels are more than cost competitive, they make absolute sense, ensuring reliability, availability and affordability.”

The Governor and General Assembly have teamed up on a number of projects and initiatives that have made Pennsylvania a national energy leader, according to Secretary McGinty.

Some examples include the East Coast’s first commercial biofuels blending system, becoming a customer of the nation’s first waste coal–to-diesel plant, adopting the Alternative Energy Portfolio Standards that requires electric utilities to purchase 18 percent of all energy generated comes from clean, efficient sources by the year 2020, providing up to $10 million annually for the Pennsylvania Energy Development Authority as part of the Growing Greener II initiative to help fund clean power and fuel plants and creating the Renewable Agricultural Energy Council focusing on developing and expanding agricultural energy industries in Pennsylvania.

A copy of Secretary McGinty’s testimony is available online.

The Committee will hold its next Energy Policy informational meeting on December 6 to hear presentations from energy producers.

11/18/2005