Listening sessions held by the Department of Environmental Protection around the state are gathering comments on EPA’s Clean Power Climate Plan to help Pennsylvania develop a plan for meeting those requirements.  

Bernard McGurl, Executive Director of the Lackawanna River Corridor Association, presented these comments on his own behalf at the September 28 session--

I am offering these comments on my own behalf and in the context of over 30 years of work in river and watershed resource conservation in Pennsylvania.

In the course of this work, I have collaborated with community activists, conservation organizations, community and economic development interests, educational and research interests, various energy production interests, public utilities and governmental interests at local, state and federal levels.

In all of my work, I have endeavored to learn and understand as many facts and variables as I could about the issues, economics and ecological and sustainability of life both here in Northeastern Pennsylvania and across this beautiful planet upon which we live.

That is what brings me here this evening to offer a few comments in support of the Clean Power Plan as an essential element of a responsible energy policy for our Commonwealth, our nation and our planet.

It is well known that I believe it is an indisputable fact that we are experiencing significant changes to our climate and that these changes are being influenced by and accelerated by the human production of carbon dioxide and related so-called greenhouse gasses.

Over the next century and longer, these changes will continue, they will accelerate further and the impacts that result will have profound consequences to our planet, its ecosystems and our species.

The opportunities inherent in the Clean Power Plan for Pennsylvania and our neighboring states are numerous and beneficial.  We need to consider these opportunities in a creative and forward looking manner that is based on good science and smart technologies.

We MUST reduce our carbon production by 30 to 40 percent over the next twenty years.  The Clean Power Plan provides the Commonwealth with the flexibility to do that and create new economic opportunities for people and businesses in our communities large and small.

We need to bring together imagination, creativity, technologies, wise use of our natural resources and community-centered economic development related to investment in clean energy production and conservation, smart growth and smart transportation choices.

Pennsylvania has been blessed with native energy sources.  We look to the past and see wood, water and coal. 

We look at today and see the cost to the environment of coal, both in continuing inefficient electrical generation and the legacy of a scarred landscape and tainted rivers.

 We look at today and see the rising source of shale gas, solar and wind resources.

 In an enlightened market, these resources will quickly make traditional coal combustion obsolete.  An enlightened market guided with good public policy through a forward-looking Clean Power Plan can ease the transition that is inevitably away from coal and on to more responsible alternatives.

While shale gas is a fossil fuel and a generator of carbon, its aspects are such that it can provide a great deal of the necessary efficiencies for significant carbon reduction on its own.

Even greater efficiencies are possible when coupled with other passive alternates, smart growth and smart transit investment.

Taken together, these synergies deserve proper consideration in a responsible Clean Power Plan for Pennsylvania.

Gas turbine cogeneration technologies many examples of which are being sited across the Commonwealth provide a proven efficiency to help us attain the one-third national carbon generation reductions that is the intent of the Clean Power Plan.

Other renewable energy sources are latent in Pennsylvania and need attention and investment through a Clean Power Plan.

The use of the anthracite mine water pools for heat capture coupled with gas turbine generation can provide tremendous opportunities for institutional and district heating and cooling.

Obviously wind and solar sources coupled with mine pool thermal recovery have great potential as well and the local application of these sources in distributed energy systems needs to be promoted and invested in.

The hydropower potential of the thousands of miles of falling waters across Pennsylvania remains an untapped resource that needs assessment and research to optimize opportunities where they exist and wherever low-head or instream flow technologies can be applied.

The concepts of smart growth look at maximizing economies by among other things renewing, reusing and recycling our existing communities and infrastructures.  We need to look at opportunities to repurpose the existing footprint from our traditional industrial and cultural developments.

That means remining and reclaiming abandoned mine lands.  Anthracite cogeneration plants here in the northeast are cleaner coal technologies than larger traditional generators in the bituminous region.

The anthracite cogen industry is a critical component in reclaiming the landscape of the anthracite region.  Due consideration should be applied to the beneficial aspects of coal waste cogeneration and generation from remining to reclamation in the anthracite region.

The cleaner burning aspects of anthracite and its smaller contribution to overall carbon generation can be reasons to include transitional status to the anthracite industry. 

That transition should be focused and timed to include reutilization of reclaimed mining lands and reuse of generating sites for renewable distributed energy applications as mining operations are hopefully concluded over the next few decades.

Smart growth practices such as transit-oriented development and redevelopment can be a major part of a Clean Energy Plan for Pennsylvania.

Our traditional communities developed during the late 19th and early 20th centuries featured extensive electric trolley and interurban transit systems.  These people overs provided millions of urban and small city dwellers with a ready means to travel around their communities.

Much of the settlement and transportation corridor pattern from that period is still in place today.  A policy to revitalize those systems with renewably generated electricity can help remove thousands of single occupant vehicles from our inter-urban roadways.

Energy conservation policies will obviously be an important part of a Clean Power Plan.  These policies can look at the benefits of retrofitting existing structures with insulation and new HVAC technologies and new lighting technologies to obtain significant savings in energy that is not consumed or wasted due to inefficiencies.

The forest lands of Pennsylvania may have economic potential as carbon sinks through thoughtful carbon sequestration credit trading.  On-going energy industries of all types and scales should contribute to a funding scheme that reinvests in our natural habitat lands for the sake of natural habitat and to create value for our future.

A Clean Power Plan should also address the unfunded needs for the thousands of acres of abandoned mine land in need of reclamation, the thousands of miles of our rivers impacted by abandoned mine drainage and seepage from orphaned oil and gas wells.

All aspects of a Clean Power Plan for Pennsylvania have enormous potential for economic advance through investment, education and employment.  The geometric growth of intelligent technologies will be expanded with investment research and development.

This can be supportive of a rebirth of smart manufacturing with smart materials embodying complete lifecycle practices where waste is minimized and local economies are sustainable in consumption yet growing in economic and social value.

Lastly, a Clean Power Plan for Pennsylvania can be a journey to renew our social contract.  A good and thoughtful plan will seek to renew our communities, train and employ our citizens while giving opportunities for all people to realize a return on the investment we make in ourselves and our future as a Commonwealth.

A complete copy of McGurl’s comments is available online.

For more information and a schedule of the remaining sessions, visit DEP’s Climate Change webpage.  Comments on the Clean Power Plan can be submitted online.  Click Here to see comments submitted by others so far.

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