Governor's Climate Change Task Force Releases Plan

The 82-page action plan involved more than 125 stakeholders, input from more than 200 citizens and took more than a year to produce.
Department of Environmental Services Commissioner Tom Burack chaired the climate change task force.
Burack2 “ the task force is recommending 67 actions that NH businesses citizens state and local government can take to simultaneously reduce the state’s exposure to a dynamic and some would say volatile energy market and reduce the state’s emissions.
One strategy is to maximize energy efficiency in buildings and transportation.
In 2005, 32-percent of energy consumed in NH was used to heat buildings.
The task force suggests not only weatherizing existing buildings and homes, but upgrading energy building codes and increasing compliance with them.
Burack says if energy use in existing homes were reduced by 60-percent..the state would see greater economic benefits.
Burack “In just a single year of 2025 we could save approximately one point five billion dollars to New Hampshire’s homeowners and New Hampshire’s economy and at the same time avoid emissions of more than three and a half metric tons of co2 a year. “
The recommendations also include increasing renewable energy, providing incentives for more fuel efficient cars, and changing land use patterns and zoning to avoid sprawl and reduce travel.
The task force also recommends improving public transportation like rail… and protecting sustainable forests which can not only sequester carbon but provide biomass energy.
It’s an ambitious and in some cases costly undertaking – which is why Governor Lynch created a new energy and climate collaborative to implement the plan.
Richard Ober with New Hampshire Charitable Foundation is a member.
Ober1 “we’ve all been involved with plans with lots and lots of great ideas and terrific vision, and not a lot of resources to implement them, the timing of this plan and the stimulus plan couldn’t be better, and also the first grants made out of the RGGI fund, the timing is absolutely perfect”
Grants out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and federal stimulus money could help with weatherization and energy efficiency and stimulus money could help with the costs of rail.
Most of the recommendations received unanimous or near unanimous approval when task force members took the final vote in January.
But some in the environmental community thought the plan didn’t go far enough in addressing carbon emissions from the Merrimack station coal-fired power plant.
Will Abbott is with the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests.
Abbott1 “I’m personally of the opinion that we’re not going to be burning coal at Merrimack Station by 2050 if we’re going to actually reduce CO2 emissions by 80-percent so sometime soon we need to start thinking about how we’re going to get there.
Public Service of New Hampshire’s Bow plant is the largest single source of pollution – generating 20-percent of all the carbon emitted in the state.
Abbott wanted the task force to recommend an evaluation of potential alternatives -- but that move failed.
PSNH President Gary Long.
“What I have always said is before you have less of something, less fossil you have to have more of something else, more energy efficiency and more renewable and its very slow going right now in NH as far as the development of new renewable resources and it will take a number of years”
It may also take a number of years to get some of the recommendations implemented....but Governor John Lynch says it provides a firm base for how the state can combat climate change.
For NHPR news, I’m Amy Quinton.