These are the notes from the keynote speech.

Governors and States Making it Happen, Katherine McGinty (Secretary of the PA Dep. of Environmental Protection)

From PA: The little coal state that could. PA is the 4th largest coal producing state in the country. PA is the home of the 1st commercial oil well in the country.

So what did we do?

• Banned SUVs from the State fleet
• Goal to replace 25% of our fleet from hybrids
• Put in place a RPS with 18% of energy in 2020 coming from clean, renewable sources.We are currently at about 170-180 MW of wind energy. Need to get to 4,000 MW.We are currently are at 1 MW of solar energy. Need to get to 850 MW.
• We became the 10th or 11th state to adopt the California car emissions standards.
• We have become the largest state purchaser of renewable energy; 20% of energy for state comes from renewables.

So, why are we doing this in the Rust Belt?

Why did we do it? Why did we ban the SUVs? We did it because we couldn’t afford them.

Our portfolio standard is a reaction to the unpredictable, unstable energy prices. Positioned this as diversification as a hedge against increasing energy prices.

For the building standards, green buildings provide a competitive advantage on the real estate market.

There is real dollars and cents pragmatism in these decisions.

We did this as part of how we rebuild our economy.

It wasn’t enough to point out the virtues of clean and green energy; we had to show the money. We had to point out how someone who didn’t have a job on Monday would have a job on Tuesday. We had to find the intersection between being green and supporting the economy.

We went to Spain to visit the 2nd largest builder of wind mills in the world. They understood that they were hitting market saturation in Europe and they knew they wanted to start expanding to the U.S., but they needed a manufacturing center here. So, we convinced them to build their plants in PA. They now have 4 factories in PA, employing
1,000 people.

Broght the U.S. headquarters for Conergy (one of leading solar providers) in PA. They have already bought and doubled the size of a local engineering company. This was an immediate $50M investment in our state.

People often say that “It’s nice, but I can’t afford it.” We are starting to get the place where people understand “We can’t afford *not* to do it.”

People understand that at some fundamental level, that the United States, the country of hope, has gone very wrong as it relates to energy. But, at the same time, people recognize that there is tremendous energy here.

So, we are focused on “growing it at home”. We are building out ethanol and biodesiel.

We now have the biggest farmland preservation in the country.

Are there things that we can do to add even more profitability to our farms. We are trying to put them to work, growing our our fuel.

We have legislation pending that would mandate “growing at home” the same amount of fuel as we import from the Persian Gulf. This will be the equivalent of about 1B gallons.

Where are we going from here?

We need to “reduce”.

We have legislation that *all* new load growth (new energy) *must* be met through conservation and efficiency.

In addition, under this law, every consumer will be given a smart meter so they can know what their consumption is and so they will know what the price is. This will help people understand the impact of their conservation actions.

We also have a $850M bond to invest in new, clean energy projects, including any new development on brownfields needs to be LEED certified.

We also are announcing a climate change plan.

We are looking at a plan that effects generation of electricity. You know there is a saying that old wine gets better w/ age? Well, old powerplants don’t! How do we start flipping over to biofuel? How do we ensure that we have the infrastructure in place to get the fuels
to the plants.

We also have a lot of mines. And those mines generate a lot of methane. We are now looking to see if we can capture that methane, we can create a lot of energy while capturing these green house gases. Is it technically possible?

Questions

• Pennsylvania was one of the early participants in the development of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, but has been conspicuously absent from the implementation. What are Pennsylvania’s plans here?Everything is on the table. It is possible we could join RGGI. It is also possible we could join together with other states like Ohio to create something that doesn’t yet exist.
• Carlisle, PA has some of the worst air quality in the country. I was wondering if you have considered the carbon-load of the trucks going through there?For those who don’t know, Carlisle has a “perfect storm” of major highways that come through there and, some massive percentage of the countries truck-based commerce comes through there.

  So, what have we done?

  We have made a huge investment in truck-stop electrification. We have pushed forward on a no-idling rule for trucks.

  We are focusing on an investment on biodesiel for trucks.

  Do I envision that we would have a state level directive to local governments that they can’t site additional warehouses in their districts? No. I don’t even know if we could do this.

• To achieve your solar goals, do you believe you will need to have a ‘feed in tariff” or will the RPS be sufficient.

  I do not believe the RPS will be sufficient.  Part of this $850M initiative is $200M dedicated to build out of solar PV in the state.  On part is a rebate to the consumer.  The other part would directly go to the manufacturer as a production grant incentive to any manufacturer who comes into the state.