Monday, January 22, 2007

What can an electric utility do about global warming

An interesting part of this weekend's VBA winter meeting was the presentation by John Warren, Director of the Division of Energy for the Department of Mines, Minerals, and Energy on Virginia's Energy Plan.

Related to this, I was interested to read this article about a decision by the Supreme Court of the State of Washington, to the effect that a taxpayer-owned electric utility there could not use ratepayers' money to pay others to do good deeds as regards global warming.

The other fascinating part of the presentation from the Administrative and Environmental law sections dealt with the ongoing litigation before the State Corporation Commission regarding the private wind turbine project proposed to be located in Highland County. Present were two of the lawyers involved, Dan Summerlin from Woods Rogers who represented some of the citizen opponents and Wiley Mitchell, who represented the Nature Conservancy, and even those two groups have different views about the project.

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