New state efforts to reduce energy consumption announced today by Gov. Mark Dayton have a goal of reducing state costs and creating jobs.
The governor signed three executive orders designed to create a comprehensive energy conservation and sustainability plan for state government.
Commissioner Spencer Cronk of the Department of Administration said the new efforts will add to the energy cost savings already in place:
“In the Capitol Complex alone, we have lowered our energy consumption by more than 14% and have saved the state over $1.2 million in less than three years. We can build on this success and expand our best practices to other publicly-owned buildings.”
The governor’s plans:
Executive Order 11-12 directs state agencies to make cost-effective energy improvements in state facilities with a goal of a 20 percent reduction in state energy consumption. The state owns more than 30 million square feet of space so these efficiencies should save millions of dollars annually and create up to 3,000 jobs over the next five years. It also calls for technical support to local governments and school districts to make energy efficiency and renewable energy improvements in their buildings.
Executive Order 11-13 directs state agencies to implement new practices and policies that save money and reduce the environmental impact of state government operations. Annual sustainability plans will identify specific goals, including reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050 and reducing waste disposal by 60 percent. This will reduce pollution, use less energy, save money and create jobs here in Minnesota, for example, by purchasing Minnesota made ethanol/E85 for use in state-owned motor vehicles.
Executive order 11-14 renames the state’s Office of Energy Security, housed within the Department of Commerce, as the Division of Energy Resources to reflect the broader scope of the energy division’s work, which includes planning and research around new energy facilities and transmission, the promotion of clean energy, and the administration of critical resources such as the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program and the Weatherization Assistance Program.
Kudos to Gov. Dayton! As Gene Merriam says in his April 9 posting, “Minnesota is abandoning environmental leadership.” And in the 2011 legislative session, that is almost exclusively being done by House and Senate GOP members–several of whom are delusionally denying or distorting the reality of human-induced global warming and its increasingly destructive climate-change effects.
As Minnesota-born investigative journalist Mark Hertsgaard confirms in his recent book “HOT: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth,” even if CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions were ended today, the 6.9 billion people who inhabit our planet and their unborn heirs are
“locked into” at least five decades of adverse climate impacts.
So it is not an understatement to say that U.S. government leaders at the local, state, regional and national levels who are rolling back or failing to implement effective global warming/climate change legislation are aiding and abetting ecocide on a worldwide scale. Hertsgaard’s five-year old daughter and my first grandchild who’ll soon be born don’t deserve that!