The Grand Junction Sentinel is discovering that going green has costs in jobs and electric bills:
Now, however, Xcel faces opposition from another source. The Colorado Office of Consumer Counsel, the state-funded entity that lobbies for the interests of state utility customers, said Xcel should delay closing the two plants.
The reason? Natural gas prices are rising and may soar dramatically in coming decade, said OCC Director Jim Greenwood. And that could mean an even greater jump in the prices consumers pay for electricity than the rate increases just recently announced.
It appears going green isn’t as simple as picking a more environmentally friendly technology and switching to it. That nasty old brute — cost — often gets in the way.
It seems that the Sentinel was planning to use taxpayer subsidies, which it deemed to have no real costs, to help it build a new green building. When it discovered that the subsidies weren't there, it changed its plans to stay within the budget:
Private businesses face similar tough choices. For instance, The Daily Sentinel will begin constructing a new building off H Road, near the airport, later this year. The Sentinel is committed to making the new building as green as possible, within budgetary limits. The building will include solar panels and many measures designed to conserve energy. But all of those measures will be more costly than was originally hoped, especially when some of the expected incentives for going green proved not to be available in this case.
The Sentinel does come to the right conclusion, that the goal of going green must be tempered by the realities of cost. Now, if only we can get politicians like Mark Udall, Ken Salazar, John Salazar, and Bill Ritter to acknowledge that the price of gasoline can't be allowed to go to $10 a gallon without doing the economy real damage, we may yet save ourselves from the green slime.
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