New Belgium Brewing Company, along with Colorado renewable companies and a few dozen other organizations, has submitted a letter today to Governor John Hickenlooper, encouraging the state’s top official to move forward in a timely manner to impose the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan rule on carbon reduction, stressing the importance of renewable energy:
We, the undersigned companies and investors, have a significant presence in Colorado and strongly support the implementation of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Carbon Pollution Standards for existing power plants. These standards, also called the Clean Power Plan, are critical for moving our country toward a clean energy economy. The Plan’s flexible approach provides an exciting opportunity for states to customize their own energy portfolio, expand clean energy solutions, attract new industries to the state, and create thousands of jobs.
Our support is firmly grounded in economic reality. Clean energy solutions are cost effective and innovative ways to drive investment and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Increasingly, businesses rely on renewable energy and energy efficiency solutions to cut costs and improve corporate performance. In 2014, a study by Ceres, Calvert Investments and the World Wildlife Fund revealed that 60 percent of Fortune100 companies have set their own clean energy targets and have saved more than $1 billion a year in the process.
Clear and consistent policies can send market signals that help businesses and investors plan for the future. We are seeking long-term policies that provide businesses the certainty needed to transition to a clean energy economy. Electric power plants are the single largest source of carbon pollution in the United States and the Clean Power Plan will be pivotal in reducing their emissions.
As you develop your implementation plan we hope you will include the building blocks of renewable energy and energy efficiency, which will allow you to mitigate the risks of climate change and the volatility of fossil fuel prices.
To “send market signals,” this group would prefer onerous regulation that threatens places like Craig, Colorado and Moffat County in favor of preferred investments, and perhaps more importantly, preferred investors.
Send clear market signals = government picking energy winners and losers.
The full text of the letter and complete list of signatories:
