Given the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources’ mission to sustain the environment and make the great outdoors accessible, it’s appropriate that the agency is on track to use electricity generated only from renewable fuel by 2030.
The state agency’s 121 state parks and 2.2 million acres of forest land use about 28.7 gigawatts of electricity each year, according to the DCNR. A gigawatt is a billion watts; 28.7 gigawatts is enough to power about 10 million homes, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
With renewable sources that it already employs, the agency said it reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 194 metric tons in 2021 alone.
That’s great for air quality but it’s also good for Pennsylvania taxpayers because the agency generates a great deal of its own power. It has developed 23 solar farms on state land and has 18 more under planning or construction. By 230, the DCNR itself will produce 15.5 gigawatt hours of electricity and purchase the remaining 13.2 gigawatt hours from producers that use renewable fuel.
The initiative is a natural for an agency rooted in environmental stewardship, but there’s no reason that ethic can’t drive similar improvements throughout the state government. Other agencies, especially PennDOT with its vast holdings in rights-of-way, own substantial land on which to develop renewable energy projects. And the ever-falling price of renewable-energy electricity as more generation comes on line, when compared to conventional fossil-fuel generation, makes buying it advantageous for the environment and taxpayers.
Because of the natural-resource abundance over which the DCNR and the state Department of Environmental Protection have stewardship, the state is well-positioned to accelerate the government’s and the general economy’s transition to renewable power generation.
And since that generation inevitably will take time, and because global power needs are so great, it will not come at the expense of the state’s natural gas industry.
State legislators should embrace the DCNR’s progress as a model for the entire government and beyond.
— The Citizens’ Voice, Wilkes-Barre via TNS
