ALEC to Attack North Carolina Renewable Energy Initiatives

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Renewable energy is under attack in the Tar Heel State. That’s the word fromย Greenpeace USA‘s Connor Gibson today in a report that implicates King Coal powerhouse, Duke Energyย and the fossil fuel industryย at-large.ย 

The vehicle Duke Energyย is utilizing for this attack is one whose profile has grown in infamy in recent years: the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

ALEC is described as a โ€œcorporate bill millโ€ by its critics. It’s earned such a description because it passes โ€œmodel billsโ€ written by corporate lobbyists and to boot, the lobbyists typically do so behind closed doors at ALEC‘s annualย meetings.ย 

The ALEC-Duke Alernative Energyย Attack

Gibson puts it bluntly in his exposรฉ, explaning thatย North Carolina Republican Rep. Mike Hager โ€œsays he is confident that he has the votes needed to weaken or undo his state’s [renewable] energy requirements during his secondย term.โ€ย 

Hagerย is a former Duke employee, where heย worked as an engineer. Duke maintains its corporate headquarters in Charlotte, NC.ย 

The model bill Hager appears likely to push is called theย โ€Electricity Freedom Act,โ€ย a piece of legislation calling for the nullification of any given state’sย Renewable Energy Portfolio Standards (REPS). Passed in October 2012 by ALEC, the bill was actually co-written with the fossil fuel-funded think tank, the Heartland Institute (of โ€œHeartland Exposedโ€ย fame).ย 

โ€œWe wrote the model legislation and I presented it. I didnโ€™t have to give that much of a case for it,โ€ย James Taylor of Heartland told The Washington Post in a November 2012 investigative report.

Taylor’s claims are backed by economic analyses of aย sort.

That is, the sort one would expect from a group heavily funded by the fossil fuel industry (Heartland) teaming up with a group receiving 98 percent of its funding from corporate interests (ALEC). Asย The Post explained back in November:

As part of its effort to roll back renewable standards, ALEC is citing economic analyses of state policies co-published by Suffolk Universityโ€™s Beacon Hill Institute and the State Policy Network. Both groups have received donations from foundations funded by the Kochย brothers.

Gabe Elsner of theย Checks and Balances Projectย described ALEC‘s game plan as a deceptive โ€œone-two punchโ€ against renewable energy toย The Post.ย 

โ€œYou push the legislation to state legislators and then you fund reports to support the argument and convince state lawmakers and all without any transparency or disclosure about the sources of this funding,โ€ he said back in November.ย 

North Carolina’s GOP (which according to the Center for Media and Democracy‘s (CMD) ย SourceWatchย has 45 ALEC members) appears set to go on the offensive against the state’s existing renewable energy standards.ย 

More toย Come?

There’s far more of this to come in the weeks and months ahead in statehousesย nationwide.

As Gibson explains, โ€œAccording to its own documents, ALEC spent the last couple years monitoring states attempting to introduce state-level renewable energy portfolio standards in West Virginia, Vermont and Virginia as well as legislative attacks on REPS laws in New Hampshire and inย Ohio.โ€

Renewable energy is under attack. That is, of course, unless its advocates fightย back.ย 

Image Credit: ShutterStock |ย Meletios

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Steve Horn is the owner of the consultancy Horn Communications & Research Services, which provides public relations, content writing, and investigative research work products to a wide range of nonprofit and for-profit clients across the world. He is an investigative reporter on the climate beat for over a decade and former Research Fellow for DeSmog.

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