Bob Jenks’ Appearance On KBOO’s Locus Focus
Posted on March 2, 2012 by Ghassan Ammar
Tags, Climate and Conservation, History of CUB and General CUB News
On Monday, CUB’s Executive Director Bob Jenks visited the Portland studios of KBOO-FM to speak with Barbara Bernstein, host of the show Locus Focus.
Bob discussed the history of the campaign to create CUB, what CUB does today, and how it benefits Oregonians. He also talked about the fight against corporate influences in utility regulation, the closure of the Boardman coal plant, the elimination of nuclear power in the Northwest, the creation of the Energy Trust, and the Renewable Energy Standard, among many other things. (It doesn’t take much to keep him going!)
When asked about the future of energy here in Oregon and in the United States, and what CUB is doing to help shift the energy paradigm, Bob stated:
“This is really critical. We’ve got to deal with climate change, we fundamentally have to change where we get energy, how we deal with electric energy, and we need to do it in a way that’s affordable. So the first thing for keeping things affordable in energy is to invest as much as we can into energy efficiency and conservation, because that’s the cheapest resource we have.
“The second thing that we have to deal with is that we have to fundamentally change our relationship with coal. Boardman is sort of a classic example because it’s close by, it’s the biggest coal plant serving Oregon, and it’s the largest emitter of carbon pollution in Oregon. It’s one of about 28 coal plants in the west that serve Oregon customers, so getting the agreement to close Boardman was really important—but we still have a lot of other coal plants we need to look at.
“Now is our real opportunity, because the Clean Air Act is requiring all kinds of new investments in existing coal plants to keep them operating, and what we’re demanding is that every utility company that operates a coal plant has to systematically—before they make those investments—examine whether it makes more sense to make those investments with what we know about climate change and expected carbon regulation, or if it makes more sense to retire those coal plants. That kind of analysis is what led PGE to close Boardman.”
Bob thoroughly enjoyed being on KBOO, and welcomes continuing the conversation at any time. You can listen to the entire 43-minute broadcast by going to the KBOO archives.
If you would like to support CUB in the fight for clean and affordable utilities in Oregon, there’s no better way to do so than becoming a CUB member today!
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03/29/17 | 0 Comments | Bob Jenks’ Appearance On KBOO’s Locus Focus