True Freedom - Guest Opinion - the original

True Freedom

Every time you hear your furnace kick on that's money and energy being wasted. With efficiencies and retrofits, we would not "need" anywhere near the amount of energy projected by those who come up with every reason why renewables will not satisfy our needs.

Renewables absolutely will meet our needs when we stop wasting it. NYSERDA has a Deep Retrofit program that can lower energy costs by at least 70% but it can cost around $70,000 per house, depending on age. A lot of people can't afford that. Deep Retrofit is not just blowing in insulation into walls and attics but also layering additional panels on external walls, plus moving out old boilers, furnaces and water heaters, replacing with instant-on heaters or solar hot water heaters. You could end up with not having the need for any heat/cool appliances in the basement and close to zero heating/cooling bills. That's real freedom.

Deep Retrofits can reduce costs and thus improve the bottom line, can improve the economy with more jobs, reduce carbon emissions, and create energy security.

We must move federal, state and local subsidies and tax breaks from oil, gas, coal and nuclear now and transfer those taxpayer dollars to Deep Retrofit incentives and grants as well as solar on every single and multifamily residence and on all public buildings, thus lowering our taxes. New York could meet 15% of its power needs and 100% of its electricity needs with rooftop solar.

Every new high rise must first dig a geothermal trench before they start building. They have to dig a deep hole anyway. Both geothermal and solar installation companies are in New York State and growing, including in Broome county. Check out the New York State solar Industries Association. The state and the Southern Tier should be open to business to these companies and others like them, not to giving tax breaks for polluting gas pipelines, noisy compressor stations, puzzled about what to do with fracking waste fluid, taking the chance of illegal dumps of radioactive waste into fields and streams in the middle of the night, etc., etc.

Hydraulic fracturing's sole purpose is to burn fossil fuel, the greenhouse gas emissions of which have brought us global warming. Methane, i.e. natural gas, is worse than CO2 for heating up the planet. Formerly rare downpours, floods and heat waves are now common across the U.S. and will come to dominate our climate in our grand-children's lifetime.


Let’s stop hiding our heads in the sand and get to work on this. Call and write your legislator and demand a change. If he or she refuses to budge or fudges, vote him or her out of office in 2012. Get together with community members and start your own community energy initiative like in Maryland and Washington State. States that have more insulated buildings and solar have lower electricity bills, including cold mid-western states. New York State is not one of those states. Let's change that.