Editorial: Legislative leaders need to end war on renewables and back growing the clean energy economy
Monday, Jan. 16, 2017 -- The effort by legislative leaders to shut down the Amazon wind farm is misguided. It hurts rural economic development efforts and thwarts a bright spot of North Carolina growth.
Posted — UpdatedState Sen. Bill Cook, a Republican from Beaufort County, may have set the speed record for a politician stabbing his constituents in Perquimans and Pasquotank counties in the back.
It is part of an unrelenting ideological war by luddites in the General Assembly, who reflexively oppose renewable energy as some kind of alien plot foisted on North Carolina by zombies wearing bellbottom jeans and beads.
While these legislators may be getting their kicks at tilting -- quite literally in this case -- at windmills in their misguided effort to crush the state’s growing renewable energy industry, they need to more deeply consider the consequences of their actions.
In Pasquotank and Perquimans counties it is about dollars and cents. At risk is nearly $500,000 annually in local property taxes along with another $550,000 in payments to land owners. The $400 million project employed several hundred during construction and the 17 permanent positions will bring in salaries averaging $80,000. This is money that pays for the public schools, builds roads, puts shelter over families’ heads and food on their tables.
The project is the model to provide an economic boost in rural areas – particularly ones where they lag behind the state employment and household income. Not only does the area benefit from the single project, but word of it has led other businesses to approach local economic development officials.
One local legislator, Rep. Bob Steinburg, R-Chowan, declined to sign onto the letter and raised objections with House leaders. He contends the effort to close the wind farm has less to do with any concerns for the military than it does with the long-running fight against renewables in the General Assembly. “I have not talked with anyone from the military that has said they cannot coexist with this particular project.”
This latest misguided effort, coupled with HB2, only makes North Carolina appear even more business unfriendly. It is time for the leadership of the General Assembly to stop the foolish fight against the renewable energy industry – an economic sector with little downsides and one of the few bright spots in North Carolina’s economy since the Great Recession.
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