FastTracking on the "American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009

I sent the following to several members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee regarding Rep. Waxman's desire to push this legislation, which is still in draft form without a HR #, through the Committee by end-of-day Thursday (5/21/09):
FIRST, this is NOT a politically-generated argument against the so-called “carbon tax” bill. Rather, I will try to convince you to review this legislation very cautiously with scientific and economical proposals.
It is imperative that the House Energy and Commerce Committee carefully deliberate on the proposed 648 page “American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009”. Since plans by Rep. Waxman is to push this through your committee by end of day tomorrow (Thursday), no one can justify how they gave this important legislation careful review in just one day. The subcommittee members have been working on this legislation proposal for several days, but the remaining Committee members must insist on reviewing this proposal in an efficient and careful manner. I will address 2 points regarding this proposal. First, you must be careful if you think that a “smart grid” will work efficiently. Having over 20 years experience working in a nuclear power plant, I can attest through experience and observation that synchronizing the energy output from an electrical-producing facility with the electrical grid takes crucial coordination, and this is using the output from a consistently supplying source. Locking into the grid by only one-tenth of a second early or late can cause serious problems with the grid-coordinating facility accepting the output and also causes generator problems with the electrical-producing facility. Now imagine trying to accurately tie into the electrical grid with an inconsistent source, such as from wind generation and solar energy generation. Changes in atmospheric conditions such as wind speed deviations or temporary loss of consistent generation due to adverse weather conditions would be detrimental to synchronizing into the electrical grid. If changes in atmospheric conditions occurred during the period of synchronizing with the electrical grid, this could result in brownouts within small communities (which will probably be your main “client” of electricity from wind or solar generating facilities) and probable generator problems at the source of electrical output. This is very costly on a large scale and would be costly even on a smaller scale when discussing wind or solar generation. I’ll close on this point by pointing out that this proposal is for 2 megawatt-electric facilities; this is on the scale with typical nuclear power plant electrical outputs ranging from 1400 to over 1800 megawatt-electric (keep this in mind when deliberating on wind and solar generation and my discussion regarding synchronizing with electrical grids). Now for my second point: When presented with findings from an OMB –released document (Deliberative-Attorney Client Privilege) at a Senate hearing on 5/12/09, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson was unable to justify that EPA-sponsored studies performed several years ago were based on “scientific” findings as related to greenhouse gas emissions (CO2) affects on public health or global warming studies. The OMB document also pointed out the recommendations of the EPA-sponsored studies would create adverse economic impacts to small communities and small businesses. The memo also states “In the absence of a strong statement of the standards being applied in this decision, there is concern that EPA is making a finding based on…’harm’ from substances that have no demonstrated direct health effects,” the memo says, adding that the “scientific data that purports to conclusively establish” that link was from outside EPA.
Again, I implore that you insist on spending the proper amount of time needed to review this 648-page legislation so that careful and deliberate researching and debate can be achieved. There is not an emergent need for this to fast-track thru your committee. We have the time to make our decisions based on logical and informed conclusions.
Thank you for your consideration,
William P. Conant
Mount Vernon, Georgia
How long will We, the People allow Congress and Obama push through costly legislation thru Congress? Remember, they work for us serving our needs, not the other way around.