Wednesday's News
A Small Victory: The Arkansas Public Service Commission did what it should have and ruled in favor of letting the Sierra Club and Audubon Arkansas have a place at the table when it comes to talk about energy rate hikes. PSC staff and SWEPCO were trying to keep the groups at bay. The PSC did rule, however, that a citizen's advocacy group organized by the two organizations could not intervene in the proceedings. Go to GreenAR by the Day for more. AR Business also had an item about the ruling.
One quick thing to point out is that the PSC did offer one condition to the environmental groups' participation - that they could not revisit the economic viability of the Turk Plant. Now, it seems to me that if you're about to take up a $50 million rate increase, based partly on construction costs of an already irrelevant plant, that an evaluation of the economic viability of that plant is not only pertinent, but essential.
Hot Shit: It turns out that we might be able to produce energy by burning chicken excrement. Wouldn't that be nice? From Green Inc.: "A growing number of environmentally-minded poultry farmers in the United States, Canada and Australia are looking to peck away at their greenhouse gas emissions by transforming chicken dung into biochar fertilizer, as well as biogas and a form of bio-oil that can be used to run farm operations."
At Odds: As always, rural Democrats are gonna be at odds with a Democratic administration on some issues - usually guns. Roby Brock talks about how this is playing out in terms of energy policy, especially as it relates to Congressman Mike Ross.
