From:                                         rddonnellymd@aol.com

Sent:                                           Friday, June 7, 2019 12:03 PM

To:                                               RPS, DOER (ENE)

Cc:                                               maria.robinson@mahouse.gov; karen.spilka@masenate.gov

Subject:                                     changes to RPS and APS re wood burning.

 

I am writing to try to express how furious I am at this idea of encouraging more greenwashing in the form of changes to the RPS and APS that would encourage more harvesting of trees and  essentially burning them directly for electricity generation.                                                                                                     Here is what I think.First,the backslapping and congratulations for increasing the RPS standard from 1 to 2% ,as opposed to 3% is unwarranted.I have had it with politicians proposing some weak improvement that might pass,then having business and the fossil fuel industries lobby for half of what was barely sufficient.The RPS standard needs to be at least increasing 5% yearly.and it needs to be with clean renewable generation.                     How might we get there?First,don't knock yourselves out,since you're obviously not up to the task.Just copy the leaders.                       California has mandated,after many meetings,that every new house and building have solar on it.Just copy them,beginning in 2020.                                 Mandate that every new hotel,business,school,municipal building,etc have solar on it.                          If they must have parking lots,mandate that they have a certain amount of solar canopies over the parking lots.                  Mandate that every house sale,over a certain price-e.g-$500,000 have an energy audit and solar retrofit if possible.                                   Mandate that according to the building code,every garage in a house being sold for over $300,000 has a Level II charger in the garage.            Move to time of use electricity payments,this will encourage electric car owners to charge at night.                                        Pass a carbon fee and green debit card bill. Begin with $25 per ton,increasing $10 per year, returned as a green debit card progressively to taxpayers in the state.                       Increase the rebates for purchase of electric cars.Copy California's system for this,giving greater rebates to lower income folks.                   I understand that GM and company are regretting their lobbying against the proposed fuel emission standards for 2025.Let Mass. beginning in 2020 require those registering new gasoline cars and trucks costing over $35,000 pay an additional $1000 pollution surcharge to register those cars.Increase it yearly by $1000. Use the monies collected to fund purchases of electric school buses and city buses.If people want a new polluting expensive gasoline car or truck,they should have to pay for the privilege,since we are paying for the increased health and climate costs.                                               Finally,every day I have to listen to news from Washington,where Trump and McConnell,far from addressing the problem,are actively trying to make it worse.I don't want to hear that my own state is doing the same.