AfD’s first success with Feed In Tariffs in Oregon‏

Thursday, July 1st, marked the first day that Oregon private utility customers were able to sign-up for the new solar power generating program.

This program, a modified Feed-In Tariff, is the first such state-wide program in the US and is modeled after an extremely successful program in Germany which dramatic increased the production and use of clean green renewable energy while creating lots of well paying green jobs. 

Why is Alliance for Democracy excited about this? 

Well, because the Alliance for Democracy’s sponsored advocacy group, Oregonians for Renewable Energy Policy, has been involved in this effort to Democratize the Grid for the past year and a half, first working with the Oregon legislature and then with the Public Utility Commission (PUC) to establish the program.  Note that our Judy Barnes is quoted in the Thursday article and AfD supporter and a key activist working with Judy, Mark Pengilly, is quoted in the Friday article. 

Our efforts have been to develop a program which would allow average people to develop renewable energy on our rooftops and in our neighborhoods where the energy will be used instead of on large remote sites requiring the building of additional expensive grid capacity. Up to this point, those big program have benefited large multi-national corporations.  Now we can get be involved in our clean energy future. 

While we are happy that the program is up and running, much more needs to be done to make it truly a real feed-in tariff program.  Judy and Mark and Teddy and the rest of us here at Alliance for Democracy are going to continue working on this until the state of Oregon gets it right. 

Please visit the Oregonians for Renewable Energy Policy website for more details on this project. Visit the Alliance for Democracy website to view an interview by Jim Lockhart of Judy Barnes on the topic of feed-in tariffs.  This interview was conducted before the Oregon PUC rules were released and before the release of the program to the public.

Please us continue our work!

If you would like to make a tax-deductible contribution to support our continuing efforts, please visit the national Alliance for Democracy website and click on Donate Now.  Please check the box that says “to support OREP and become a member of Alliance for Democracy”.

David e. Delk, Alliance for Democracy – Portland Chapter