LighTec, Inc.

As a small-business owner and long-time Republican, I'm perplexed when I hear the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) -- once a GOP free-market bragging point -- vilified as a Democrat tax-and-spend wealth redistribution plan. In the recent vote to withdraw New Hampshire from RGGI, leadership of the House Science and Technology committee called it a "plan to tax the many to benefit the few." While my conservative instincts naturally warm to this description, the simple fact is that, as applied to RGGI, it's simply not true.

What RGGI's cap-and-trade revenue generation actually amounts to is a tiny tax on all -- with all getting the benefit. The RGGI law requires the majority of its revenue to be invested back into our state to help reduce aggregate demand for electricity. This works for all of us because the price of electricity tends to decrease when we decrease our need for it.

When state Rep. Jim Garrity appeared on WMUR's "Close-Up" program recently, he opined that the state should not invest public money in private energy efficiency projects. I have worked with Jim on energy issues and know him to be a selfless public servant; we are lucky to have him in public office. I also share his view that any government role in managing public funds should always be scrutinized. Some thorough scrutiny of RGGI, however, will reveal a program that serves our state as an in-region alternative source of electricity that reduces rates for everyone.

Here in New Hampshire, this kind of public investment is not new. Most House members seem utterly unaware that for the past 12 years the state has levied a "tax" on the many that indisputably benefits the many: the Systems Benefit Charge (SBC). If you look at your electric bill, you'll see a tiny charge of $0.0035 per kilowatt-hours of energy usage to pay for state-sponsored energy efficiency. This SBC "tax" (like RGGI, bipartisan) benefits the many by reducing the need to make multi-billion dollar investments in new power plants and electricity transmission and distribution systems.

It's worth noting that last year demand for energy efficiency services from all of New Hampshire's electric distribution utilities far outstripped available SBC funds, and utilities turned to RGGI funds to supplement business investments in energy efficiency. Thus RGGI allowed many businesses to justify investments in energy demand reduction projects within their facilities that would not otherwise have occurred. I also note that roughly every dollar on investment in utility electricity demand reduction programs leverages four dollars in job creation and sustaining private investment.

Despite this evidence, some of us Republicans somehow got it in our heads that New Hampshire's RGGI law is a bad Democrat idea. After sitting through all of the testimony in the House hearings, I heard no real data at all that could remotely justify killing RGGI.

I do agree that the Legislature needs to stop diverting RGGI efficiency funds for use in other purposes; otherwise I view RGGI as an indisputable "win" for New Hampshire businesses and ratepayers.

Though hazy, New Hampshire's energy strategy is really pretty simple: We encourage electric and gas utilities to make small annual investments in energy efficiency programs in order to push out the day when we have to make huge -- billion dollar -- investments in new sources of electrical energy. (Have we forgotten Seabrook Station overruns?)

Given the slow-down in the Northern Pass project to create more transmission line capacity from Hydro Quebec to New England, we're lucky that our RGGI and core electric and gas utility energy efficiency programs exist as alternative electricity sources that need not come from out of region.

Such energy efficiency programs have a proven track record of keeping electric rates as low as possible.

According to PUC testimony from our largest electricity supplier, the cheapest source of new electric power is that which is removed by improvements in customer end use energy efficiency.

We should help the RGGI law continue its current success: operating as an energy efficiency engine that keeps electricity costs as low as possible while spurring economic development.

Jim Grady is president and owner of Merrimack's LighTec, Inc.

Greenhouse gas plan is good for business

I just read another one of those "Ban the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative" columns, frequently written by groups that have billions invested in fossil fuel consumption. According to industry naysayers, RGGI is bad for business. This is true only if you are in the business of selling energy to New Hampshire. As president of LighTec Inc., a New Hampshire energy efficiency company, I'd like readers to hear about the benefit of RGGI to our municipalities and businesses, enabling job-creating growth while reducing greenhouse gases.

Are RGGI's opponents suggesting a better idea, one that would be as environmentally responsible and curb the annual drain of more than $3 billion from our economy? Are they forgetting that this is a regional initiative? If we withdraw, the state will lose a valuable source of revenue.

RGGI is the nation's first market-based cap-and-trade program to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. It uses the money raised by auctioning pollution rights to subsidize energy efficiency programs that lead to further reductions in C02 output.

Good for the region

RGGI is a smart idea to help manage an intractable, long-term energy and environmental problem. Furthermore RGGI is good for New Hampshire and the entire Northeast and Mid-Atlantic region, which is increasingly energy-scarce. We have no easily extractable fossil energy sources in New England. This is not how we make our livings. New Hampshire is a state with a highly educated and innovative workforce, trained by some of America's best colleges and universities. Our RGGI law helps this army of engineers, entrepreneurs, and trades people start companies and jobs in fast-growing energy efficiency professions.

Increased energy efficiency is our most cost-effective way to stay competitive in the region and world, while saving money. It makes no economic sense for a state burdened with high electricity and fossil fuel prices to repeal a law that invests in lowering our need for high-priced energy. RGGI funds go directly into creating jobs that will reduce our energy dependence and make our manufactured products more competitive in world markets.

RGGI, along with electric utility efficiency programs, have proved that investments in energy efficiency are the best way to reduce electricity costs.

New Hampshire's Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative is performing a clearly measurable economic benefit to New Hampshire municipalities, home owners and businesses. Killing RGGI would be harmful to New Hampshire's economic growth.

Taxpayer savings

Let me give you a sense of where some of the RGGI money has been invested. Consider the town of Hollis, where the selectmen and school board approved an energy efficiency project that had been stalled for three years. Only 12 percent of project cost was picked up by RGGI but allowed the project to go forward. The resulting energy improvements to the Hollis schools and town buildings freed up over 150 kilowatts of electricity demand and will provide Hollis an annual savings of $63,000. This is equivalent to removing the electricity load of 30 residential homes from New Hampshire's power distribution system. Did I mention the emissions reductions? Hollis will reduce greenhouse gas pollution by 200 tons per year.

The taxpayers of Hollis are far from alone in receiving big energy cost reductions from RGGI. Many other towns, school districts and business are doing likewise.

Although RGGI was not expressly intended to be an integral part of the New Hampshire's resource and economic development policy, this can become the reality.

Recently George Bald, commissioner of the Department of Resources and Economic Development, pointed out that New Hampshire's economic growth and resource policy go hand in hand. New Hampshire's natural resource is its environment.

RGGI opponents have no alternative

It is no accident that outdoor sports companies like Eastern Mountain Sports and the Timberland Co. are headquartered in New Hampshire. A law that reduces pollution, under any name, helps keep this economic advantage alive and well.

If New Hampshire withdraws from membership in RGGI, the only winners are out-of-state energy suppliers that would hate to lose the $3 billion per year that flows out of our economy and into theirs.

A sound energy policy for a state that imports 90 percent of its energy, must be one that is focused on using energy efficiently. With such a compelling reason to keep the RGGI energy efficiency program alive and functional, why would anyone want to kill it?

(Jim Grady is president and CEO of LighTec Inc of Merrimack and a member of the state's Energy Efficiency and Sustainable Energy Board.)