Don’t Gamble on Being Heard
ACES Energy Legislation is a Losing Hand for Consumers

October Message from Randall Pugh
President/CEO

While Congress and the public are focused on national health care reform, another piece of legislation is working its way through the Senate that could have an even greater impact on your personal finances. If the Senate passes the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) unchanged later in the year, it could drive your electric bills up 35 percent or more and make the cost of doing business in our country prohibitive for many American industries and manufacturers.

ACES is energy legislation that will impose unrealistic standards for renewable power generation while also drastically limiting carbon emissions by utilities and manufacturers. If this legislation passes, your electric bill will be impacted for years. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that cap-and-trade legislation will raise the cost of living of an average household by $1,600 a year.

Why Such an Increase?

If Jackson EMC fails to meet the arbitrary goals the legislation sets, we’ll have to increase your electric bills to pay the penalties we’ll face, which are essentially taxes to be returned to the federal government. You’ve probably heard of the cap-and-trade debates over the past few months. Cap and trade is a system proposed to limit carbon emissions and establish an auction system to trade carbon credits to make up for not meeting those limits. Carbon limits increase every year, and power companies would be forced to buy more credits in order to continue producing electricity.

In addition, the renewable energy provision will require power companies to produce at least six percent of their power from renewable resources such as biomass, solar, wind, low impact hydropower or geothermal by 2012 and 20 percent by 2020.

We’ve supported renewable power generation as founding members of Green Power EMC. After six years, we’re only generating less than one percent of our electricity from renewable resources.

We’re quite a ways from the required six percent by 2012, and without the technology in place, we’ll likely never get there. Renewable generation such as solar is too expensive to produce, and the land mass required to place enough solar panels to generate significant power is staggering. We have a wealth of resources in Georgia, but an abundance of wind isn’t one of them, so wind power options are limited. When we fail to meet these requirements, we could pay more than $39 million in penalties in 2020.

After 70 years of serving our members, our goal is to provide you with reliable, affordable power. By doing that, we help keep local economies healthy and attract new business to the communities we serve. Our U.S. Senators from Georgia agree that ACES is a losing hand for American consumers, and we thank them for their support. We need to send their colleagues the same message – American consumers and industry just can’t afford the bill for ACES. I urge you to add your voice to ours, visit our web site at www.jacksonemc.com/ACES for Congressional representatives’ contact information.

Randall Pugh
President/CEO.