GOP Budget Cuts Energy Conservation Program, Transfers Management Out-Of-State

When it comes to installing energy conservation technology in state homes and businesses, ideology and privatization trumps common sense and local control in the Wisconsin budget passed by the GOP-controlled legislature.

The widely-respected Wisconsin-based Focus on Energy program and its grassroots management - - all funded by utility revenues, not state tax dollars, to help through rebates install energy-saving equipment and other measures - - gets a state-ordered resource trim and its management transferred to an out-of-state, private-sector energy conglomerate.

Details, here.

More than a hundred Wisconsin businesses have asked Walker to veto the changes, but that would surprise me.

[Monday update. No veto.]

Remember that Walker, through siting restrictions, is crushing the wind turbine industry here.

He also reversed the transition of the Charter St. generating plant on the UW campus in Madison away from fossil fuel (coal is gone, but Walker substituted natural gas for biomass, as Gov. Doyle had wanted), and will allow private operators to buy state-owned electric-generating stations without competitive bids.

Walker is beholden to traditional coal-and-gas-and nuclear industries (from Koch Industries on down) and they don't want green-and-clean competitors.

Cleantech opens too many minds and saves consumers too much money, and that bites the utilities and resource companies who also supply the GOP with a different kind of energy.