Arlington, Virginia, May 10, 2007 – Barry Hart, CEO of AMEC, was interviewed on “Agritalk” about the potential impact of proposed climate change legislation on rural electric co-ops on Monday, May 7, 2007.

Hart, one of over 3,000 electric co-op members who came to Washington for the 2007 Legislative Conference, voiced his concerns that some climate change proposals could lead to “rate shock” for co-op members.

“Some of the carbon tax proposals could increase rates in our state, in Missouri, by up to fifty percent. … and if you place that kind of an increase on a dairy farmer or a pork producer, it’s very difficult for them to pass those costs on,” Hart told “Agritalk” host Mike Adams. “There’s ways we can reduce carbon if everybody works together over a planned approach, then maybe we can reduce carbon without breaking the bank.”

Hart voiced concern about calls for a ban on building new coal-fired generation plants, noting that electric co-ops will need to build new base-load generation plants.

Missouri is developing a 150 Megawatts of wind power in cooperation with Wind Capital Group and John Deere, but Hart cautioned, “when farmers are using power and the wind’s not blowing, it’s not reliable baseload generation. It helps by being a part of our generation mix, but when they turn that grain dryer on they want it to work and if the wind’s not blowing, we have to meet their needs other ways.”

“The key thing is getting the Congress to spend a large amount of resources on research and development…. As Americans we’re all going to have to rally around a solution and it may have to be a long term solution.”

“Agritalk” is heard in 16 states, including Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

The podcast of the show is available on the “Agritalk” website at http://www.agritalk.com/podcast/index_all.php.

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Tracy Warren, NRECA Newsroom
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