Renewable, safe energy key in N.H.

By Jesse J. DeConto

PORTSMOUTH - The governor asked for input as the state develops a 10-year energy plan, and Seacoast residents responded Thursday by saying the next decade should look much different from the past 100 when it comes to how New Hampshire residents produce and use energy.

Representatives of the Governor's Office of Energy and Community Services held a public forum on the New Hampshire State Energy Plan at Portsmouth City Hall on Thursday.

"Our energy past is one of dirty, dangerous, unhealthy energy sources," said Dover resident Jim Sconyers, who like the other speakers called for ending reliance on nuclear power and fossil fuels.

"Energy sources must be good for the people and other living things in New Hampshire," said Sconyers. "The technology already exists. What's missing is the public will."

Transportation accounts for almost half of the state's energy use, and personal automobiles use about 80 percent of transport fuel burned in the state, according to the Office of Energy and Community Services.

"We might imagine that it's mostly an issue of industry," said Greg Norris, president of Sylvatica, Inc., a company hired by the state to help plot New Hampshire's energy use. "Sorry, folks, it's us."

Portsmouth resident Ned Raynolds, whom the Herald recently featured in a story about hybrid-electric vehicles, is policy outreach manager for the Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnership.

If "a penny saved is a penny earned," Raynolds argued that energy saved is energy earned.

"Energy efficiency is, without question, the most cost-effective indigenous energy resource the state has," he said.

He urged the state government to pursue efficiency in its own infrastructure and to help low-income residents and small-business entrepreneurs to make their own homes, offices and factories as efficient as possible.

"The greatest cost savings potential for energy efficiency comes when a building is constructed," said Raynolds, who has lobbied the city of Portsmouth to build efficiency into the renovated high school and new library buildings, projects that will soon be under way.

Chris Nord, an Exeter building contractor who specializes in efficient construction, chided the state government for subsidizing fossil fuel plants by not making them accountable for the health impact of their emissions.

"We're involved in corporate socialism," said Nord. "The free market is necessarily short-sighted because corporate earnings do not necessarily equate with the public good."

Nord cited two studies in Massachusetts linking living near a nuclear reactor to an increase in cancer. Massachusetts towns within 10 miles of Seabrook Station have radiation monitors, but 17 New Hampshire towns within that radius do not.

"It's always been amazing to me that we don't have monitoring in this state," said Nord.

Martin Cameron of the Portsmouth Neighborhood Association agreed. Cameron specialized in chemical, biological and radiological warfare during the Cold War, and he discussed the damage nuclear radiation can do.

"The greatest responsibility of a government is to protect its citizens," he said. "I think the state of New Hampshire is failing its people in the southeastern coast area."

Jennifer Hicks of the Seacoast Anti-Pollution League echoed Cameron's complaints about Seabrook.

"This is one of the largest risks in the Seacoast just by the fact that it exists," she said. "Just being near it could be a health hazard."

Hicks had similar criticism of the state's oil-burning electric power plants in Bow, Newington and Portsmouth.

"Yeah, they're cheap to run. But they're actually very expensive plants because of the health impact to residents."

Gov. Jeanne Shaheen recently signed into law a Clean Power Act forcing those electricity plants to cut emissions.

Doug Bogen, of Clean Water Action, lamented that this legislation does not apply to natural gas plants. "We need to stop subsidizing the old, smelly, dirty power sources," said Bogen. "We may have the least environmentally sound energy regime in New England."