KySEA Groups Discuss Upcoming Legislative Session

About half of KySEA member groups attended a meeting in Lexington on Monday, November 7th, to discuss the upcoming 2012 Kentucky legislative session.

Thirty three representatives from 23 KySEA member groups participated in lively discussion about how to move the Clean Energy Opportunity Act forward this session and about how to support other opportunities that might arise to advance clean energy in the state.

The group heard preliminary findings about a Health Impact Assessment from the Kentucky Environmental Foundation, which shows the health advantages for Kentucky of moving to clean energy.

Curtis Stauffer, of Metropolitan Housing Coalition, also presented about a recent report from the Metropolitan Housing Coalition, entitled the 2011 State of Metropolitan Housing Report. It looked at a variety of factors surrounding affordable housing in the Metro Louisville area, focusing particularly on approaches to providing fair and affordable housing that uses less energy.  

He showed the graphic above to highligh that denser housing types in transit oriented developments are significantly more energy efficient than less dense housing types in suburban style development.  And, green, energy efficient  building practices- significantly reduce home energy use in all types of developments.

Those present at the KySEA meeting agreed that Kentucky needs better solutions both in building new homes and retrofitting existing homes in order to lower people's energy bills. With electricity rates rising across the state, this will be a topic of much consideration during the next session. And the Clean Energy Opportunity Act, supported by KySEA offers some of those solutions.