Peggy Rawlins 

519 Liberty Cap Court 

Grand Junction, CO 81507 

July 30, 2014 

The new Carbon Pollution Standards announced by the EPA represent a great 

beginning in the fight for national climate action. The scientific reports from the 

International Panel on Climate Change state that governments around the world 

must act boldly to reduce emissions, since they are rising at twice the rate this 

century than during the last decades of the 20thCentury. 

So along with the EPA's new Tier 3 standards to reduce smog forming emissions 

from gas powered cars and trucks, finalized in March, we have an opportunity to 

make our air cleaner and healthier. Besides reducing the sulphur content of 

gasoline, these standards will help the emissions control work, effectively cutting 

nitrogen oxide from these vehicles and, in the process, helping to prevent asthma 

attacks, hospital admissions, and other health problems. Additionally, they will 

help create more jobs over three years, in new equipment installation in oil 

refineries and maintenance of this equipment. 

Speaking of jobs in Colorado, the GRID Alternatives business, with volunteer help, 

is installing solar panels in the homes of people unable to afford them, allowing 

these homeowners to pay GRID Alternatives two cents per kilowatt for energy 

produced and save $500 or more on electricity each year. GRID began in 

California and now both Coloradans and Californians have the opportunity to use 

clean renewable energy to lower their bills and breathe cleaner air. 

The Colorado Energy Office granted GRID money to launch this new business 

opportunity this year. Part of GRID's mission is to provide solar job training for 

workers, both paid and volunteer. So this is a business that is helping to lower 

carbon emissions. 
Wind energy companies are growing in Colorado and have expectations of adding 

1,000 more workers in four Colorado cities, which is a definite plus to help reduce 

carbon pollution while also strengthening the economy. 

We in Colorado voted ten years ago to adopt Amendment 27, which established 

the country's first citizen initiative renewable energy standard requiring the 

largest utilities to obtain 10% of their elective energy from clean renewable 

sources by 2015. In 2010, the Colorado legislature increased the renewable 

energy standard to require utilities in the state to achieve 30% renewable energy 

by 2020. The rural legislators agreed and supported an increase in the rural 

renewable energy standard to 20% by 2020. In 2014, Colorado approved the 

strongest air pollution and methane standards for the oil and gas industry in the 

United States — so reducing emissions has been repeatedly supported by our 

voters. 

Power plants are responsible for 40% of carbon pollution. In Colorado, 64% of 

our electricity still comes from coal burning power plants. So this first federal 

limit on carbon pollution is an essential step towards a cleaner, healthier country. 

Agriculture is important to our way of life in Colorado and for our farms, ranches 

and orchards here, the high carbon pollution increases temperatures and higher 

ground-level ozone levels which reduce crop yields and quality of the harvest. 

For these and many other reasons, we urge passage of the new Federal Carbon 

Pollution Standards. 

Thank you for holding this hearing. 

Peggy Rawlins 

Member of Citizens for Clean Air 

Grand Junction, CO