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 20 th Century.
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 addin 

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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