KCP&L, Sierra Club Accord can Serve as Model for Others

An excellent compromise announced last week promises to cut air pollution, increase renewable energy and conserve power for decades to come in the Kansas City area.

This is an innovative deal. The prime movers behind it deserve plenty of credit for ending their lengthy court battles and working out their differences to benefit the people of this region.

- Kansas City Power & Light showed once again that it can step outside the mainstream of stodgy U.S. energy companies. The utility agreed to build more wind farms, slash pollution from existing plants, aggressively promote energy conservation and make sure its Iatan 2 plant, now under construction, will be among the cleanest-burning in the nation.

- The Sierra Club and Concerned Citizens of Platte County persistently fought for the right causes — to encourage renewable power and to protect the local air quality.

Kansas Citians should reap many benefits from the jointly announced compromise, which can be found at www.greatplainsenergy.com/investor/NR_Mar20_07.pdf.

Construction of Iatan 2 will move forward, which will help KCP&L meet the still-growing demand for electricity in this region.

The company also will add wind farms that create renewable power without adding tons of carbon dioxide emissions to the air. And KCP&L will upgrade two existing power plants to cut harmful air emissions.

More can be done to promote wiser use of energy. For example, KCP&L should continue to expand its Energy Optimizer program. It provides customers a free programmable thermostat that lets them set temperatures for different times of the day, such as at night and when nobody is home. With customers’ permission, KCP&L can raise the temperature on these thermostats a few degrees on the hottest weekdays, allowing the utility to control energy use.

The compromise announced recently is a model for how environmental groups and utilities in the rest of the nation could work together.

Under the deal, KCP&L will be able to generate the electricity needed to keep area industries and offices humming, and to keep homes cool in blazing Midwestern summers.

And all of this will happen with fewer pollutants being dumped into the air we breathe every day.

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