Penn. dumps destructive ‘green’ programs as job losses, utility bills skyrocket

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports:

(Excerpted) The Corbett administration is de-emphasizing renewable energy and energy conservation, eliminating programs created by previous Democratic and Republican administrations as it focuses on natural gas energy from booming Marcellus Shale.
Quietly but systematically, the administration has all but shut down the state Department of Environmental Protection’s Office of Energy and Technology Deployment — the state’s primary energy office — and removed directors and reassigned staff in the Office of Energy Management in the Department of General Services and the Governor’s Green Government Council.

It has also forbidden state executive agencies from signing contracts that support clean energy supply…

…The administration’s prohibition against sustainable and alternative energy purchases reverses a policy that by the beginning of this year, had the state buying 50 percent of its electricity from renewable sources, according to PennFuture, and made it “a national leader in the development of the clean energy economy.”…

…Pennsylvania is not the only state reassessing or reducing sustainable energy, energy conservation and renewables portfolio standards policy. Governors and legislators have voiced similar concerns in Connecticut, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Oklahoma and Wisconsin, according to the Pew Research Center.

“Even Tom Corbett, who is still dedicated to the job-killing radical environmentalist agenda, silently admits ‘green jobs’ are a hoax and Expensive Energy Mandates kill jobs,” said American Tradition Partnership Executive Director Donald Ferguson.  “Even Democrat-controlled Pennsylvania can no longer suffer the crippling burden of the low-jobs, high-cost Gang Green agenda.”