Last week, this outlet published Josh Portney’s misguided and ill-informed opinion piece on the regional solar power purchase agreement (SPPA). Portney presents himself as a sleuth and advocate for the truth. In fact, he shows his fundamental lack of understanding about the SPPA, governmental processes and the drivers of climate change. I wouldn’t fault readers if they suspected he had been hired by a fossil fuel lobbyist to undermine public confidence in solar power. It is a grade A piece of “inactivism,” communication designed to hinder climate action.
As the current chair of the SPPA Working Group and one of its many champions, I must respond.
Portney, a law student at Penn State Law, serves in three positions in the area. He works as office and campaign staff for Rep. Scott Conklin, along with Tor McCartney, host of the Tor Michaels Show on WRSC. He is also the youngest member of State College Borough Council. Portney worked on my 2020 campaign for House District 171.
Though his opinion piece may give the impression of insider knowledge, Portney has never been to an SPPA Working Group meeting. After he went on his boss’s Tor Michaels Show and libelously called the SPPA “a financial scandal,” I called him twice to set the record straight. He did not call me back. Later, he walked back his scandal statement in remarks to The Centre Daily Times. His opinion piece last week simply continued his campaign of doubt, distraction and delay.
Portney’s so-called “concerns” about legal fees and processes have been dealt with. For example, Borough Manager Tom Fountaine addressed Portney directly about legal fees. Legal expenses are an item built into the Borough’s budget. Borough Council President Evan Myers explained this again in the Centre Region Council of Governments (COG) Executive Committee. Similar discussions have happened in recent meetings of the State College Area School District, Patton Township and the Working Group.
It almost pains me to say this: Our team has done our homework and followed the law. Are legal fees annoying? Definitely. Are legal services that protect us from risk worth it? Yes. Do we wish they were less? Of course. Is the investment in cooperative purchasing of affordable renewable energy for the long term worth the headache? Yes. Having spoken to over 40 elected officials and staff about the SPPA over just the last few months, I can attest to widespread recognition that people would love this to be easier, that it isn’t and that it’s worth it because the SPPA is on track to meet its goals.
Our local governments stand on the cusp of adopting affordable, carbon-free, Pennsylvania energy. Over the contract’s 15 years, conservative estimates show we will save local governments $4 million. Nearly half of that will go to the State College Area School District, the Working Group’s largest user of electricity. The project’s total cost will be $360,000, about 0.1% of the participants’ annual budgets.
The SPPA’s solar farm will avoid 240,000 tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide over the contract’s term. Last year, record heat shut down schools in Philadelphia. This year, hotter oceans delivered Hurricanes Helene and Milton which have flooded scores of schools in the American southeast. 4-H and Harris report that 80% of American young people actively worry about the state of the climate. In 2022, a survey found that 78% of Penn State University Park students reported being alarmed or concerned about climate change. These are our constituents. It is our moral duty to respond. It is also an economic and technological possibility. The SPPA is our path.
Portney is unmoved. He distracts you with worries about a pittance of emissions from “construction (on farmland), manufacturing and other variables (emphasis mine)” from the solar farm. He provides no details. He wants your imagination to go into the land of confusion.
Solar is far better than our fossil-heavy grid. A 2017 study in the journal Nature Energy analyzed greenhouse emissions from fossil fuel-based and renewable energy production. A complete life cycle analysis shows solar emits between 0.6% and 2.2% of the emissions of a fossil fuel power plant per unit of generated energy. Meanwhile, fallowed, pollinator-planted and wisely managed land under a solar array sinks carbon dioxide, becomes habitat and provides pasture.
Don’t waste your time with Portney’s mysterious “other variables.” Pay attention to methane. Methane is 84 times as potent a greenhouse gas in the 20-year timeframe and 22 times as potent as carbon dioxide over a hundred years. The methane leakage from coal seams, hydraulic fracturing operations, natural gas pipelines, compressor stations and well blowouts utterly dwarfs marginal emissions related to solar.
Unsurprisingly, Portney insults the project’s emissions reduction. He diminishes them as “less than 2% of the total CO2 emitted annually in just the Centre Region.” Sorry, 2% in one swoop sounds great. It is a tangible step toward the Centre Region’s goal of 45% emissions reduction by 2030.
The pattern is clear: Portney is an “inactivist.” He’s saying, “Hey. I support renewable energy, but…but…but…” As my friend, co-author, Nobel laureate and project supporter Michael E. Mann writes in “The New Climate War,” inactivists like Portney “will go down in history as having ironically sided with wealthy, powerful polluters, rather than ‘the people’ they purport to care about, in the defining battle of our time.” Portney has nothing to offer but delay, distraction and doubt. He’s out of touch with his generation, with State College voters, with climate reality and the procedures and processes of our local governments. Maybe he should find something else to do.
Leaders do hard things. Teams of leaders do hard things together. We are leaders. I can’t be grateful enough to the team we have here in central Pennsylvania. Despite the difficulties, we keep learning, adapting and focusing on our shared goals. We are doing right today to do even better tomorrow.
Peter Buck serves on the State College Area School District’s Board of Directors and as chair of the Centre County Solar Working Group. This opinion piece is his own, not that of the Board or the Working Group.
