The Fall Colors are Red, White and Blue (VOTE!)

Voter Resources and Deadlines

Early “no excuse” early voting is October 31 and November 1st and 2nd. The General Election is November 5th. You can find information on KCC’s Voter Resources website, and you can also go to govoteky.com. For information about ballot initiative #2, go to Protect Our Schools Kentucky.

Scenes from the University of Louisville Sustainability Fair

Louisville Earth Walk This Saturday, Recap of the Louisville Sustainability Fair

We hope you join KCC and nine other great nonprofits this Saturday (October 26th) for the 8th Annual Louisville Earth Walk! It’s not too late to take part, so we hope to see you at Shawnee Park! We also want to thank the University of Louisville for hosting their annual Sustainability Fair this past week (photos above). We had a great time meeting all of the sustainability groups in and around campus.

Scenes from the 2024 Governor’s Conference: (Left) graph on how green spaces impact stroke survival, (Center) Timeline of extreme events from the past decade, (Right) presentation on deploying energy-efficiency for housing equity.

Governor’s Conference on Energy & Environment

This year’s Energy and Environment Conference was held earlier this week where there were many sessions related to how we can strengthen Kentucky’s health and resiliency to the impacts of climate change. The discussions ranged from strengthening the reliability of the power grid to how nonprofits like the United Way can be more proactive in preparing communities in advance. A session including the Environme Institute cited data on how “greeness” has an impact on cardiovascular mortality and how outdoor spaces impact our immune responses.

The conference highlighted the 100th anniversary of Kentucky’s State Parks, including how the parks have become an important hub for climate resiliency and disaster response. The conference also detailed how the state is leveraging many programs from the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill to address our resiliency, such as investing in our transmission and protecting wellheads during extreme temperature events. These funds have also supplied a much-needed boost to the Abandoned Minelands program to clean up these old brownfields and provide the infrastructure for re-use.

There were several sessions on how to address energy efficient homes. Woodford County Judge Executive James Kay highlighted the progress of the state’s EPAD (Energy Project Assessment Districts) program that he helped pass when he served in the state legislature. And one of the highlights of the conference was an update on the Governor’s High Ground initiative to build energy efficient modular homes on former mine sites above the flood prone areas of Eastern Kentucky.

Interim Joint Committee Recent Highlights

During the October 16th meeting of the Budget Review Subcommittee on Economic Development, Tourism and Environmental Protection, Parks Commissioner Russ Meyer went over a recap of the state of improvements to our state park system. This included:

• 40 million in campground upgrades

• 29 million in utility improvements, including matching grants for grid resilience projects in the parks.

• 6 million in Broadband upgrades

• $2.1 million in bathhouse renovations

• $6.5 million for wastewater and pump station upgrades

• $27 million for building system improvements,  safety upgrades and ADA mobility improvements, plus dam safety reconstruction and repairs.

During the October 17th meeting of the Interim Joint Committee on Natural Resources & Energy, lawmakers heard presentations from the Kentucky Infrastructure Authority on the WWATERS program created by House Bill 563 of the 2024 session to provide a funding application and evaluation process for eligible public water and wastewater systems that seek funding from the General Assembly. Lawmakers also heard updates from representatives of Eastern Kentucky Power Co-Operative and Big Rivers Electric, where the utilities raised concerns over the retirement of coal generation at a time when power demands are beginning to increase due to factors such as the anticipated energy use of data centers, artificial intelligence and electric vehicles. Eastern Kentucky Power Co-Operative outlined some of their future plans for expanding their capacity with a brand-new power plant in Casey County outside of Liberty that would provide 216mw of power through reciprocating engines and 745mw of combined cycle units at Cooper power station near Somerset; to keep their coal power inventory as long as they can, co-fired with natural gas. They are also looking to co-fire power plants Cooper 2 and Spurlock in Maysville with natural gas that they believe would give them an extra 6-7 years to keep coal online., which we have concerns about, due to the urgency of our need to reduce carbon and transition to renewables as quickly as possible.

Overall, while the conference addressed the importance of resiliency and energy diversification, we found it to be light on renewable energy solutions and the need to address resource-hungry emerging industries such as data centers and artificial intelligence that will also impact our carbon footprint.

Industrial Decarbonization Initiatives:

While utility companies are focused on addressing the increasing demands of energy-hungry data centers and Ai, we are still hopeful for the advancement of the clean manufacturing sector in Kentucky. With the growth of electric car production supported by solar, and the prospect of the potential for lower-carbon metals production in the aluminum sector through our work with the Sustainable Aluminum Network, we are hopeful this state can show the value of smarter production methods, even for energy-hungry, difficult-to-decarbonize sectors like aluminum, steel and cement. Learn more about our work on our Sustainable Industry page.