Right now Senate leaders are poised to make a big mistake by overlooking renewable energy and energy efficiency in favor of dirty, expensive, foreign fossil fuels.  We need your help to convince them to reduce our energy bills and increase renewable energy usage at the same time!

Senator Pete Domenici from New Mexico is the Chairman of the Senate Energy Committee, and he wants to hear YOUR ideas on the best way to bring down the cost of natural gas before noon on January 7th.

Click here to tell Senator Domenici that the best way to reduce energy costs is to increase the use of solar, wind, and other renewable sources of energy and increase the use of energy efficiency! Or if you're a registered user, simply hit reply and then hit send and the comments below will be sent automatically on your behalf.

You may have noticed the skyrocketing cost of natural gas (prices have doubled in the past four years!).  This huge increase has the Senate working on ways to lower the cost of natural gas, but unfortunately, it looks like their "solution" will be to drill our way towards more supply, instead of using renewable energy and energy efficiency to reduce demand and lower costs.

It would be a big mistake to overlook renewable energy and energy efficiency as part of a solution to this problem.  Not only is renewable energy good for the environment, it's also good for our wallets!  Almost everyone agrees that fossil fuels will become more and more expensive over time, while renewable energy will become cheaper and cheaper.  Solar and wind power offer stable, predictable alternatives to dirty fossil fuels and will reduce your energy bill.
 
The big energy companies and their allies in Congress are calling for more natural gas subsidies, more drilling, and more imported natural gas.  But these "solutions" are merely a band aid for a bigger problem - we're already too dependent on non-renewable fossil fuels!

Click here to tell Senator Domenici that we need real solutions to the skyrocketing cost of natural gas, not subsidies for big energy companies!

The deadline to submit comments is noon January 7, 2005, so we need your help to make sure that Senator Domenici hears our message loud and clear.  Please forward this message to your friends, family and co-workers and ask them to submit comments too!

Thanks for your help!

Sincerely,
Katelyn Sabochik
Online Campaign Manager
info@saveourenvironment.org

Registered Users: Simply hit reply and then hit send and the message below will be sent to Senator Domenici on your behalf.
_________________________________________________________________________

Dear Senator Domenici,

Thank you for inviting the public to submit recommendations for reducing natural gas prices.  American families and businesses deserve clean energy solutions that will save consumers money by reducing natural gas demand.  We don’t want supply-side solutions that rely on new tax breaks for fossil fuel industries, increased drilling in environmentally sensitive areas, and expansion of liquefied natural gas imports that would increase our dependence on foreign energy sources.  Instead, please focus on clean energy solutions in any legislation aimed at reducing natural gas prices.

Numerous government and independent studies show that the most effective way to reduce natural gas prices is to decrease demand by improving energy efficiency and developing renewable electricity sources such as wind, solar, geothermal, and bioenergy.  For example, a 2003 analysis by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) found that consumers would save money on electricity and gas bills if utilities met a 10 percent by 2020 renewable electricity standard (RES).  Recent analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists using EIA’s National Energy Modeling System (NEMS) and updated natural gas price projections found that a 20 percent RES would decrease natural gas consumption by 6 percent in 2020, save consumers $26.2 billion by 2025, and create 355,000 high quality jobs.

Combining a strong RES with a ten-year extension of the production tax credit (PTC) and energy efficiency improvements would provide even greater consumer savings.  A recent study by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) confirms that increased renewable energy use coupled with efficiency measures would save consumers more than $75 billion on their natural gas bills over the next five years, or $96 on the average home's annual gas bill. Additional savings of $28 billion would occur from lower electricity bills. The ACEEE study demonstrates the need for the following efficiency measures: updating state and federal appliance efficiency standards, expanding consumer energy efficiency programs, encouraging clean on-site power generation, expanding federal clean energy funding, and expanding energy efficiency tax incentives.

Please ensure that any legislation aimed at curbing natural gas prices includes the renewable energy and efficiency measures described above. I look forward to hearing your position on these important issues.

Sincerely,
[your name inserted here]