It's Taken Time, But Electric Utilities Are Warming Up To Climate Change

In 1968, bombs were dropping in Vietnam. But a different kind of bomb was about to dropped here at home — one that put the country’s utility industry on notice that the burning of fossil fuels would lead to climate change. Now, though, much of the industry is working to tackle those environmental challenges.

The Energy and Policy Institute has issued a report pointing out that scientists first warned the electric power sector of the greenhouse effect at the Edison Electric Institute’s annual convention in 1968. That’s when Dr. Donald F. Hornig, a science advisor to President Lyndon B. Johnson, enlightened the gathering that rising temperatures could lead to aberrant weather patterns, melting ice caps and the erosion of crops that would lead to food shortages.

“Such a change in the carbon dioxide level might, therefore, produce major consequences on the climate – possibly even triggering catastrophic effects such as have occurred from time to time in the past,” Hornig said, at the time.

While the Energy and Policy Institute acknowledges that the data in 1968 was limited, it quickly notes that by 1971, the industry’s research arm, the Electric Power Research Institute, concluded that the burning of fossil fuels leads to global warming. And the research continued, the advocacy group says, noting that between 1985 and 1988, both the Edison Electric Institute and the electric power industry's research arm, said that climate change would “significantly” alter the electric power sector.

Full story at http://bit.ly/2hNDTis

Source: Forbes

 

 

 

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