Rep Mike Hager

The REPS repeal bill H298 went down to defeat today in Rep. Mike Hager's House Public Utilities and Energy Committee on a bipartisan vote of 18-13. This was a crushing defeat for Hager, the Rutherford County Republican and former Duke Energy engineer who sought to repeal Senate Bill 3 of 2007.

A bright candle in an otherwise dark room:

We led the nation in clean energy and clean transportation jobs in the 4th quarter of 2012, and came in second only to California for the year as a whole. The 10,800 new clean energy & transportation jobs E2 tracked here in 2012 are some of the more than 21,000 clean energy & transportation jobs that have sprung up across the state in the last five years. These are good-paying jobs in fields like public transportation, solar and wind farms, electric vehicle charging stations, and solar and wind power manufacturing.

These jobs didn't just magically appear. It took cooperation and vision and hard work, with a constant eye towards the future. Unfortunately, there are some who would ignore such evidence and take us back in time:

Rep. Mike Hager sets his sights on NC's REPS requirement:

But Rep. Mike Hager of Rutherford County views the mandate as the government unfairly “picking winners and losers” in the marketplace. As chairman of the Public Utilities committee, Hager would like to freeze it at the current 3 percent level. “Under our scenario, you would never go to 12.5 percent,” he said.

That's kind of like big energy companies unfairly paying to play in NC elections, so they can bring (what's supposed to be) our government under their power. Why would entities like Duke Energy and REAP care what kind of energy they produce, if they're going to charge us for it anyway? Because traditional power plants cost billions to build, making a lot of influential people even richer: