The Refinishing Touch Blog

The dust has settled from the Power Shift convention a couple of weeks ago in Washington and we at The Refinishing Touch are waiting to see what will result after the combination of a mass demonstration and a new administration being in office.

We all watched and admired from Alpharetta as more than ten thousand people collected in the Capital to increase the pressure on Obama to stick to the green plans he put forward in his election campaign.

Much of the storm surrounded the Capitol Hill coal-powered power plant, which will hit its centenary mark next year. It was originally built to ensure Congress had a constant independent source of power. As coal is the least sustainable fossil fuel, this is perceived as a powerful symbolic move for Obama to simply shut it down.

America has been trying to change its affiliation with the use of coal since mid-2006 when more than 80 coal plants were halted, and now many are looking to Obama and his administration to completely end the love affair with coal.

Perhaps the most interesting will be how the delicate hand that Obama prides himself on will deal with growth in unemployment amongst coal workers or whether these jobs will simply be transferred to greener energy plants. With the recession continuing deep into 2009, a split is going to appear somewhere. Watch this space.

Labels: Capitol Hill, coal, Sustainability