Moravian Students Present at “PA Power Dialog” Event
The national initiative pairs college students from across the state with key decision makers and legislators
Twenty Moravian University students, accompanied by Political Science Professor John Reynolds and Biology Professor Frank Kuserk, participated in the PA Power Dialog—one of 30 Power Dialogs held in state capitals across the nation—which brought together college students, regulators and legislators to discuss state-level implementation of the federal Clean Power Plan on Monday, April 4 at the State Museum in Harrisburg. The students are all members of professor Reynolds’ and Kuserk’s Environmental Policy course.
The goal of PA Power Dialog was to provide Pennsylvania college and university students the opportunity to share ideas with each other, as well as with state officials, about opportunities, challenges and responsibilities for taking action on climate change. “The federal Clean Power Plan mandates that each state determine how it will reach reductions in the levels of greenhouse gas emissions over the coming years. Pennsylvania and other states have important decisions to make about implementing the plan, a central piece of the U.S. strategy for combating climate change. The PA Power Dialog gives college students a voice in that process,” said Frank Kuserk, director of the Environmental Studies & Sciences Program. Four Moravian students, Jack Lema ‘16, David Mest ‘16, Ross Traphagen ‘19, and Cody Wilhelm ‘16, participated in student panel discussions focused on various aspects of the Clean Power Plan.
The program included a keynote address by Secretary John Quigley of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), opening remarks by Robert Altenburg, director of the PennFuture Energy Center on Enterprise and the Environment, a panel of state regulators, industry representatives and environmental organizations to discuss opportunities and challenges for implementing the Clean Power Plan, and small-group roundtable discussions. Joining Quigley and Altenberg were Gladys Brown, chair of the Public Utility Commission, Patrick McDonnell, director of policy for DEP, Kathleen Robertson, senior environmental and fuels policy manager at Exelon Corporation, and Mark Szybist, senior program advocate with the Natural Resources Defense Council.
The Clean Power Plan is a set of new rules established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in August 2015 for electric power plants that are designed to reduce climate-changing carbon emissions. The plan allows each state, including Pennsylvania, flexibility to establish its own implementation plan for meeting the federal standards. When fully implemented in 2030, the Clean Power Plan will cut national carbon pollution from the electric power sector by 32 percent. The DEP is in the process of developing a State Implementation Plan for Pennsylvania.
Approximately 260 students from Moravian, as well as Allegheny College, Bucknell University, Dickinson College, Gettysburg College, Messiah College, Penn State University, Shippensburg University, Susquehanna University, Swarthmore College, Widener University School of Law, Ursinus College, Millersville University and Villanova University participated in the event.
Power Dialogs took place in 30 states with the support of the Center for Environmental Policy at Bard College. Andy Revkin of The New York Times called the events, “an exciting effort to mesh learning and civic engagement around the nation’s efforts to curtail power plant emissions of carbon dioxide, the main human-generated gas contributing to global warming.”