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Lowering Emissions Will Help Improve Utah's Economy

Department of Environmental Quality
Lowering emissions in Utah will help Utah's economy.

A recent Envision Utah survey showed air quality to be among the top three concerns for Utahns. Paul Murphy is the spokesperson for Rocky Mountain Power and said lowering emissions will improve Utah’s economy.

“If we can help reduce emissions we can attract more businesses to come to Utah," Murphy said. "And we can help companies reduce the energy they use and actually help them reduce the amount of emissions they admit nto the sky. Just overall having a healthier air leads to a better business environment.”

Utah was home to 2.9 million people in 2014 and the population is projected to increase to 3.9 million in the next 15 years.

Murphy said some companies, as soon as they saw the winter air, lose all interest in relocating to Utah. He hopes elected officials will pass legislation enabling the use of incentives to bring more companies into Utah.

“We are actually attracting a lot of businesses’ to Utah because of our low electricity prices," Murphy said. "But we think there are ways we can do more to reduce emissions and actually offer them some incentives to come here. We’re asking legislature to give them special lower energy rates if they bring new infrastructure and jobs to Utah and if they use energy efficiency methods on the buildings that they make. And that is something we can’t do under the law and we’re asking legislature to be able to offer that incentive to companies that exist in Utah and want to come to Utah.”

Murphy is referring to a program called STEP - Utah’s Sustainable Transportation and Energy Plan. Some key features of the proposal are clean air and energy, economic development and sustainable energy policy.

He said that people are doing great things to improve air quality like using LED lights which greatly reduces electricity use.

“A lot of the changes are occurring because of technology," Murphy said. "People are starting to generate their own power. More people are looking into batteries and storing their own electricity and so we have to be ahead of the curve so we can be giving our customers all of their energy needs.” 

Fifty-six percent of emission is caused by motor vehicles with  businesses and houses causing an additional 32 percent of the pollution.