Letters to the editor | April 9 edition
Published 1:30 am Wednesday, April 8, 2026
Let the sun power our future
Did you know that three hours of free electricity per day will be available to households in Australia through their Solar Sharer Program, beginning this July?
The program is a result of rapid adoption of renewable energy, particularly rooftop solar, which now routinely drives mid-day wholesale electric prices to zero. Households with batteries will be able to store free electricity and use it other times of the day. Those who charge their electric vehicles at midday can travel for free on sunbeams.
In Australia, rooftop solar costs less than one third as much as in the US. The Australian government simply got out of the way and allowed a free market to work. In the US, solar is mired in government red tape, and the growth of renewables has been slowed by political monkey-wrenching by vested interests.
Clean, affordable electricity is not just a financial issue, it’s a climate issue. Electrifying everything as quickly as we can is the foundation of any effective climate policy. Cost reductions for solar and batteries have been jaw-dropping; battery prices have fallen by a factor of ten in the past ten years.
Innovations and cost reductions in complementary areas like transmission, advanced geothermal, efficiency, and controls make renewables-based grids feasible and the sensible choice.
One might hope that Washington would learn from Australia. But instead of fixing regulatory problems that keep our state near the bottom in deploying renewables, our legislators have shifted their attention to promoting nuclear power. $25 million from our state’s capital budget has been committed to an X-energy project for small modular reactors at Hanford. 1 That start-up company’s technology is dangerous, unproven, uninsurable, expensive, and years away from operation. It will increase weapons proliferation risks, create foreign fuel dependency, and leave a legacy of toxic, carcinogenic, mutagenic, and teratogenic waste.
My guess is that most Vashonites would prefer meeting their energy needs by harnessing the sun, wind, and rain. A motion to convey that preference to our elected officials will be considered by the Vashon-Maury Community Council on April 16 at 7 pm.
Rob Briggs
When did advocacy become a crime?
Since moving to Vashon in 2000, I have been providing advocacy to those who are in need. My first winter on Vashon, I provided free tax preparation and continued until 2015, including assisting people apply for the Senior Property Tax Exemption. I have advocated for parents and students in acquiring assistance for disabilities at VISD, and helped people access health and dental care and access benefits via DSHS.
Over the years I have advocating for Vashon’s homeless population, as a volunteer with the Vashon Interfaith Council to Prevent Homelessness and interfaced with Vashon Youth and Family Services and Vashon Household.
I have gotten to know the homeless population, and we have formed a mutual respect for each other.
Island Center Homes is the first King County demonstration project of congregate housing. Vashon is the experiment, and I certainly want this project to succeed. When people who have been unhoused for many, many years are moved into housing that is shared with other people, problems will come up. An onsite social worker is critical to help tenants access the mental health and other social services that they need, otherwise adjusting to communal living and moving forward to a better future is almost impossible.
My pointing out VHH’s lack of an on-site social worker, and helping a tenant understand their legal rights when faced with eviction, has earned me being trespassed from all Vashon Household properties, “…due to an ongoing and escalating disruption on those said properties.”
This trespass warning came just 11 days after the Beachcomber front page article, “One year in, conflict emerges at Island Center Homes” was printed.
Some of the people living at ICHs have no phones. This has made it more difficult for us to be in contact with each other. Is VHH saying none of their tenants can chose who they want to advocate for them? Is VHH saying none of their tenants can chose who can visit with them?
I guess believing in due process, making things public and mostly advocating for those who ask, seems to be my crime from VHH’s perspective.
Hilary Emmer
Whoops 2
Would you sign a contract without knowing a price or a delivery date? Would you sign a contract that required payment even if the product never arrived or never worked? HB-2103, a bill introduced in our State legislature this past session, would have allowed that to happen for new energy projects.
Something similar happened in the early 1980’s. Some of you may remember the nuclear power debacle that became known as WHOOPS, when two 75% completed nuclear power plants and two others planned by Washington Public Power Supply System were abandoned, resulting in the world’s largest municipal bond default at the time. Ratepayers are still paying off that debt today.
HB-2103 proposed to amend an existing law that allows cities and public entities needing electricity to sign contracts for renewable energy projects while they are being built. The existing law requires contracts for such projects to have upper cost limits, providing financial protection for utility customers.
Proposed amendments in HB-2103 prohibit upper cost limits. They also require payment for projects while they are being constructed, even if they never get completed or if they never produce any electricity. Another amendment adds nuclear power reactors, an inherently dangerous technology, which throughout its history has been plagued with construction delays, cost over-runs, and project cancellations, to the list of eligible energy projects. These proposed changes are alarming.
Joe Fitzgibbon, our representative, co-sponsored this bill, which shifts risk from developers onto us, utility ratepayers. This is unfair, particularly when much of the electricity is slated for use by highly profitable corporations headed by billionaires to run AI. Those who choose to invest money in risky, untested nuclear power projects should bear the cost risks, not the public or ratepayers.
Fortunately, HB-2103 didn’t progress out of Committee this session, but it could be resurrected next session. Don’t let history repeat itself. Let legislators know we don’t want Whoops2!
Virginia Lohr
