I can’t help but notice that Rep. Pricey Harrison is in the news a lot lately. Earlier this week, there was her big box bag recycling bill, which the N&R dissed. She’s spiked Guilford County Commissioner Billy Yow’s one-cent sales tax once already and will have the opportunity to do so again.

(“You got Pricey Harrelson that jumped out against this and she trying to make everybody more interested in changing a light bulb in their house than trying this a brighter place to live and save energy,” Yow said at last night’s meeting).

But there’s more subtle news involving Harrison. Sun Edison’s decision to build a solar farm is being hailed as direct result of last year’s state energy law in which she played a key role:

State Rep. Pricey Harrison, D-Guilford, said that renewable-energy systems such as SunEdison’s proposed solar farm are “precisely” what legislators were hoping for when they drafted the energy law last year. Harrison is one of the leaders in the General Assembly on environmental issues and was a key writer of the energy law.

“By requiring a solar set-aside, it was our hope that we would create a domestic market for solar power in North Carolina,” Harrison said.

Now there’s Fibrowatt, which burns chicken litter for electricity. Thanks to the energy law,that Harrison helped write, Fibrowatt’s got the market locked, so all they need to do is decide which city is offering up the better deal, and a 30-year moratorium on annexation sounds like a pretty good deal. Note the story is spun that Firbrowatt is backing off that request, but only after the Elkin Board of Commissioners “decided the chances of forcibly annexing them were unlikely,” according to Mayor Lestine Hutchens. Thinking about this week’s debate on a possible annexation moratorium, a lot of ordinary citizens would like Fibrowatt’s chances. But the odds are stacked against them.

Harrison’s name pops up again in an analysis of the Fibrowatt deal by Environment NC’s Geoff Lawrence. First, the bad news: Burning chicken litter produces more pollutants than coal. Now the good news: Chicken litter is more reliable source of power than solar.

In fairness, Harrison was aware that companies burning chicken litter would get an advantage, stating

“There was a reason to put in a solar set-aside, but I couldn’t really rationalize, from my perspective, the set-asides for the poultry or the swine industries. It was really benefiting a couple of specific industries.”

But it doesn’t change the fact that the law carves out markets for one source that’s unreliable and the another source doesn’t burn so clean. Gives you the feeling that the state’s renewable energy law just isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be.

Hey, this isn’t meant as a shot at Pricey. I’ve just seen her name a lot lately, and I thought I’d share my observations.