Welcome to Energy Justice Now!

Wel­come to Ener­gy Jus­tice Now, Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work’s first month­ly newsletter!

Ener­gy Jus­tice Now will pro­vide crit­i­cal report­ing on the entire spec­trum of the dirty ener­gy resis­tance, high­light­ing the voic­es of com­mu­ni­ty orga­niz­ers bat­tling fos­sil fuels, nuclear pow­er, and bio­mass and waste incin­er­a­tion from sea to shin­ing sea. We are accept­ing sub­mis­sions at nia­by [at] ener­gyjus­tice [dot] net.

Some of you are on our email dis­cus­sion lists while oth­ers may not have heard from us in years. We’re hap­py to now be at a point where we can engage and sup­port more peo­ple, and let you all know what we’re doing.

Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work exists to build, sup­port and net­work grass­roots com­mu­ni­ty orga­ni­za­tions fight­ing dirty and unnec­es­sary ener­gy and waste indus­try facil­i­ties. We’ve helped com­mu­ni­ties win vic­to­ries against coal and gas-fired pow­er plants, incin­er­a­tors of every sort (trash, ‘bio­mass,’ tires, poul­try waste, sewage sludge, med­ical waste…), land­fills, frack­ing, pipelines, refiner­ies, ethanol biore­finer­ies, nuclear facil­i­ties and more.

Our approach includes con­nect­ing peo­ple fight­ing sim­i­lar indus­tries so that they’re help­ing one anoth­er as a net­work, rather than our try­ing to only pro­vide top-down sup­port. Through net­work-build­ing, we help bring peo­ple from a Not In My Back­yard (NIMBY) mind­set to a Not in Any­one’s Back­yard (NIABY) approach toward dirty tech­nolo­gies for which clean alter­na­tives exist.

In 2006, we pulled togeth­er the nation’s first and only grass­roots “No New Coal Plants” net­work, con­tribut­ing to the defeat of 85% of 200+ coal pow­er plant pro­pos­als. We also brought togeth­er a nation­al grass­roots move­ment against “bio­mass” incin­er­a­tors (burn­ing trees, wood waste, poul­try waste and more), and saw 45 pro­pos­als for bio­mass and oth­er waste incin­er­a­tors defeat­ed with­in our net­work just since 2010. We hope to do the same soon for those fight­ing the hun­dreds of gas-fired pow­er plants now pro­posed. With­out the big mon­ey oth­er groups have to bring peo­ple togeth­er for nation­al con­fer­ences, we’ve con­nect­ed peo­ple via email dis­cus­sion lists and con­fer­ence calls.

Our work focus­es on pro­vid­ing tools grass­roots com­mu­ni­ty activists need to win. This includes pro­vid­ing strat­e­gy and orga­niz­ing advice, research sup­port, infor­ma­tion of many sorts (on prob­lems with tech­nolo­gies and fuels, cor­po­rate track records, rel­e­vant pub­lic poli­cies…), speaking/training, local envi­ron­men­tal ordi­nances, map­ping tools, con­nect­ing stu­dent and com­mu­ni­ty activists, and much more. For more info, see our web­site for our his­to­ry, accom­plish­ments and to learn about the ser­vices we provide.