New Year, New Work

I hope you have been enjoy­ing the break, hol­i­days, win­ter weath­er and new year. New Year is prob­a­bly my favorite hol­i­day of the year, and it’s not just because of the par­ties. New Year is a time of seri­ous reflec­tion. A time to look back on the past year and con­sid­er what you did, and what kind of impact you are hav­ing on the world around you. Here at Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work we are proud of the work did in 2010 and eager to raise the bar in 2011. Here are some of our cur­rent projects.

Pow­er Shift 2011

It is now offi­cial­ly Pow­er Shift recruit­ment sea­son! Pow­er Shift will be held April 1–4 in D.C. It is a nation­al youth con­fer­ence held in D.C. every oth­er year and an incred­i­ble oppor­tu­ni­ty for young peo­ple to meet oth­er like-mind­ed young adults. Par­tic­i­pants of the sum­mit are pas­sion­ate about the envi­ron­ment, glob­al cli­mate change, polit­i­cal action, ener­gy issues, pol­i­cy mak­ing and activism, which makes Pow­er Shift an elec­tric place to be. 

This year has already start­ed with a bang: in just two weeks over 200 grass­roots lead­ers have signed up to be Pow­er Shift Coor­di­na­tors! Pow­er Shift Coor­di­na­tors recruit, raise funds and secure trans­porta­tion to DC so that their community/campus can par­tic­i­pate in this extra­or­di­nary event. 

If you’re inter­est­ed in becom­ing a Pow­er Shift Coor­di­na­tor, sign up here: http://energyactioncoalition.org/powershift2011/organize

Relat­ed Links

CNN report on Pow­er Shift:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etjx92rUONw&feature=channel

Pow­er Shift Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9kgn8uCa‑o&feature=player_embedded

EAC Pow­er Shift Blog Post:

http://energyactioncoalition.org/content/big-news-power-shift-2011-set-april‑1–4

At EJN we have embarked on an incred­i­ble endeav­or: we are map­ping all of the exist­ing, pro­posed, closed and defeat­ed dirty ener­gy and waste facil­i­ties in the Unit­ed States. We are build­ing a net­work of com­mu­ni­ty groups to fight the facil­i­ties and the cor­po­ra­tions behind them. We hope that this tool will be a help­ful resource to activists, wher­ev­er they may be fight­ing for a clean, zero-emis­sions future. 

Our map­ping site goes way beyond map­ping, and is fun as well as use­ful. Not only is this a great resource to visu­al­ize the state of dirty ener­gy in Amer­i­ca, but it also works as a social net­work, allow­ing you to con­nect with oth­er activists local­ly and nation­al­ly. List your group so oth­er activists will be able to con­tact you with infor­ma­tion, ideas, and encour­age­ment. Post a pic­ture of your­self or a dirty ener­gy facil­i­ty near you. Track facil­i­ties you’re inter­est­ed in or find out about a new pro­pos­al and map a dirty facil­i­ty in your area. Log on to our new map­ping site and play around! 

You can check out this cool new fea­ture of our site here: http://www.ejmap.org/

Our map­ping fea­ture is cur­rent­ly in beta. If you run into any prob­lems, please email us. We are always look­ing for more feedback.

The Tire Incinerator

The fight con­tin­ues against tire burn­ing (or “tires-to-ener­gy”). The project – tout­ed as a green ener­gy solu­tion – is a Tire Derived Fuel (TDF) burn­ing facil­i­ty. It will use two Cir­cu­lat­ing Flu­idized Bed (CFB) boil­ers to burn 900 tons of tires a day to heat a boil­er to cre­ate steam to turn a tur­bine cre­at­ing 90MW of elec­tric­i­ty. For those who aren’t up to date, here is a quick his­to­ry lesson.

His­to­ry

Erie Renew­able Ener­gy (ERE), along with part­ner Calet­ta Renew­able Ener­gy, first pro­posed their incin­er­a­tor project sev­er­al years ago in Erie, PA. After being kicked out of Erie by local oppo­si­tion and envi­ron­men­tal group Keep Erie’s Env­iorn­ment Pro­tect­ed (sup­port­ed by EJN), ERE decid­ed to do some­thing real­ly greasy. First, they changed their name to Craw­ford Renew­able Ener­gy (CRE). Then, sur­prise, they decid­ed the project should be moved to Green­wood Town­ship, Craw­ford Coun­ty, PA, where, accord­ing to the 2000 cen­sus (dur­ing bet­ter eco­nom­ic times than these), the per capi­ta income for the town­ship was only $14,584.

Let me stop here and point out a few of the many seri­ous prob­lems with this pro­pos­al. The 36.5 mil­lion scrap tires need­ed year­ly to run the facil­i­ty, for exam­ple, don’t seem to exist. The pro­posed site is adja­cent to Con­neaut Marsh, a rare wet­land, home to our state’s largest breed­ing pop­u­la­tion of bald eagles. Craw­ford Renew­able Ener­gy isn’t even address­ing the lin­guis­tic prob­lem with its pro­pos­al – the use of the word renewable.

No state laws in Penn­syl­va­nia or neigh­bor­ing states qual­i­fy ener­gy pro­duced from burn­ing tires as renew­able or “alter­na­tive” ener­gy. No envi­ron­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions con­sid­er tire incin­er­a­tion renew­able. No renew­able ener­gy cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­grams do. Tires are pro­duced from fos­sil fuels and oth­er non-renew­able resources. It should be clear they are not renew­able. Yet dirty ener­gy pro­duc­ers spend lots of mon­ey to con­fuse the con­ver­sa­tion and influ­ence the lan­guage. Next time you hear the word “renew­able,” beware.

Cur­rent Situation

In late April, Craw­ford Area Res­i­dents for the Envi­ron­ment (CARE) was formed with the imme­di­ate goal of oppos­ing the tire incin­er­a­tor. Since then CARE has worked to inform the com­mu­ni­ty on the dan­gers of the project as well as address local and region­al offi­cials with con­cerns. Togeth­er, we are doing every­thing we can to pre­vent the con­struc­tion of this incin­er­a­tor.

Alleghe­ny Col­lege decid­ed to step out and facil­i­tate a non par­ti­san debate on this issue. Although in no way affil­i­at­ed with CARE or EJN we cer­tain­ly com­mend CEED for con­tin­u­ing the dis­cus­sion and edu­cat­ing the pub­lic. CARE and EJN will also host a pub­lic meet­ing. While we don’t have a date planned yet we hope to get local press to the event and real­ly spread the truth about tire burn­ing with the public.

As you can tell we have been keep­ing busy and are mov­ing full steam ahead into the new year. We have every inten­tion of con­tin­u­ing to work on these issues, as well as increas­ing our load. We are going to help sup­port more com­mu­ni­ties threat­ened by dirty ener­gy pol­luters. We are also always look­ing for vol­un­teers who can sup­port our efforts. If you think you might be inter­est­ed in help­ing out, please send me an email and let me know hours you’re avail­able to help.

Look­ing ahead into 2011, I see an excit­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty. A brand new year is a clean slate. It is a chance to get active, join a cause, donate time and/or mon­ey, come to Pow­er Shift – a brand new year to make a difference. 

I hope this year you’ll join me!

Peace.