On the Dirty Energy Policy Front

While Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work’s work is main­ly focused on help­ing you win grass­roots vic­to­ries, we’ve had to weigh in on some state and nation­al poli­cies that would have major con­se­quences for how many bad ideas need to be fought. Mis­guid­ed poli­cies aim­ing to lim­it coal or cli­mate pol­lu­tion con­tin­ue to push (fracked) gas and biomass/waste incin­er­a­tion as false solu­tions. We encour­age you to look over some of the well-doc­u­ment­ed com­ments we put togeth­er and to bor­row from them in your own work, as needed.

EPA’s CO2 Rule for New Fos­sil Fuel Pow­er Plants: thank you to the near­ly 600 of you who respond­ed to our action alert in May, telling EPA that loop­holes for “clean coal” / car­bon seques­tra­tion, nat­ur­al gas, bio­mass and waste incin­er­a­tion are unacceptable!

Depart­ment of Ener­gy Sub­si­dies for Incin­er­a­tors: a Solyn­dra-relat­ed pro­gram to pro­vide bil­lions in loan guar­an­tees to renew­able ener­gy and ener­gy effi­cien­cy would sub­si­dize trash and bio­mass incin­er­a­tors and bio­fu­els, even though the pro­gram is required to fund only tech­nolo­gies that reduce green­house gas­es. These tech­nolo­gies are among the worst green­house gas emit­ters! With­in just six days, over the 3‑day Memo­r­i­al Day week­end, we pulled togeth­er 131 groups on a sign-on let­ter chal­leng­ing this, includ­ing about 100 grass­roots or state/regional groups from 27 states plus DC and Puer­to Rico as well as about 30 nation­al / inter­na­tion­al groups, includ­ing some of the big greens: Clean Water Action, Earth­jus­tice, Food & Water Watch, Friends of the Earth, Green­peace USA and Sier­ra Club.

COMING UP: EPA’s CO2 Rule for Exist­ing Fos­sil Fuel Pow­er Plants: this rule just came out this week, and is rid­dled with loop­holes as we expect­ed. We’re con­cerned that this rule does far too lit­tle (near­ly 2/3rds of the reduc­tions required by 2020 over 2005 emis­sions lev­els were already accom­plished with­out any rule!), and that it could do more harm than good by encour­ag­ing a switch from coal to fuels more pol­lut­ing than coal for the cli­mate, like nat­ur­al gas and bio­mass/waste incin­er­a­tion. Bio­mass is 50% worse than coal for the cli­mate; trash incin­er­a­tion 2.5 times worse.

The plan also would keep open risky and dan­ger­ous old nuclear pow­er plants that the indus­try recent­ly decid­ed it wants to close, and sub­si­dize the build­ing of new reac­tors, suck­ing up the mon­ey we need for a gen­uine tran­si­tion to clean ener­gy. Coal is already on the decline with­out a CO2 rule due to activism and geol­o­gy (we’ve used much of it up and the remain­der is get­ting too expen­sive to extract). This rule is so weak that it’ll do less than what would hap­pen any­way, but could make things worse if we don’t beat down these false solutions.

EPA’s Waste-to-Fuels (WTF) Dereg­u­la­tion: We’re work­ing with Earth­jus­tice and the Glob­al Anti-Incin­er­a­tor Alliance (GAIA) to fig­ure out how to stop this dread­ful trend to rede­fine wastes into unreg­u­lat­ed “fuels” that can be burned in any of about one mil­lion boil­ers in the nation’s indus­tries, schools, hos­pi­tals and oth­er businesses.

In the States: We’ve com­ment­ed and tes­ti­fied on sev­er­al flawed ener­gy and waste bills in Mary­land that would encour­age bio­mass and waste incin­er­a­tion, none of which passed by the end of this year’s ses­sion. We’ve also recent­ly com­ment­ed on Mary­land’s incin­er­a­tor-friend­ly draft Zero Waste Plan and filed com­ments on New York’s new Ener­gy Plan.  Feel free to bor­row from our com­ments in your own advo­ca­cy.  We’re also work­ing with the Wash­ing­ton, DC City Coun­cil to ban sty­ro­foam and adopt a zero waste plan that would start curb­side com­post­ing, make elec­tron­ic waste recy­cling more respon­si­ble, and end the city’s use of incinerators.