Tag Archives: Sierra Club

Renewable Portfolio Standards: GA, NC, and ALEC

Renewable Energy Portfolio Standards (RPS) are being proposed in Georgia and ALEC is trying to do away with them in North Carolina. If ALEC doesn’t like them, there must be something good about RPS. Let’s get on with real renewable energy in Georgia.

In Georgia, HB 503, sponsored by Karla Drenner, Carol Fullerton, Debbie Buckner, Scott Holcomb, Spencer Frye, and Earnest Smith, would create a Renewable Energy Credits Trading program as part of renewable portfolio standards, as Kyle wrote for Spencer Frye’s blog 10 March 2013, Let the Sunshine In. Unfortunately, HB 503 includes biomass as a renewable energy source. Maybe they just mean landfill gas, which I consider a special case since it’s being produced anyway, and since methane is worse as a greenhouse gas than CO2, burning landfill gas makes some sense. Nope, in the actual bill, 46-3-71 (1):

‘Biomass material’ means organic matter, excluding fossil fuels and black liquor, including agricultural crops, plants, trees, wood, wood wastes and residues, sawmill waste, sawdust, wood chips, bark chips, and forest thinning, harvesting, or clearing residues; wood waste from pallets or other wood demolition debris; peanut shells; cotton plants; corn stalks; and plant matter, including aquatic plants, grasses, stalks, vegetation, and residues, including hulls, shells, or cellulose containing fibers

The barn door in there is “harvesting”, which can mean whole trees, but the rest isn’t much better. We don’t need to be burning things that increase atmospheric CO2 and end up stripping our forests. In North Carolina they staretd with just tops and limbs and then tried to escalate to whole trees. We already fought off the biomass boondoggle here in south Georgia; let’s not have it encouraged statewide. Especially when we have better solutions: solar and wind power. HB 503 isn’t going to get passed this year, since it didn’t make crossover day, so maybe its sponsors can clean up that biomass mess before they submit it again.

Speaking of North Carolina, Continue reading →

$1.88 billion and more on Kemper Coal to be charged to Mississippi Power customers

Risks at Southern Company’s Kemper Coal plant in Mississippi? Push those costs onto the public, of course! Southern Company and its subsidiary Mississippi Power got the MS Public Service Commissioners to approve super-CWIP (Construction Work in Progress) for Kemper Coal: automatic rate increases for MS Power customers for years. Just like Southern Company and its biggest subsidiary Georgia Power got the Georgia legislature to approve Super-CWIP for the new nukes at Plant Vogtle back in 2009. And both CWIP projects are already over budget. How about we cancel those boondoggles and build solar and wind instead?

AP reported 13 December 2012, After spending $1.88 billion, Southern Co. still faces risks on plant in Kemper County,

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Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer —Sierra Club

Sierra Club, one of the oldest, largest, and most influential grassroots environmental activist groups in the U.S., has been tentatively anti-nuke since 1974, observing now that none of its conditions of energy conservation, reactor safety, nuclear fuel disposal, weapons proliferation, or adequate regulation have ever been met, has come out unequivocably against nuclear power.

Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer

The Sierra Club remains unequivocally opposed to nuclear energy. Although nuclear plants have been in operation for less than 60 years, we now have seen three serious disasters.

Tragically, it took a horrific disaster in Japan to remind the world that none of the fundamental problems with nuclear power have ever been addressed.

Besides reactor safety, both nuclear proliferation and the required long-term storage of nuclear waste (which remains lethal for more than 100,000 years) make nuclear power a uniquely dangerous energy technology for humanity.

Plenty of links in that Sierra Club page.

Sierra Club is one of the first two of the 99 sponsors of the Forward on Climate rally, high noon Sunday 17 February 2013 on the National Mall in Washington D.C. I’ll be there. How about you?

-jsq

Help Sierra Club send a message to Georgia Power CEO Bowers

Georgia Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign probably contributed to Georgia Power’s recent decision to shut down some coal plants. Now Sierra Club offers a petition to ask Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers to go farther, and replace those coal plants with solar offshore wind power for jobs and health for Georgia.

Dirty Coal is Out, Help Usher Clean Energy In!

Georgia Power recently announced their plans to retire three of their oldest and dirtiest coal fired power plants. Now, we must send a clear message to Georgia Power’s leadership that we want to keep Georgia Jobs by investing in homegrown clean energy and energy efficiency to power our homes and businesses.

Send a message to Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers telling him to replace dirty coal with investments in homegrown clean energy and energy efficiency that can produce thousands of lasting Georgia jobs.

It’s a petition; details here.

Seth Gunning explained why in Sierra Club PR:

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Another $3.5 billion nuclear cost overruns coming —David Staples @ HBA 2012-10-18

David A. Staples running for the Georgia Public Service Commission for District 5, talked about the ethical conflicts of the incumbents who take almost all of their campaign contributions from people associated with the utilities they regulate. Then he mentioned that the new nuclear reactors Georgia Power is building for Southern Company at Plant Vogtle have another $3.5 billion in cost overruns coming.

This is after the PSC incumbents just rubberstamped the Vogtle budget in August, and on top of the $900 million in cost overruns we already knew about. That $900 million was already more than 6% of the originally-projected $14 billion total cost. If it’s now $3.5 + $0.9 = $4.4 billion, that’s more than 31% over the original total. Maybe we should vote in some PSC members and legislators who will stop this nonsense.

Here’s the video:

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Elect Georgia Public Service Commissioners to represent you

GA PSC The Georgia Public Service Commission decides how much you pay for energy. If you’re tired of Georgia Power’s three-legged nuclear regulatory-capture stool and Georgia lagging far behind other states in solar and wind energy, or you just want PSC members who will represent you and who do not accept massive campaign contributions from the utilities they regulate or their employees or lawyers like the incumbents do; the incumbents who can’t even be bothered to show up for debates or to answer questionnaires.

David Staples for GA PSC Steve Oppenheimer for GA PSC Here are two GA PSC challengers who did answer a questionnaire: Democrat Steve Oppenheimer and Libertarian David Staples. Early voting has already started: you can vote for them today.

let the sun shine on Georgia While you’re at it, you can vote for statehouse legislators who will let the sun shine on Georgia.

-jsq

GA PSC questionnaire answers: Steve Oppenheimer

Steve Oppenheimer The Georgia Sierra Club sent a questionnaire to all candidates for Georgia Public Service Commission. None of the incumbents answered. The two challengers did. Here’s the one from Steve Oppenheimer for District 3. -jsq

  1. As a Candidate for Public Service Commission, what is your campaign strategy for achieving 50% +1 of the votes cast?

    [I’m omitting the answers to this question. -jsq]

  2. How should the Public Service Commission consider and weight the impacts to community health (asthma, cancer rates, etc.) and on Georgia’s environmental (water quantity, air quality etc.) when making decisions about a utility’s generation portfolio?

    The PSC has a major role shaping energy policy for Georgia. I would like to schedule PSC hearings on the relationship of power production and our air, water, morbidity and mortality and our general quality of life. My professional background in dentistry & health care provides a keen understanding of the relationship of power generation and health. Dr David Satcher, former US Surgeon General and Executive Director Satcher Health Leadership Institute at Morehouse University has become a friend and part of my professional network during the campaign. I would like to see PSC convene hearings on the topic. Georgians for a Healthy Future, a relatively new, broad based, organization would provide another forum for discussion of these issues. Membership in Georgians for a Healthy Future includes Georgia Legislators on both sides of the aisle. The PSC must be a leader on these issues—as the legislature as a body will likely not be progressive on these issues.

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GA PSC questionnaire: David Staples

David Staples The Georgia Sierra Club sent a questionnaire to all candidates for Georgia Public Service Commission. None of the incumbents answered. The two challengers did. Here’s the one from David A. Staples for District 5. -jsq

  1. As a Candidate for Public Service Commission, what is your campaign strategy for achieving 50% +1 of the votes cast?

    [I’m omitting the answers to this question. -jsq]

  2. How should the Public Service Commission consider and weight the impacts to community health (asthma, cancer rates, etc.) and on Georgia’s environmental (water quantity, air quality etc.) when making decisions about a utility’s generation portfolio?

    Impacts to community health and the environment have to be considered very carefully. I know there are a number of different ways of viewing the situation but the explanation I’ve found that works best with Republicans in trying to get their support is that it comes down to a private property matter. The right to swing ones fist ends at the other person’s nose. Does anyone have the right to pollute the air that I breathe or the water that I drink?

    If I buy a piece of property for instance along the Savannah River or Ogeechee River, does someone upstream from me have the right to pollute the water that then flows onto my land, carrying those pollutants with it?

    Absolutely not.

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Pass the Production Tax Credit for Georgia Jobs

At yesterday’s wind rally on Tybee Island, one spoke about passing the Production Tax Credit for wind jobs in Georgia.

More pictures and videos in the GA Sierra Club flickr set.

-jsq

PS: Owed to Seth Gunning.

ALEC responds to Sierra Club report

Received yesterday on Sierra Club reports on big fossil fuel’s coordinated attack on clean energy. My comments below. -jsq

Although the Sierra Club was notified of the errors in their report, they have yet to address them. In addition, neither fact checking nor communication was attempted by the Sierra Club on claims made in this report.

In response to this error-filled report , here is a short statement and brief fact check.

http://www.alec.org/fact-setting-response-to-sierra-club-report/

-Todd Wynn

And if you follow that link you find these things:

The American Legislative Exchange Council is not against renewable energy in any form….

ALEC believes that free markets in energy produce more options, more energy, lower prices and less economic disruptions. Also, ALEC believes that mandates to transform the energy sector and use renewable energy sources place the government in the unfair position of choosing winners and losers, keeping alive industries that are dependent on special interest lobbying. ALEC opposes mandates and therefore opposes infighting among fuel sources. ALEC also believes that government programs designed to encourage and advance energy technologies should not reduce energy choices or supply. They should not limit the production of electricity, for example, to only politically preferable technologies.

Translation: ALEC opposes renewable energy portfolio (REP) standards, which is one of the main points of the Sierra Club report. So ALEC’s rebuttal actually supports that point.

The rest of ALEC’s response is fiddling around the edges about Continue reading →