TVA wind purchases open the door to new opportunities

Quietly, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) has been signing contracts with several wind developers that will put the federal utility in a position to significantly grow its wind energy portfolio in 2012, if all goes to plan. eastern_study_region

Over the past 5 months, TVA has announced multiple contracts with Invenergy Wind, CPV Renewable Energy Co., Iberdrola Renewables, and most recently Horizon Wind, adding up to 1,380 MW of contracted wind energy purchases by the end of 2012.  These contracts are in direct response to the December 2008 Request for Proposals released by TVA for up to 2,000 MW of renewable energy, a strategy the TVA says is important to reach their goal of producing 50% of their electricity from zero or near-zero carbon emissions by 2020. Read more…

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TV Ads Challenge Investment in New Reactors

Last week, Friends of the Earth launched two television ads challenging $54.5 billion in loan guarantees the Obama Administration proposed to hand out for the construction of the first new nuclear reactors in the U.S. in 30 years. The 30-second television ads, “Family” and “Risk,” will run in both South Carolina and Georgia. In South Carolina, two new nuclear reactors are proposed to be built at the V.C. Summer plant — a site in the running for loan guarantees also being challenged by Friends of the Earth in South Carolina State Supreme Court. The ads will also run in Georgia, where the first of the Obama Administration’s loan guarantees were awarded earlier in the month — $8.3 billion for the two proposed nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle. Read more…

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72 hours to urge support for Clean American Power

cleanpower_72Today kicks off a 72 hour call-in campaign to ensure the United States Senate knows there is support for energy and climate policies that will put us on a path towards energy independence and a clean energy economy.

There is also a real and growing threat that Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and allies in both the Senate and the House of Representatives may call for votes on their “Dirty Air Act” proposals in an attempt to weaken protections offered by the decades-old, seminal environmental law known as the Clean Air Act.

Consider taking five minutes over the next three days to place a call to your Senator(s) and add your voice to this campaign!  You can easily register and then use our national ally 1Sky’s Click-to-Call system during your lunch break.

All of us involved in this campaign recognize that investing in a clean energy future now, we can create millions of jobs, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and tackle climate change — all at the same time. It’s time to ensure that our elected leaders recognize this, too.

Not Safe, Clean or Affordable - Vermont Votes to Close Nuclear Plant

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Cooling Tower Collapse at VT Yankee, Courtesy of VYDA.org

The so-called “Nuclear Renaissance” touted by proponents hit a brick wall recently when the Vermont State Senate voted 26-4 to prevent the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant from operating past 2012. This bi-partisan blow occurred just a week after President Obama announced $8.3 billion in controversial nuclear loan guarantees for Southern Company’s proposed two new reactors at Plant Vogtle in Georgia.

Read more…

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Cobb EMC in Georgia Tops List of Bad Coop Practices

Last week in Atlanta, the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) held their annual meeting, which brought together leaders from over 900 Electric billofrightsMembership Cooperatives (EMCs) across the country.  The annual meeting provides an opportunity for EMC leaders to discuss issues facing their cooperatives and strategies to ensure the long term stability of individual EMCs.  In response to this national gathering, an informal analysis of EMC operations was released highlighting the best and worst practices of select cooperatives in the country.  One of the very worst in the nation, according to the report, is right here, in Georgia’s backyard - Cobb EMC. Read more…

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Connecting the dots: how clean energy policies lead to green jobs in the Southeast

greenjobsLast week, the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy helped coordinate two Congressional tours at clean energy manufacturing facilities here in the Southeast to visibly demonstrate the link between progressive clean energy policies and the green jobs that can result.

On Tuesday, February 16, U.S. Senator Kay Hagan (NC) joined a SACE-ally, American Wind Energy Association, for a tour of a Shelby, NC-based PPG Industries’ plant.   The tour provided the opportunity for the senator to see one step in the wind-energy supply chain: fiberglass sheets production that will eventually become wind-turbine rotor blades.  The tour enabled the senator to speak directly with a few of the plant’s 500 employees and the plant manager pointed out that a modest 20% by 2020 Renewable Energy Standard would enable PPG to add about 250 workers with an increased demand for their products. Read more…

Reducing Diesel Emissions in Georgia Workshop

Diesel Pollution Has A Solution

On Monday, Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE), Mothers & Others for Clean Air (MOCA) and the University of Georgia (UGA) hosted a workshop and air quality demonstration in Athens, GA. The event was held as part of a $1.7 million stimulus grant from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to Athens-Clarke County (ACC), University of Georgia (UGA), and Washington County to install pollution control devices (retrofits) to reduce toxic emissions from diesel transit buses and municipal vehicles. MOCA and SACE are leading the project’s outreach and education efforts.

Diesel exhaust contains particulate matter, black carbon, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and more than 40 hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) – all of which are dangerous to human health, especially to the developing bodies of children. The fine particles in diesel soot are so small that they penetrate deep into the lungs and get into the blood stream.  Breathing diesel exhaust can contribute to both chronic and acute human health problems such as asthma attacks, reduced lung function, lung disease, cancer and even premature death. Analysis based on EPA’s most recent National Air Toxics Assessment data concluded that diesel exhaust poses a cancer risk that is 7 times greater than all 181 air toxics studied combined.

Read more…

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Have an uninformed climate change denier; there is an app for that

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Ever find yourself in a debate with a climate change denier or anyone attempting to undermine the science behind global climate change? A new iPhone app offers a list of common skeptic arguments and what the science says on each argument.  Whenever you encounter a denier, you can easily refute their claims by choosing from a list of rebuttals actually founded in scientific data.

We’re not all scientists, and we don’t all have iPhones, but we are interested in learning about how to respond to a climate skeptic.  Real Climate, a website offering accurate climate information, has launched a wiki that can help us debunk popular climate nonsense we find in the media.

The site indexes op-ed pieces that are specifically written to confuse, obfuscate and abuse the science behind climate change. Under each article, there are links to rebuttals of specific arguments and overall critiques of the pieces. Next time you’re digging out of a major snowstorm and your neighbor snidely remarks, “So much for global warming,” you’ll know exactly how to respond.

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Nuclear loans provide a false solution to climate change

I was on CNN yesterday responding to the nuclear loan guarantee announcement by President Obama.  We are seriously disappointed in this action and SACE released a statement warning against the risk loan guarantees will put on taxpayers.

As outlined in a blog entry from last week, we feel the administration is making a serious mistake by offering financing for nuclear energy. It appears to be an effort to reach out to Senate Republicans, who have perfected the art of saying “no” and derailed the President’s agenda, including cap and trade.

Read more…

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No Solution, Just More Pollution

pollutionWhen the 111th Congress reconvened last month, Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) introduced a “disapproval resolution” (S.J. Res 26) which many in the environmental community are calling the “Dirty Air Act.”  What may seem like a simple statement of disapproval is actually a back-door attempt to use Senate procedures to cripple an essential environmental law.

Sen. Murkowski, and the 38 senators who joined her, intend to eliminate the Clean Air Act’s legal authority to crack down on dirty coal plants.  Protecting the full authority of the landmark Clean Air Act legislation, which the conservative-leaning Supreme Court upheld in its 2007 MA vs. EPA decision, is critical because it gives us a way to hold dirty energy companies accountable for their global warming pollution until Congress gets serious about passing climate and energy legislation. Read more…

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