TVA Announces Old Coal Retirements

Last Friday the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) announced a new vision for its energy portfolio at their August Board meeting. (We will be blogging on this in more detail soon.)
TVA CEO Tom Kilgore expressed the hope that TVA will become “one of the nation’s leading providers of low-cost and cleaner energy by 2020″. One of [...]

Time to crack down on toxic coal ash

SACE is closely following the issue of coal ash waste, and the proposed Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule to finally regulate the toxic by-product of burning coal.  To highlight the importance of this issue and the opportunities to get involved, we are re-publishing our national ally 1Sky’s post on coal ash below.
After reading this post, [...]

Dysfunctional politics continues to stall confirmation of TVA Board nominees

Nearly a year after President Obama nominated four people to fill vacant seats on TVA’s Board of Directors, and 6 months after the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works unanimously approved the nominations, it seems backdoor politics and partisan bickering are keeping the Board nominees from final confirmation by the Senate.
We see no reason [...]

Appeals Court Undermines Regional Clean Air

The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Virginia, struck a very serious blow to Southeast air quality last week when it overturned an interstate nuisance ruling in the case of Tennessee Valley Authority vs. North Carolina. The appeals court ruled that the state of North Carolina could not claim a public nuisance against a [...]

Legal Victory Spells Trouble for Plant Washington

This week marked a major victory for clean water and a step in the right direction for clean energy in Georgia, as a judge threw out water use permits for the proposed coal-fired Plant Washington. The denial of these permits could require the Georgia Environmental Protection Division (EPD) to take another hard look at [...]

Dams in the desert, windmills in the doldrums, biopower in the Berkshires

From SACE’s perspective, the Manomet study of biomass and carbon offers an important new way to describe and think-through the possible impacts on the climate from biomass energy. Although the study’s findings are limited in geographic scope, the methodology can be applied elsewhere to great benefit.

The Time Is Now, We Can Wait No Longer

This blog is a special re-post from the original Huffington Post blog by Gloria Reuben.  Gloria is a nationally known environmental activist and a special 
advisor to The Alliance for Climate Protection.
Last fall I traveled to West Virginia to witness mountaintop removal coal mining. I had never seen such destruction of the environment by [...]

The Southeast Has A Ten Billion Coal Dollar Habit

In 2008, Southeastern utilities spent six times more on coal from Colombia (yes, the country in South America) than they did helping their customers cut energy waste at home.
In fact, the Southeast spent over $10 billion in 2008 to import coal from other states and countries to fuel power plants, according to a [...]

New GA Report Offers Efficiency Alternatives to Dirty Coal

On Tuesday, March 9th the Ochs Center for Metropolitan Studies out of Chattanooga, TN released a report entitled, “Energy Efficiency as an Alternative Strategy for the Power4Georgians EMC“.  The report identifies how the Electric Membership Corporations (EMCs) investing in the Plant Washington coal facility would benefit their local communities by investing in energy efficiency instead.
According [...]

NC Experts Spar Over Future Energy Plans

John D. Wilson co-wrote this blog.
What’s the future for energy in the Tarheel state? This week, the North Carolina Utilities Commission (NCUC) considered the energy plans of Duke Energy, Progress Energy and Dominion Power. Each year, North Carolina utilities are required to update their 15-year plan. An Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) explains how each utility [...]