Welcome back.
We’ll open today with big thanks to everyone who stood out with us last Friday – and to those braving today’s soggy weather – holding signs to raise public awareness of pollution issues related to Pittsfield’s largest peaking power plant. We’re thrilled to report that Pittsfield’s Board of Health voted unanimously to write to the plant’s owner, Hull Street Energy, and request that officials explore a transition to green energy to alleviate its contribution to global warming and to lessen local health consequences.
Elsewhere, protests and actions by local activists resulted in cancellation of the Byhalia Pipeline project which appeared to have been deliberately routed through environmental justice communities in southwest Memphis. While that victory points to the possibility of a better future, a split decision by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to approve the Gulf Run pipeline points to a regulator still struggling to extract itself from the tar pit of the past.
Maine caught our attention when pro-environment Governor Janet Mills signed into law a bill prohibiting offshore wind farms in state waters. But on closer reading, it appears to make sense. The legislation protects the near-shore region, keeps the lobster industry happy, and encourages wind development in federal waters – generally more than three miles offshore.
The proposed Climate Conservation Corps got a boost this week when Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer made clear that he would prioritize its inclusion in federal infrastructure legislation currently taking shape. Inspired by Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps, the new CCC would provide a national service platform where young people can apply their energies to solve environmental and climate challenges, and prepare themselves for good jobs in the emerging green economy.
The Guardian published an excellent long article exploring some of the earliest government policy responses to emerging awareness of human-caused climate change. The historical perspective is sobering, and we followed it provocatively with a rather speculative article describing potential future problems related to the alarming buildup of plastic waste in the environment. We’re being warned again – will we act this time or follow the same path of deflection, denial, and delay?
We’re calling out Grasshopper Energy for its unacceptable disregard for indigenous artifacts located on a site it’s developing for a 2.4MW solar farm in eastern MA. Destruction of ceremonial stone landscapes is the same assault, whether it’s done for gas pipelines or clean energy.
New York based BlocPower is in the news again, having secured funding to expand its energy efficiency retrofit model to even more buildings in typically under-served communities. Transportation could also get an efficiency boost as the Biden administration aims to establish a set of milestones that encourage rapid electrification of that sector.
A new report sheds light on fossil fuel industry pollution of the Gulf of Mexico during ten years of offshore fracking. And just like last week, we close with a report that suggests further likelihood that the Goldboro LNG export facility will never be built in Nova Scotia.
For even more environmental news, info, and events, check out the latest newsletters from our colleagues at Berkshire Environmental Action Team (BEAT) and Berkshire Zero Waste Initiative (BZWI)!
— The NFGiM Team
PEAKING POWER PLANTS
‘Peaker’ power plant owner should discuss cleaner operation, Pittsfield health officials say
By Larry Parnass, The Berkshire Eagle
July 8, 2021
PITTSFIELD — A grassroots fight to curb a Pittsfield power plant’s environmental damage just won a new public ally.
Health officials in Pittsfield will appeal to the company that owns Pittsfield Generating on Merrill Road to discuss ways to shift from use of fossil fuels to lighten the plant’s carbon footprint and environmental harm.
“It’s consistent with our mission,” Brad Gordon, a member of the Board of Health, told his colleagues Wednesday.
The four-member board voted unanimously to write to the plant’s owner, Hull Street Energy, and request that officials explore a transition to green energy to alleviate its contribution to global warming and to lessen local health consequences.
That letter will go out in the days ahead, as Hull Street Energy continues to pursue a new permit from the state Department of Environmental Protection.
“I would think that we’d want to get that process moving,” said board member Steve Smith.
The move widens public calls for action. On June 30, the leader of the Tri-Town Health Department, which covers Lee, Lenox and Stockbridge, urged Hull Street Energy to clean up its act.
“Given the feasible alternative of solar energy with battery storage, the Tri-Town Health District, and its board of health members hereby strongly encourages that these outdated facilities transition to green energy to comply with reductions in emissions,” wrote James J. Wilusz.
» Read article
» Check out the Put Peakers in the Past campaign
Berkshire Environmental Group Pushing To “Put Peakers In The Past”
By Josh Landes, WAMC
July 7, 2021
Tonight, the Pittsfield, Massachusetts Board of Health will hear a petition calling for three Berkshire County power plants to transition to green energy. The Berkshire Environmental Action Team’s No Fracked Gas in Mass initiative is behind the effort. The group says it would reduce the environmental and health impacts from the “peaker” plants that come online during spikes in energy use by customers. They’ve also organized an ongoing Friday afternoon demonstration series against the plants on Dalton Avenue in Pittsfield by one of the peakers located on Merrill Road. WAMC spoke with No Fracked Gas in Mass program director Rose Wessell about the initiative.
WESSEL: No Fracked Gas in Mass started in response to the large pipeline projects that were being proposed in 2014. We initially responded to the NED pipeline, the Northeast Energy Direct, that was proposed by Kinder Morgan, and soon found that there were five large pipelines being proposed across the state at that time. Since then, that project has been withdrawn, one of the other big pipelines was withdrawn. We’ve been making sure to keep on top of new fracked gas infrastructure that was being proposed and present arguments as to why it shouldn’t be built. And now with our “Put Peakers In The Past” campaign, we’re starting to take on existing fossil fuel infrastructure that we feel has had its time and doesn’t need to be what it is anymore.
» Read article or listen to the interview
» More about peakers
PROTESTS AND ACTIONS
‘A victory for us’: Southwest Memphis residents elated as developers drop Byhalia Pipeline project
Landowners who received money from planners can keep it, eminent domain cases will be withdrawn, stakeholders told
By Carrington J. Tatum and Hannah Grabenstein, MLK50
July 2, 2021
At first, it was just a few Black residents – most elderly – in one of Memphis’ poorer neighborhoods, up against a behemoth pipeline company.
Then some younger activists showed up. They organized rallies, wrangled support from elected officials, filed and fought lawsuits. National media and celebrities took notice.
And then late Friday afternoon came the news: Developers of the Byhalia Connection Pipeline – what proponents insisted would create hundreds of jobs and what opponents called the embodiment of environmental racism and a threat to the water supply – would no longer pursue the project.
The explanation given was “lower US oil production resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic,” but at least one environmental activist gave the credit to pipeline opponents, including the grassroots Memphis Community Against the Pipeline organization.
At a hastily called gathering Friday evening at Alonzo Weaver Park in Southwest Memphis — where MCAP held most of its rallies — MCAP founder Justin J. Pearson stood with his hands stretched to the sky, thanking God.
“This is where what we view as power, met people-power, in a community they thought was powerless,” Pearson said. “It’s time to make sure we’ll never have to fight this fight again. And when we pass those laws, it will be an even bigger celebration.”
» Read article
Lawmaker Threatens to Subpoena Exxon After Secret Video
The chairman of a powerful House subcommittee said he is seeking answers from Exxon and other oil and gas giants over their role in spreading disinformation on climate change.
By Hiroko Tabuchi and Lisa Friedman, New York Times
July 2, 2021
The chairman of a House subcommittee is demanding that executives of Exxon Mobil Corp., Shell, Chevron and other major oil and gas companies testify before Congress about the industry’s decades-long effort to wage disinformation campaigns around climate change.
Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, said Friday he was prepared to use subpoena power to compel the companies to appear before lawmakers if they don’t do so voluntarily.
The move comes a day after a secretive video recording was made public in which a senior Exxon lobbyist said the energy giant had fought climate science through “shadow groups” and had targeted influential senators in an effort to weaken President Biden’s climate agenda. Several of those senators said this week that the lobbyist exaggerated their relationship or that they had no dealings with him.
“The video was appalling,” Mr. Khanna said in an interview on Friday. He called it the latest evidence of the fossil fuel industry’s efforts to “engage in climate denialism and to manipulate public opinion and to exert undue influence in shaping policy in Congress.”
Mr. Khanna said the House Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on the Environment, which he chairs, will issue letters next week to top executives at Exxon Mobil, Shell, Chevron and other oil and gas companies and trade groups demanding documents and testimony. One major target of the panel’s inquiry are dark money groups that have been funded by fossil fuel companies to disseminate falsehoods about climate science and policy solutions. The hearing is expected to be held in the fall.
» Read article
» More about protests and actions
FEDERAL ENERGY REGULATORY COMMISSION
Energy Transfer’s Gulf Run Pipeline to Export Fracked Gas from Louisiana set to Begin Construction
But FERC’s business-as-usual approach to fossil fuel projects during the climate crisis looks increasingly shaky, casting new doubt on the industry’s prospects.
By Sharon Kelly, DeSmog Blog
July 1, 2021
In June, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) narrowly approved the construction of a new 42” diameter gas pipeline that will connect shale wells in Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Ohio to a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal on the Gulf Coast, carrying over a billion cubic feet of fracked gas to be transported overseas every day.
The FERC decision was split, with two of the five commissioners dissenting, writing that the Commission had failed to adequately examine the climate-changing pollution linked to the fossil fuel pipeline.
That dissent in Gulf Run takes on new relevance as the term of FERC Commissioner Neil Chatterjee, appointed by Donald Trump in 2017, ended on Wednesday. President Joe Biden is expected to soon announce a nominee as Chatterjee’s replacement — a decision rumored to be between Willie Phillips, who, according to Politico Morning Energy, previously worked for Jeff Sessions and interned in George W. Bush’s Office of General Counsel, and Maria Duaime Robinson, a former official with Advanced Energy Economy, which advocates for solar, wind, hydroelectric and nuclear energy.
The Gulf Run pipeline, one small piece of the shale industry’s strategy to revive itself despite the growing climate crisis, offers a view of the crossroads faced by the Biden administration.
The project highlights federal regulators’ continued business-as-usual approach to fossil fuel infrastructure projects with decades-long expected lifespans and regulators’ failures to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
» Read article
» More about FERC
LEGISLATION
New Maine law prohibits offshore wind farms in state waters
But the compromise still encourages the development of offshore wind technology in federal waters off Maine.
By Kevin Miller, Portland Press Herald, in centralmaine.com
Photo: Maine Coast | Expedia
July 7, 2021
Gov. Janet Mills has signed into law a bill prohibiting offshore wind farms in state waters, in a compromise aimed at siting such projects farther from Maine’s heavily used inshore waters.
Mills is a vocal supporter of wind energy who has made addressing climate change a top priority of her administration. But segments of Maine’s fishing industry – particularly lobstermen – have been battling to ban any wind development off the coast of Maine over concerns about potential loss of access to valuable fishing grounds and other conflicts.
The bill proposed by Mills and signed into law this week would prohibit state and local governments from licensing or permitting the siting, construction or operation of wind turbines in the state territorial waters that extend three miles from shore. A demonstration project under development off Monhegan Island and future “pilot-scale, limited duration” research projects would be exempt from the prohibition.
The bill, L.D. 1619, also would create an Offshore Wind Research Consortium with an advisory board that includes representatives of the lobster industry, other commercial fishermen and the recreational charter fishing industry as well as energy experts. The board will advise the state on local and regional impacts from offshore wind power projects as gleaned from a state-backed “research array” of up to 12 turbines to be located in federal waters.
» Read article
» More about legislation
GREENING THE ECONOMY
‘This Is Huge’: Schumer Commits to Creating Civilian Climate Corps
“We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to confront the climate crisis and create millions of middle-class union jobs,” he said. “Creating a new Civilian Climate Corps is a key step.”
By Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams
July 8, 2021
After being targeted by progressive climate campaigners, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer made clear on Wednesday that he will work to include the creation of a Civilian Climate Corps in evolving federal infrastructure legislation.
Schumer (D-N.Y.) issued a lengthy statement outlining his support for the inclusion of a Civilian Climate Corps (CCC), which was inspired by a New Deal-era program and formally unveiled as legislation earlier this year by Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) on the same day they reintroduced the Green New Deal Resolution.
The Sunrise Movement, whose New York City chapter took to the streets to push Schumer on the CCC proposal, celebrated his statement as a victory for local organizers and the youth-led movement more broadly.
“In the upcoming American Jobs and Families Plans legislation, we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to confront the climate crisis and create millions of middle-class, family-sustaining union jobs,” Schumer said. “Creating a new Civilian Climate Corps is a key step towards both goals.”
» Read article
» More about greening the economy
CLIMATE
Sixty years of climate change warnings: the signs that were missed (and ignored)
The effects of ‘weird weather’ were already being felt in the 1960s, but scientists linking fossil fuels with climate change were dismissed as prophets of doom
By Alice Bell, The Guardian
Photo: Homes destroyed by a storm in New York state in 1962. Photograph: Bettmann/Getty/Guardian Design
July 5, 2021
In August 1974, the CIA produced a study on “climatological research as it pertains to intelligence problems”. The diagnosis was dramatic. It warned of the emergence of a new era of weird weather, leading to political unrest and mass migration (which, in turn, would cause more unrest). The new era the agency imagined wasn’t necessarily one of hotter temperatures; the CIA had heard from scientists warning of global cooling as well as warming. But the direction in which the thermometer was travelling wasn’t their immediate concern; it was the political impact. They knew that the so-called “little ice age”, a series of cold snaps between, roughly, 1350 and 1850, had brought not only drought and famine, but also war – and so could these new climatic changes.
“The climate change began in 1960,” the report’s first page informs us, “but no one, including the climatologists, recognised it.” Crop failures in the Soviet Union and India in the early 1960s had been attributed to standard unlucky weather. The US shipped grain to India and the Soviets killed off livestock to eat, “and premier Nikita Khrushchev was quietly deposed”.
But, the report argued, the world ignored this warning, as the global population continued to grow and states made massive investments in energy, technology and medicine.
Meanwhile, the weird weather rolled on, shifting to a collection of west African countries just below the Sahara. People in Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad “became the first victims of the climate change”, the report argued, but their suffering was masked by other struggles – or the richer parts of the world simply weren’t paying attention. As the effects of climate change started to spread to other parts of the world, the early 1970s saw reports of droughts, crop failures and floods from Burma, Pakistan, North Korea, Costa Rica, Honduras, Japan, Manila, Ecuador, USSR, China, India and the US. But few people seemed willing to see a pattern: “The headlines from around the world told a story still not fully understood or one we don’t want to face,” the report said.
» Read article
An Indigenous Group’s Objection to Geoengineering Spurs a Debate About Social Justice in Climate Science
The Sámi people of Northern Sweden say blocking out the sun with reflective particles to cool the earth is the kind of thinking that produced the climate crisis in the first place.
By Haley Dunleavy, Inside Climate News
July 7, 2021
It was February in northern Sweden and the sun was returning after a dark winter. In the coming months the tundra would reawaken with lichens and shrubs for reindeer to forage in the permafrost encrusted Scandinavian mountain range. But the changing season also brought some unwelcome news to the Indigenous Sámi people, who live across northern Scandinavia, Finland and eastern Russia.
The members of the Saami Council were informed that researchers at Harvard planned to test a developing technology for climate mitigation, known as solar geoengineering, in Sápmi, their homeland. “When we learned what the idea of solar geoengineering is, we reacted quite instinctively,” said Åsa Larsson Blind, the Saami Council vice president, at a virtual panel about the risks of solar geoengineering, organized by the Center for International Environmental Law and other groups.
“This goes against our worldview that we as humans should live and adapt to nature,” she said.
The planned geoengineering project sought to limit global warming by releasing reflective particles into the stratosphere, reducing the amount of sunlight that beams down to Earth’s surface. The test, originally scheduled for June, would have been the first step in a series of small-scale experiments aimed at understanding the feasibility of combating global warming.
» Read article
» More about climate
CLEAN ENERGY
Wilson Street solar project ordered to pause after tribal officials claim disregard for Indigenous artifacts
By Mary Ellen Gambon, Hopkinton Independent
July 7, 2021
Two cease and desist orders were filed last week against Grasshopper Energy to stop construction of a 2.4-megawatt solar farm between Wilson Street and Cedar Street after allegations were made by the Narragansett Indian Tribal Historic Preservation Office that artifacts sacred to the tribe’s culture were destroyed.
“The Narragansett Indian Tribal Historic Preservation Office had done an investigation of the site and found some items of historical significance that they felt it was important to preserve on the ceremonial hill,” explained John Gelcich, the town’s principal planner. “There is a condition in the special permit that says that, if they find any new resources that they bring it before the Planning Board.”
He confirmed that two separate cease and desist orders were issued, the first by the tribal office and the second by the town, to stop work in the area of the ceremonial hill, which sits on the western portion of the site.
“My understanding of the town’s cease and desist order is just to bring the historical resources to their attention and to do what needs to be done to protect those resources,” Gelcich explained. “This will bring all parties to the table to discuss that.”
Narragansett tribal historic preservation officer John Brown was more direct in his criticism of the company. He said items of cultural significance were destroyed, including some large stone formations. Brown said the stones would have been used “several hundreds of years ago to [thousands] of years ago” as table-like structures on which ritual ceremonies were performed.
“We sent a cease and desist order because [Grasshopper] did not comply with the special permit issued by the town,” said Brown, whose organization is based in Charlestown, Rhode Island. “Several areas of the stone wall have been pulverized.”
» Blog editor’s note: Some of our readers may recall the 2017 battle over ceremonial stone landscapes and the CT Expansion pipeline. It’s no better when solar companies show disregard.
» Read article
More than 75 companies ask Congress to pass clean electricity standard
By Zack Budryk, The Hill
July 7, 2021
More than 75 major U.S. companies including Apple, Google, Lyft and Salesforce signed a letter circulated Wednesday urging Congress to adopt a federal clean electricity standard.
In the letter, signers urged the federal government adopt a standard that achieves 80 percent carbon neutrality by the end of the decade, with a goal of completely emission-free power by 2035.
Signers of the letter, organized by sustainability advocacy group Ceres and the Environmental Defense Fund, also include automakers General Motors and Tesla.
The letter notes that the electrical power sector alone generates a full third of nationwide carbon dioxide emissions created by burning fossil fuels. It is also the source of about 50 percent of natural gas use nationwide, which is itself a major driver of methane upstream leaks.
Scientists have estimated human-produced methane accounts for at least 25 percent of current warming.
“In addition to reducing emissions from the power sector, a clean electric power grid is also essential to unlock opportunities to reduce emissions in other sectors. Electrification of the transportation, buildings, and industrial sectors is a critical pathway for the U.S. to achieve a net zero-emissions future. Together, clean electricity and electrification could cut carbon pollution economy-wide by up to 75%,” the letter states.
“By acting now to enact a federal clean electricity standard, Congress and the President can spur a robust economic recovery, create millions of good-paying jobs, and build the infrastructure necessary for a strong, more equitable, and more inclusive American economy for the next century,” it adds.
White House climate adviser Gina McCarthy said in June a clean energy standard was one of the climate provisions the White House considers “non-negotiable” in a reconciliation infrastructure package.
» Read article