News that Slipped Through the Cracks

Here's another coal story from the holiday season - this time it's one that seems to have slipped through under the radar of the mainstream media. The Office of Surface Mining granted a permit for more coal mining on Native lands in Arizona. This permit is for Black Mesa, which is considered sacred land to several tribes.

Read more about the issue in this E magazine article and in this column by Elsa Johnson of the Navajo Nation (scroll down).

If you want to get active on it - lend the Black Water Mesa Coalition a hand!

Dynegy Abandoning LS Power Coal Plants

This is a weekly blog post from Bruce Nilles, director of the Sierra Club's National Coal Campaign.

The hints came down in December, but today it is confirmed: Dynegy is abandoning its plans to build five new coal plants as a joint venture with LS Power.  Without its larger partner, LS Power will have a very difficult time developing and financing the proposed plants, even though the company has said it will try.

These abandoned plants are in Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Iowa and Arkansas, and this is a major victory for the Sierra Club, our partners, and the thousands of people who stood up to Dynegy's dirty plans. Dynegy had been the largest developer of new coal-fired power plants in the country, but due to our efforts the company has now recognized that new coal plants are an economic mistake and the wrong direction for their shareholders and the country.  We applaud them for taking this major step forward in securing a clean energy future. 

The Continuing Coal Ash Spill Aftermath

We here at Compass have been on a holiday break until today, but we have been closely watching the terrible aftermath of that coal ash impoundment spill in Tennessee from last week. Thankfully, this tragedy is not getting swept under the rug - there are still plenty of articles being written about the toxins in the ash and the impact on everyone around the spill.

There's also word (noted in the AP article on the TN governor below) that Congress will hold a hearing on the spill next week and that the Senate Environment Committee heard from Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) officials and local officials yesterday.

I thought I'd highlight a few good articles on here, so check these out.

NY Times: "Metal levels found high in tributary after spill" - Our friends over at Appalachian Voices have tested the water near the sludge spill and found toxin levels many times higher than those found by the EPA or Tennessee's Department of Environment and Conservation. Sad but true, the EPA and TNDEC have not revealed their full test results yet. In fact, they've only revealed the test results for a spot that, according to this article, is six miles upstream from the sludge site.

Associated Press: "Community's future, vistas clouded by sludge spill" - A good article because it addresses the impacts to hunters and anglers, as well as talks to a person affected by the Inez, Ky., coal sludge spill in 2000.

USA Today: "Tenn. residents fear impact of sludgy ash spill" - Looks at the toxins and how locals are responding.

LA Times: "After Tennessee ash spill, cleanup and worry" - A great overview of the entire situation.

Associated Press: "Tenn. gov. promises more oversight of ash ponds" - Some promising words from Gov. Phil Bredesen:

"Burning fossil fuel for electricity is a dirty business," he said. "Everywhere this happens there are huge ash piles, there are environmental issues. My dream out of all of this is maybe this is an epiphany for TVA and for the country that some things have got to change."

Christian Science Monitor: "Tennessee spill revives coal ash controversy" - This article is a great look at the coal ash situation across the US, including the history of regulations, as magnified by this TN disaster.

This story won't be going away anytime soon - we'll be doing our best to make sure of that. This is a serious issue for the many reasons listed in these articles above and it should not be ignored.

The TVA Coal Ash Impoundment Spill - Another Risk of Coal

This is a blog post from Bruce Nilles, director of the Sierra Club's National Coal Campaign.

Today there is sad news out of Roane County, Tenn.: A retention pond at the Kingston coal-fired steam plant burst, sending more than 524 million gallons of coal fly ash and water into the nearby town of Harriman and Watts Bar Lake. One man was injured when his home was swept off its foundation, and the mudslide also affected 15 other homes.

Reports are that the rush of mud, ash and water now covers 400 acres and is several feet deep in some areas – this coal ash spill is also many times more massive than the Exxon Valdez oil spill. The cleanup is expected to last weeks, but some lives have already been altered forever - and the full environmental impact is not yet known. Fly ash is known to contain numerous toxic chemicals and it’s being reported that some of the spill made it into the Tennessee River – a water supply source for the city of Chattanooga as well as people in Kentucky and Alabama.

Beaten to the Plug-In?

This is a guest post by Jesse Prentice-Dunn of the Sierra Club Clean Cars Campaign.

Hold on to your wall sockets, everybody. The world’s first mass produced plug-in hybrid vehicle went on sale this Monday. No, I’m not talking about the Chevy Volt or a new Prius. The sleek F3DM, produced by Build Your Dream Autos, ranges about 60 miles on a full battery charge. Unlike many prototypes from other automakers, the F3DM’s lithium-ion batteries can be recharged from a standard wall outlet. For those of you reaching for your pocketbooks, not so fast, this car is only available in China (for now, anyways).

With the F3DM already on lots and models from GM and Toyota on the way, hopefully plug-in hybrids will go zero to 60 in the global auto market in a hurry.

Winds of Change: Dynegy Rethinks Coal

This is the weekly blog post from Bruce Nilles, director of the Sierra Club's National Coal Campaign.

The dominoes continue to fall in the fight to stop the coal rush: last week Dynegy Inc. announced that it was now re-evaluating six of its planned coal-fired power plants due to difficult permitting processes and the “high cost of capital.”

According to the Reuters article, “the company wants to protect cash flow and avoid complex financial arrangements” – something we warned Dynegy about earlier this year (PDF) through an Innovest Strategic Value Advisors report about the risk to Dynegy shareholders when merging with LS Power. Dynegy is also considering pulling out of two other projects under construction.

Clearly the higher-ups at Dynegy (and LS Power, which owns 40% of Dynegy) are seeing the writing on the wall: Coal is not a viable option for our country’s power needs, and coal plants come with a tremendous financial risk.

This is something Sierra Club and our allies have been telling Dynegy/LS Power (and many other companies) for a long time now. Our staff, activists and allies have spent thousands of hours fighting Dynegy's proposed coal plants – including getting more than one hundred protesters to the annual Dynegy shareholders’ meeting back in May.

Dynegy/LS Power had more planned coal-fired power plants than any other company in the U.S., truly showing how behind they are when it comes securing a clean energy future for the U.S.

In 2009, we look forward to working with Dynegy after they abandon their risky coal projects and instead begin to invest in green jobs that avert catastrophic climate change.

Change is Everywhere

Thought a quick image to show you the changes in the air. The photo below is from the Vatican, which recently installed solar panels on it's rooftops.

What a symbol - and, hopefully, a model for people everywhere. Once, there were solar panels on the White House back during the administration of Jimmy Carter. I'm sure soon, we'll start seeing them everywhere.

Courtesy EcoGeek.

Clean Coal Carolers

Written by Jake LaBelle

I think Seinfeld put it best: "I’m speechless. I am without speech." That is all I could think about when I saw the ad campaign entitled "Clean Coal Carolers" from our friends at America’s Power. Unfortunately, I can’t share this ad with you because it was taken down after less than a week. They have this site in its place. Apparently the sheer idiocy of the ad was realized.

It was a quasi-interactive website with 6 or 7 lumps of coal with googly eyes and winter garments singing Christmas carols with new clean coal lyrics.  This was something one would find on the EbaumsWorld or CollegeHumor websites. If America's Power was looking to target mature, intelligent adults with these shenanigans, then they missed the mark by about a light-year.  I can’t imagine that anyone in that marketing department is so desperate as to think that this would elicit a positive response.

Coal Plants: The Next Round of Subprime Loans?

This post is co-written by Mark Kresowik, Corporate Accountability Representative for the Sierra Club’s National Coal Campaign.

Shortly after the credit markets crumbled this fall, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Yvo De Boer, suggested that it was a good time for banks to review the financial risks of global warming: “We’re in this pickle in the first place because these banks made unwise loans.  Giving a loan that doesn’t take climate change into account also is an unwise loan.”

As UN Climate Change Conference talks in Poznan, Poland wind down, the incoming U.S. administration is gearing up plans to restore the flow of credit and stimulate the economy, led by creating millions of new green jobs through energy efficiency and clean energy.

This is great news for our economy and the environment. But it also means banks and credit rating agencies rushing to green light as many as 100 massive coal-fired power plants. Banks like Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Moody’s, Standard and Poor’s, and Fitch Ratings are betting against the next President of the United States and making a new round of subprime loans.

Updates from the Poznan Climate Talks

John Coequyt of the Sierra Club's Energy and Global Warming Program is over in Poznan, Poland, this week for the big climate talks. We've seen in many news articles that the talks aren't going so well, and John's updates are no different.

He's sent us two updates so far, and here they are in one convenient blog post. Enjoy! And if you have any questions for John, submit them in the comments and we'll see if we can get him to answer a few when he's got a spare moment.

Update 1 from Poznan:
I wanted to give you all heads up that things are not going well here.  I worked out some of the potential outcomes with some of the U.S. people here and I am pretty sure that the most we can hope for is very little progress.  Thankfully it does not appear that we will have moved backwards.

The European Union is distracted by their domestic climate debate and it appears that too many countries are content to wait for the U.S.  We should have a talk about how much we want to stress the importance of the U.S. getting its team ready for the international work after watching this slow train wreck.

The ministers have not even arrived and it already seems to be clear that we will not get what we hoped out of this meeting.

All is not lost.  There is still a year to go.  And we should not do what the PEW Center is doing and put hopeless messages out, but we really need leadership.

China and France issued statements of disappointment today with the close of the Kyoto text.  No such statement is forthcoming from the U.S.