A recent decision from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) offers hope that the nuclear industry’s free ride is coming to an end. The problem of what to do with the ever-growing amount of nuclear waste that is stockpiled at nuclear sites around the country has been vexing industry and regulators for years. It is a shameful reminder of poor management. Our nuclear reactors continue to operate and generate more waste when we have no real solution for its long-term storage.

Absent a permanent answer, the waste sits where it ends up when it is no longer useful. In the case of Vermont, it sits on the banks of the Connecticut River or in a spent fuel pool of the same style and vintage as was used at the Fukushima reactor.

On August 7, the NRC decided no new or extended licenses will be finalized until the Commission completes the environmental review of waste issues that a Federal Appeals Court required in a June decision. Specifically the NRC decided it will:

(1) suspend final licensing decisions in reactor licensing cases, pending the completion of our action on the remanded Waste Confidence proceeding; (2) provide an opportunity for public comment on any generic determinations that we may make in either an environmental assessment (EA) or environmental impact statement (EIS); and (3) provide at least sixty days to seek consideration in individual licensing cases of any site-specific concerns relating to the remanded proceedings.  (pg.3)

This is a very significant decision. The Federal Court gave the Commission a strong rebuke when it rejected NRC and industry claims that keeping waste where it is indefinitely is safe based only on a limited analysis of keeping it there for twenty years.

The waste storage issue is huge. It is crazy to think we can continue to license and operate nuclear facilities when we acknowledge we don’t have a place to put the waste. This decision is a step in the right direction, as we now have some assurance the impacts will be evaluated and the public will be allowed to participate in that process.

It is unclear what effect this will have on existing licenses. The specific decision only addressed licenses that are pending, including renewals.  As for Vermont Yankee, it is likely that these decisions will affect the state-level Public Service Board review. Vermont regulators must determine if continued operation “promotes the general good of the state.” While issues of radiological health and safety can legally only be managed at the federal level, the indefinite storage of waste and the lack of solutions produce economic burdens that are important for state regulators to address. Vermont and other states cannot be stiffed into holding the bag and bearing the economic burdens of unsound nuclear waste management. this harms Vermont’s “general good.”

Additional information is available in this Vermont Digger article - Nuclear Regulatory Commission halts nuclear power licensing decisions

Bike Lane on Park Ave, near Deering Oaks Park, Portland. (Photo courtesy of Corey Templeton @ flikr)

I felt like thumping my chest last week after reading an article in the Portland Press Herald about the decline in the number of cars registered here in Portland and the increasing number of people who are getting to and from work by bus, bike or foot. Ours is a small office (4 full time employees and this summer 4 student interns) and it was not unusual to see 5 or 6 bikes in the office, representing commuters from Deering Oaks, the West End, South Portland and Falmouth. Last Spring, one of our interns, a 3rd year law student commuted from Biddeford by bus. As our intern Brian Lessels wrote on this blog, he, like others at CLF, are biking devotees.

photo courtesy of Justin D. Henry @ flickr

As the article points out, the move away from relying on cars has been born both of necessity due to their high costs and of choice. Certainly, no one wants Maine’s or the country’s economic challenges to persist but to the extent those challenges create the opportunity for more people to choose to both save money and reduce their environmental footprint by driving less, CLF will continue to encourage those choices by supporting commuting alternatives and incentives, public transportation opportunities, and livable and compact developments in our existing cities.

Getting out of our cars more and getting to work by bus, bike or sidewalk is a win-win proposition for our health, our communities and our environment. For more on CLF’s transportation work in Maine, see this fact sheet.

Perry Marine & Construction workers lower the second of four turbines into place in ORPC's TidGen™ turbine generator unit (TGU) which will be installed at ORPC's Cobscook Bay project site in August. Photo courtesy of ORPC.

Ceaseless, predictable, powerful – the tide is all of these things. We may be adding “illuminating” to that list as our nation’s first grid-connected commercial tidal energy project gets underway off the coast of Maine and begins to light up homes sometime in August. As part of a renewable energy plan, tidal energy may hold great promise for a cleaner energy future. It’s a relatively simple process to convert the kinetic energy of tides into power for the grid (not much different from a wind turbine, really) – but the process of siting and building tidal energy farms in our coastal waters is much more complex.

Cobscook Bay off Eastport, Maine may be one of the most ideal spots in the US for tidal energy. It sits at the mouth of the Bay of Fundy – which has the most extreme tidal fluctuations in the world (an average of 24 feet). It also enjoys a high level of biodiversity – with an abundance of migratory shorebirds and waterfowl, as well as finfish, lobsters, scallops, and clams. Critically endangered North Atlantic right whales use the area. Tourism, fishing, and aquaculture are important parts of the economy here. There are many stakeholders involved in an area where so many depend on the ocean for their livelihoods as well as for tourism and recreation.

The Cobscook Bay Tidal Energy Project from the Ocean Renewable Power Company (ORPC) has been ramping up since 2006. The company is set to deploy its first turbine in mid-August, and hopes to add several more in the coming decade.

In general, the process to site and build a tidal energy project involves the input and coordination of several federal, state, and local government agencies working with numerous existing energy production and environmental laws, as well integrating input from citizen and environmental groups, the energy industry, fishermen, and other stakeholders. Maine recently streamlined the process for developing tidal energy projects, and is now the only state on the East Coast with a formal agreement with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to ensure federal and state coordination in the regulation of this new industry. But the process is still quite involved.

Complicated, right? Well, if this small commercial project in Eastport and others like it are successful, tidal energy is likely to grow in our coastal waters, and along with it, the challenges of planning for it. Recent U.S. Department of Energy reports find that ocean current power resources could potentially provide up to 250 terawatt-hours of electricity per year nationally (our current demand is around 4,000 terawatt-hours of electricity per year). Given the likelihood that ocean energy production is going to grow rapidly and dramatically, we need a better way through the process of planning for new energy development while protecting our valuable ocean resources and traditional uses.

The development in Eastport, Maine might provide some useful lessons in how to approach a project like this at a community level, using the principles of Regional Ocean Planning.

Chris Gardner, Executive Director of the Eastport Port Authority, said ORPC began working with the Port Authority and with local stakeholders from the very beginning of the process in 2006. The Port Authority saw the project as potentially benefitting the community economically, but were “very watchful about how they did their business and if they did it the right way” said Gardner. Fishermen were especially concerned about the project – worried that structures or construction activity would interfere with fishing grounds. According to Gardner, the company took the approach that it was ORPC’s own “responsibility to prove their case.”

John Ferland, ORPC Vice President, talked to me about what the company did to garner community support and ease concerns about tidal energy. First and foremost, he emphasized the importance of communicating with local residents and getting them involved as much as possible. “We have had so many meetings over the last several years. For a while there were a couple of community style meetings a year, and all sorts of private interactions and group meetings in between – city council meetings, selectmen, lots of informal meetings” said Ferland. “The State of Maine Ocean Energy Task Force cited ORPC’s efforts as a model for other ocean energy developers to follow,” he added.

The Cobscook Bay Resource Center facilitated a series of stakeholder and community meetings, as well as provided detailed information about the project on their website. (There is a really interesting clip from the PBS “Sustainable Maine” video with interviews of many of the people involved in and potentially affected by the project, as well as footage of how the turbines will work.)

As a result of conversations with local fishermen, ORPC was able to site the project in an area that wouldn’t impede their fishing. As one fisherman said in the PBS video, “You gotta be careful of what goes where.” In Cobscook Bay, Ferland said, tidal energy is ideal in places that are not important to fishing due to the nature of the ocean bottom and the high currents.

In addition to meeting with stakeholders, ORPC has been working with the University of Maine School of Marine Sciences on fisheries concerns, and with the New England Aquarium to minimize future potential impacts on marine mammals. Whenever possible, said Ferland, they prefer to hire local citizens as employees, local subcontractors as service providers, and have trained local residents as certified marine mammal monitors as part of the NOAA NMFS-required data gathering effort.

Any major human activity in our oceans and coastal waters is going to involve making some decisions about the best place for certain uses. Regional Ocean Planning is the process of defining these uses and potential conflicts, and seeking the optimal path of sustainable development and resource protection. Using the principles of ecosystem-based management, gathering and sharing the best possible data about ocean uses and impacts, and making sure every stakeholder has a say in the process – that’s Regional Ocean Planning in a nutshell.

The phrase I heard over and over as I was researching tidal energy in the Gulf of Maine was, “It’s a good idea, as long as it’s done right.” Regional Ocean Planning can be used to help manage ocean uses the right way – by involving stakeholders at the very beginning of a project, and keeping them engaged throughout, by examining the social, economic, and environmental effects of the project, by filling the data gaps needed to make science-based decisions, and by making the process adaptive so that changes can be made as new information comes in.

The current project in Cobscook Bay might be the beginning of major tidal energy development in the Gulf of Maine. The process of planning and implementation will get more complicated as the scale gets bigger – there will be more stakeholders involved, more potential environmental impacts, and more activities in the water. It is important to have a process that works for everyone.

We all have a lot to gain from the full implementation of the National Ocean Policy. For more information about the need for Regional Ocean Planning check out these blogs about sea level rise, coastal pollution, and protecting endangered whales from ship strikes.

Last week I found myself on the beautiful shores of Lake Champlain in Burlington Vermont at the 36th Annual meeting of the New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Premiers.

Normally, this meeting is a low key affair that doesn’t have a big impact on the place where it is being held. That was not the case this year. Protests outside the meeting drew attention to issues, like potential import of tar sands oil into New England, that were not on the formal meeting agenda.

An Op-Ed by CLF President John Kassel which ran in a number of regional newspapers before and after the meeting and can now be found on the CLF blog, as well as those protests and pointed inquiries by the press in the meeting forced drew focus towards important and contentious issues like tar sands oil imports and the Northern Pass project.

But the action inside the conference was real and important.  Some notable highlights:

• The Governors adopted a plan for “regional procurement” of renewable energy that creates an important framework for getting much needed clean renewable energy to get built across New England
• The Governors and Premiers came together to hail the progress that has been made to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across our shared region since 2001 and to lay out a framework for further action
• A plan was adopted for moving towards a cleaner transportation system that maintains and builds mobility while moving away from gasoline and other dirty fuels that produce a range of pollutants

The overall story here is of a cross-border region that is struggling to do the right thing for its economy and its environment.  The challenge we all face is ensuring that our states and provinces live up to the promises of their words, making the difficult transition away from dirty fossil fuels and providing leadership to both the United States and Canada to build a new clean energy economy.

Against a backdrop of protesters vehemently opposing bad proposals to bring energy from Canada into New England, governors from the six New England states this week demonstrated their commitment to a clean energy future for our region. They resolved to pool their buying power, regionally, for renewable energy. This will boost wind and solar energy, among other clean sources, at the best available price — a much-needed step on our path to affordable renewable energy and independence from dirty fossil fuels.

The resolution was announced at the 36th annual meeting of New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Premiers, held July 29th and 30th in Burlington, Vermont. The protesters outside the meeting had the attention of high-ranking officials from Canada, whose energy system has been linked with ours – in small ways so far – for decades.  That linkage could grow dramatically in the future, for mutual benefit.  Eastern Canada has the potential to serve markets all over New England with low-carbon, low-cost and clean electricity from renewable sources. And New England needs it, if we get it on the right terms.

The wrong terms are exemplified by the Trailbreaker proposal and the Northern Pass transmission project, the two Canadian energy proposals galvanizing protesters outside the meetings in Burlington. Trailbreaker would send slurry oil derived from tar sands in Western Canada to Portland, Maine by reversing the flow of the Portland-to-Montreal pipeline that has cut across Quebec, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine since it was built over 50 years ago. Northern Pass would cut a route running the length of New Hampshire, including through the White Mountains, for a high-voltage DC transmission line to deliver Canadian hydropower to parts of New England. In both cases, the environmental burdens far outweigh any benefits for our region.

However, long-term supplies of hydro, wind and other sources of power – that respect and significantly benefit the landscape through which they are transmitted, support rather than undermine the development of New England’s own renewable energy resources, replace coal  and other dirty fuels, keep the lights on at reasonable cost, and accurately account for their impacts – are what New England needs. The details will be complicated, but they can be worked out.

Conversations inside the meeting were tilting in the direction of such productive cross-border cooperation, and the announcement of a regional resolution to bring clean, affordable energy to New England may have provided some salve for the protesters. Still, we need to continue to be vigilant about Trailbreaker and Northern Pass and we will spend the effort to defeat them if we must. But any effort spent on these deeply-flawed proposals –whether advancing them or fighting them – is an unfortunate use of precious time for both countries, given the urgent call of climate change.

The sooner we get to the task of building our shared clean energy future the better, for New Englanders and our friends to the north.

Seasonal produce at the Portland, Maine Farmer's Market - photo courtesy of www.facebook.com/PortlandMaineFarmersMarket

“Local” has become a new buzz word in America but what does it really mean, and why should we get on board? The reality is that within our own lifetimes we will witness the end of cheap oil and will have to learn to get by with less, whether we want to or not. In an attempt to practice just that, I planted a 600 sq. foot vegetable garden on some family property last year and found it to be very rewarding.

My family and I tilling the ground that will eventually become the garden. I am the farthest on the left holding the rake. Moving right across the photo: my sister, my husband, my brother, my dad, and my brother-in-law (operating the Gravely).

Our family garden about 7 weeks after planting.

Like many people though, I enjoy eating fresh produce all year round and when growing season is over, I find myself perusing the grocery aisles for tomatoes from Mexico and bell peppers from Holland. How can I justify this when I think about how much oil it takes to manufacture, fuel and maintain the truck or cargo ship that transported that produce to my supermarket?

The obvious answer to this dilemma is to only buy produce during its growing season and to do so at your local farmer’s market, which for me is the South Portland Farmer’s Market. Here in Maine, there are many farmers’ markets, several of which operate during the winter months! In fact, the Portland Farmer’s Market holds the accolade of being the oldest continually operating market in the country, something Mainers can be proud of!

While I would love to support my local farmer’s market year round, my current budget does not permit me to do so. To help compensate for this, I plan to enroll in a food preservation class next year at my local university (University of Southern Maine). The course teaches not only canning techniques, but drying, freezing, pickling and much more. That way I can begin to build skills on how to preserve my own harvest, which will ultimately help my budget.

No matter what measures you decide are right for you – growing or buying local, eating in season or preserving your own harvest – the outcome will be the same: you will reduce greenhouse gases and gain valuable experience in how to use less oil, a skill that will help save your wallet in the long run as the price of oil rises.

Not a moment too soon, the Massachusetts Legislature has enacted important new clean energy legislation that will maintain the state’s momentum in advancing clean renewable energy solutions like wind and solar energy. We breathed a sigh of relief as the final favorable votes were taken on July 31 – the very last day of the Legislature’s formal 2-year session – sending to Governor Patrick’s desk An Act Relative to Competitively Priced Electricity. The legislation includes key provisions that are essential for ensuring Massachusetts reaches its renewable energy targets. And this highly welcome development comes in the nick of time, just as existing programs are hitting their limits.  This means we can avoid a solar slowdown and keep the wind blowing behind the state’s clean energy revolution.

CLF celebrates the new Massachusetts energy bill together with the Green Communities Act Coalition (GCA Coalition) – a diverse coalition of business, labor, environmental, clean energy, low-income and other stakeholders who advocate for strong clean energy policies in Massachusetts. The GCA Coalition, which is co-led by CLF and the New England Clean Energy Council, came together in Fall 2011 in the face of attacks by clean energy skeptics who wrongly suggested that Massachusetts cannot afford clean energy. Since then, the GCA Coalition has worked together to bring forward facts demonstrating that clean energy is one of the most promising areas of economic growth, and that it is delivering considerable economic benefits. (See here for a helpful myth v. fact sheet.)

The new energy legislation, which some have dubbed “Green Communities Act – Part II”, builds on the tremendous success of the 2008 Green Communities Act, which is delivering hundreds of millions of dollars of net economic benefits while dramatically boosting the deployment of energy efficiency and renewable energy. The new Energy Bill will ensure continued growth of the state’s renewable energy programs with an even greater focus on affordability. This is a win for the environment, public health, jobs and the economy.

So, what exactly will the new Massachusetts Energy Bill do?

Central to the Energy Bill are provisions that will extend two critically important renewable energy programs: long-term renewable energy contracts and “net-metering”:

• The Energy Bill requires electric utilities to work together to sign additional long-term (10-20 year) contracts for the purchase of renewable energy to meet 4% of total customer demand.

 » This is in addition to the long-term renewable energy contracts the utilities already have signed under the existing 2008 Green Communities Act (which established a 3% minimum) — bringing the total amount of renewable energy long-term contracts to at least 7% of the electricity that is consumed in Massachusetts.

» Contrary to some confusing media reports, this requirement does not change the overall amount of new renewable energy that electric utilities must purchase each year (currently at 7% of all electricity consumed, and increasing by 1% per year). Instead, it only increases the extent to which utilities buy that energy using long-term contracts instead of spot-market purchases or alternative compliance payments.

» Long-term contracts are a win for renewable energy projects and customers alike.  Such contracts have become essential for getting new renewable energy projects built because the developers can show lenders that they will be able to re-pay their loans. This translates into lower financing costs, and those savings are passed on to electric customers.

» The Energy Bill generally requires utilities to jointly solicit and enter long-term renewable energy contracts, and competitive bidding will be required. Based on prior experience in Massachusetts, land-based wind energy projects are likely to be particularly successful in securing long-term contracts under the new law. In addition, the mechanism for joint solicitation should provide opportunities for larger projects to compete to sell their power to all Massachusetts customers.

» This expanded renewable energy long-term contracting program is likely to be an important complement to the agreement reached on July 30 by the New England Governors to work together to implement a regional renewable energy purchasing commitment.  Massachusetts already is ahead of the curve and well situated to help lead the region to success!

• The Energy Bill also will significantly expand existing renewable energy “net metering” programs, providing an important boost to smaller scale clean energy projects throughout Massachusetts:

»  “Net-metering” makes small-scale renewable energy installations more affordable by ensuring that homeowners and small businesses will be compensated fairly – at retail rates – for excess power that they deliver into the electric grid.

»  The Energy bill doubles the existing net-metering program limits, up to 6% of total electricity consumed in Massachusetts (3% from publicly owned facilities, 3% from privately owned).

»  The bill also allows anaerobic digestors – projects that convert organic waste to energy – to qualify for the program for the first time, together with small wind and solar projects.

These provisions are hallmarks of a critically important clean energy bill that will maintain clean energy momentum as we enter the summer doldrums.

The Energy Bill also is noteworthy for what it does not include:  e.g., significant clean energy program rollbacks that were championed by skeptics, and provisions that risked locking in new fossil fuel fired generation.  Whew!

So please join us in applauding the Massachusetts Legislature and the Patrick Administration for advancing an important and balanced Energy Bill that will keep clean energy growing!

Environmental issues span the globe. When it comes to nuclear power, global action is needed. That’s why it was a privilege for CLF advocates to meet with a number of environmental lawyers from Japan, many of whom are members of the Japan Environmental Lawyers Federation.

The tragedy of Fukushima shows the need for the US to stop giving nuclear power a free pass. Just yesterday another mishap at the accident-prone Vermont Yankee facility resulted in the draining of some of the radioactive cooling water. Enough already.

Our conversation addressed how environmental groups operate. We also touched on some of the litigation tools available to protect our environment from the risks of nuclear power – from problems with the storage of waste, the possibilities of accidents, and the economic problems that nuclear power creates.

Our colleagues in Japan have a far keener sense of how important this work is. As different as our legal systems are, it was interesting to find the similarities as well, including how challenging it is to navigate the interplay of state or local government oversight with federal regulations.

The attorneys shared with CLF MA advocate Jenny Rushlow that most Japanese attorneys interested in practicing environmental law are only able to dedicate a small percentage of their time to environmental cases, as it is difficult to find compensation for that work. As a result, the attorneys we met with mostly take on environmental cases on a volunteer basis. The group reported on a number of high impact cases, including a current lawsuit aimed at classifying carbon dioxide as a pollutant, much like the Massachusetts v. EPA case.

Photo credit: Jaypeg @ flickr

Peer-to-peer (“P2P”) car-sharing is gathering some major mainstream steam in New England and the rest of the country. RelayRides, originally founded in Cambridge and now one of the major players in the P2P car-sharing space, has officially begun a partnership with General Motor’s OnStar service that will give millions of vehicle owners the ability to start making money off their vehicle in seconds. The new partnership has the potential to benefit not only the region’s environment, but also its economy and residents – cars owners and not, alike.

For those who are unfamiliar with the concept, P2P car-sharing works by providing a platform, usually a web-based car-sharing service, that connects renters with a short-term need for a vehicle directly to a vehicle owner willing to rent out their personal vehicle for a fee. In areas where it is available, P2P car-sharing provides financial benefits for all parties involved. Renters avoid the high costs of vehicle ownership while still having access to a vehicle for an hourly rate when needed. The car-sharing service collects a percentage of the vehicle owner’s rental revenue and gains access to a fleet of rental vehicles without incurring the huge capital costs involved in running a traditional car rental service. Meanwhile, vehicle owners can defray their own costs of ownership by collecting rental revenue during the time that their vehicle would otherwise sit unused.

In addition to being a potential boon for vehicle owners, the widespread adoption of P2P car-sharing could also have environmental benefits. A recent study by UC-Berkeley’s Transportation Sustainability Research Center suggests that car-sharing reduces household vehicle ownership by both allowing households that own multiple vehicles to shed one or more and also deterring carless households from ever purchasing a vehicle. Environmental advocates hope that this reduction in household vehicle ownership will reduce the carbon footprint of transportation by resulting in a lower number of total vehicle miles traveled (“VMT”) and a decrease in traffic congestion.

The new RelayRides/OnStar partnership has the potential to take P2P car-sharing beyond the daydreams of ardent environmentalists. Having already invested an undisclosed sum in RelayRides’ early round venture financing, General Motors (“GM”) doubled down on their investment by giving RelayRides members integrated web-access to their network of nearly 6 million GM vehicles with active OnStar subscriptions. OnStar subscribers with an eligible GM vehicle will be able to sign up for RelayRides online through their OnStar account and allow members, with an approved reservation, to instantly unlock their vehicle using either a smartphone app or by replying to a text message.

The new web-access technology streamlines the P2P car-sharing experience, removing the need for renters and vehicle owners to arrange to meet in person and exchange keys. In addition, many OnStar equipped vehicles include theft-prevention technology that can block a vehicle’s ignition or force it to slow to a stop and theft recovery technology that includes pinpoint location through GPS. GM hopes the added security and convenience of the partnership will create an added incentive for subscription to or renewal of their OnStar service while RelayRides hopes the new technology will help differentiate it from competitors and increase membership.

As highlighted by the liability issues surrounding a fatal accident recently covered by the New York Times, there are still kinks to be worked out in the P2P car-sharing model. These include things like clarifying how car-sharing will be treated for insurance liability purposes.  Despite these uncertainties, the partnership between GM and RelayRides could be a major step towards bringing P2P car-sharing closer to mainstream acceptance. Clf is hopeful that support from one of the world’s largest automakers is a good sign both for the burgeoning P2P car-sharing market and the environment as a whole.