In partnership with the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC), CLF Ventures recently released Land-based Wind Energy: A Guide to Understanding the Issues and Making Informed Decisions. (PDF, 1.6MB)

Wind energy has the potential to play a significant and beneficial role in an energy economy that seeks to rely less heavily on fossil-fuel based electricity production. For this reason, many communities are currently trying to learn more about wind energy development and determine whether it makes sense in their city or town.  Land-based Wind Energy provides municipal officials and other local decision-makers with clear overviews of wind energy siting issues as well as best practices for community engagement.

Specifically, the guide includes:

• Guidelines for how to assess the quality of available information and how to resolve conflicting points;
• Overviews, contextual information, and recommended reading on important topics like wind turbine sound, shadow flicker, health, property values, and energy project economics; and
• Recommendations on how to structure a robust local review process when siting wind energy projects. By this we mean a process with full participation by relevant stakeholders, transparent decision-making, and durable outcomes with public support.

Download the guide, and learn more about CLF Ventures.

CLF's Winston Vaughan and Gloucester Fishermen's Wives Association's Angela Sanfilippo speak to the crowd. (Photo credit: Sean Cosgrove, CLF)

On Saturday, June 25, 45 people braved what was forecast to be a cloudy, rainy day to gather on a quiet Pavilion Beach in Gloucester, MA. As the sun emerged, they joined hands and looked out on the open ocean.

This seemingly quiet moment sent a loud, clear message. A message that New England’s ocean has shaped our past and will shape our future, and that future should be based on sustainable industries like fishing and tourism – not oil drilling. And we weren’t alone in calling for a healthy ocean and healthy coastal communities. In Gloucester, Cape Town, South Africa, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil and even Wilson, Wyoming, thousands joined hands with strangers and spoke with one voice to call for an end to destructive offshore drilling, healthy oceans and clean, renewable energy.

I was honored to be joined on Pavilion Beach by Angela Sanfilippo. Angela is the leader of the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association, and an ally of CLF’s going back to the first days we worked together to oppose, litigate and eventually stop oil drilling on Georges Bank in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Many in the crowd, myself included, weren’t even born then.

Looking out over that beautiful ocean, and over my shoulder at the community of Gloucester which was ready for their annual Fiesta of Saint Peter, I realized how great a debt we owe to people like Angela and my colleagues at CLF who fought so hard and so long to protect our ocean and all that it gives us. A great debt indeed, and one that can only be repaid by joining their fight.

That fight is more important than ever today. This year, Congress came very close to passing legislation that would have required a massive expansion of offshore drilling, including wells off of New England’s coast in the rich fishing grounds of Georges Bank. While that legislation has been defeated for now, it is likely to come up again. We owe it to Angela, and to future generations, to protect our coasts and invest in energy efficiency and clean renewable energy sources like wind and solar power.

“Hands Across the Sand” may be a small gesture. To some people it seems a little quaint, maybe even odd. To me, it’s an indication of the strong ties between the people of Gloucester and their ocean, of a life spent working to protect the people and places that we care about, and a down payment on the debt we owe to those who have spent their lives defending our ocean. A life well spent indeed.

Photo credit: S1acker, flickr

As you hit the road this holiday weekend, you will be joining millions of others in filling up your gas tank and will watch in consternation as your paycheck pours into your tank. The sad thing is, you are probably driving a vehicle that gets far less than 45 mpg, so you might have to fill that tank more than once to get back home.

These days, Americans spend on average $369 dollars a month on gas. By contrast, the average monthly gas bill in April 2009 was $201. That’s a lot less money that you have to go towards dining out and hotel rooms this holiday weekend. The good news is that the EPA and DOT are currently contemplating raising fuel economy requirements to between 47 to 62 mpg starting with all 2017 model vehicles. That means  getting twice or even three times as far without having to fill up.

You would think that states buckling under the weak economy would rejoice at any effort that would give folks more money to spend. Unfortunately, Governor LePage seems to disagree.

In response to EPA and DOT’s effort, LePage joined a small handful of other governors this week in a signing a letter to Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson cautioning them to be  “sensible” about raising fuel economy standards and claiming that “overreaching regulations can be a cost burden on individuals, families and businesses in our state” because the technology used for fuel-efficient vehicles makes them more expensive for consumers.

In other words, we haven’t learned any lessons, we couldn’t care less if our constituents have to spend half their paycheck at the pump and we have no problem with our addiction to foreign oil.

Fuel efficiency standards for 2012-2016 were set in 2007 at 35 mpg. When those standards were about to go into place, there was a remarkably similar wave of national hand-wringing. People were concerned that the new standards would have a negative effect on the auto industry and Americans’ perceived need to have large, affordable vehicles. Yet, the sky didn’t fall. Detroit had been teetering on the brink of survival not because of MPG standards but due to their failure to stay ahead of the innovation curve, like Toyota, in creating fuel efficient vehicles. The success of the Ford Focus speaks for itself.

Opponents to increasing the MPG standards claim that the government needs to stay out of this — market demand will dictate higher fuel efficiency.  But the data doesn’t bear that assertion out.  In 2002, the National Academy of Sciences issued a report on the effects of the CAFE standard. The report concluded that in the absence of fuel economy regulations, motor vehicle fuel consumption would have been approximately 14 percent higher than it actually was in 2002.

Americans are fully capable of stepping up to the plate and developing the affordable technology necessary to bring the higher standard to fruition. They’ve done it before and they can do it again. And here’s the thing– a whopping 78 percent of Americans think they should. According to a recent poll by the Mellman Group, the majority of Americans support efforts by the auto industry to reduce CO2 emissions. And if that also means saving money on gas, then Maine should be embracing the new standards and not trying to slow them down.

Today,  the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office and the state Department of Environmental Protection announced that they have settled claims over violations of air quality at the Mt. Tom Power Plant in Holyoke, MA.

“CLF is gratified to see the State take enforcement action to address the violations that were uncovered at Mt. Tom,” said staff attorney Shanna Cleveland. “Particulate matter is one of the deadliest air pollutants emitted by coal-fired power plants, and is a major contributor to the poor air quality that is sickening residents in Holyoke and surrounding communities. The State’s insistence on continuous monitoring is an important step toward ensuring that the plant cannot continue to violate emissions limits with impunity.”

Particulate matter is responsible for a wide range of health impacts, including heart disease, lung damage and an increased risk of lung cancer. The asthma rate in Holyoke is more than twice the statewide average of 10.8 percent.

Cleveland continued, “This enforcement action is a step in the right direction, but even with the pollution controls recently installed at Mt. Tom, the plant has continued to emit harmful pollution and violate emissions limits. Despite their significant investment in technology to clean this plant up, the reality is that a 50-year-old coal plant cannot be modernized enough to run in compliance with the law, and moreover, cannot run efficiently, or economically. The only way to stop Mt. Tom from polluting the air and making people sick is for it to shut down. We need to be thinking less about how to keep old, polluting coal plants operating and more about how to get our electricity from clean, renewable energy.” More >

Flooding in Minot, ND (photo credit: USACE)

Earlier this month, my CLF Vermont colleague Anthony told the tale of his brush with a changed climate in dealing with flood waters in the Montpelier area.  Severe weather around the country continues to make news, with record floods in North Dakota and an “exceptional” drought and wildfires in the Southwest.  Although it got lost in the controversy over Al Gore’s critique of the Obama administration’s climate efforts, Gore’s essay last week in Rolling Stone also highlighted the mounting evidence that that climate change is causing severe weather and resulting disasters – record droughts, fires, floods, and mudslides - to increase in intensity and frequency all around the world. 

This week, a three-part series of articles in Scientific American is tackling the same issue.  (Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 is coming tomorrow.)  Some key points: 

• Global severe weather data – not just sensational anecdotes – are demonstrating that climate change is the culprit.  As series author John Carey puts it, “The signal of climate change is finally emerging from the ‘noise’—the huge amount of natural variability in weather.”
• Extreme weather is now regularly happening in places it has been exceedingly rare, and weather events are becoming much more intense, even where severe weather is a way of life.
• What we are seeing is, essentially, elementary physics and meteorology at work.  More heat means more evaporation, and more water in the atmosphere changes longstanding weather patterns, often in dramatic ways.  As these patterns change, scientists are finding tipping points and feedback loops that are making severe weather events even more diastrous.
• Climate scientists are increasingly able to finger climate change as the reason for the severity of individual weather events, including Hurricane Katrina and the 2003 European heat wave.

I urge you to read the whole series, and to share it with others.  Whether the next weather disaster is front-page news or actually hits home, as it did for Anthony, severe weather is yet one more reason why aggressive policies to transform our energy and transportation systems to curb emissions of greenhouse gases are so overdue.  As Betsy Kolbert eloquently argued in the New Yorker earlier this month, it is simply not true that these weather tragedies are “beyond our control.”

We wrote about the Legislature’s wrongheaded – fically and environmentally -  pursuit to acquire the leaking and contaminated Dolby landfill two weeks ago. Despite the opposition of several representatives and senators, and a request by Senators Cynthia Dill and Elizabeth Schneider for an opinion from Attorney General William Schneider on the constitutionality of the law, the bill passed and on June 17, Governor LePage signed into law, LD 1567—Resolve, To Authorize the State to Acquire a Landfill in the Town of East Millinocket. If and when the Katahdin mill’s owner Brookfield lines up a buyer for the mills, which currently appears to be International Grand Investors Corp., a Delaware corporation owned by Chinese investors in Taiwan, the state now has the authority to bring the deal to fruition by accepting, on behalf of the State of Maine, Brookfield’s generous donation of the Dolby landfill.

Despite the Dolby landfill’s projected $250,000 in annual operating costs and an estimated $17 million in closure and cleanup costs, the Attorney General’s office concluded on its response to the Senators’ request for a legal opinion  that LD 1567 does not trigger the $2 million debt limitation threshold contained in Article IX, section 14 of the Maine Constitution. Although that result appears counterintuitive given the staggering costs associated with the Dolby landfill, the AG’s office reasons that “LD 1567 does not commit the State to the assumption of any particular debts or liabilities associated with the landfill” and suggests that the SPO can contract away some or all of that liability. Unfortunately, the version of LD 1567 that was passed and signed into law did not incorporate the Attorney General’s suggestion that LD 1567 be amended to require that any contract entered into by the SPO to acquire the Dolby landfill contain a clause limiting the State’s liability for pre-acquisition operation of the landfill.

Although the authority granted under LD 1567 apparently does not trigger Article IX, section 14, the AG’s office concedes that the terms of Article IX, section 14 “will be relevant to the terms of [an] agreement” by which the State takes title to Dolby. Thus, Article IX, section 14 remains part of the conversation. But the extent to which it does remains unclear. To that end, legislators have requested an additional legal opinion from the AG’s office regarding the relevancy of Article IX, section 14 to any contract transferring ownership of the Dolby landfill to the State. Given that Brookfield is just as steadfast in its resolve to dump the landfill as the State is in its resolve to acquire the landfill, it is hard to fathom that Brookfield would agree to remain responsible for the majority of the $17 million in closure and cleanup costs or to indemnify the State for pre-acquisition liabilities associated with the landfill. Would a contract that failed to limit the State’s liability for the Dolby landfill to less than $2 million be subject to approval by two-thirds of the Legislature and a popular vote? Stay tuned . . .

This Saturday, June 25, thousands of people from all across the world will take part in an event known as “Hands Across the Sand” by taking a trip to their local beach and joining hands with friends, neighbors and total strangers to send a message to our leaders—no to expanded offshore oil drilling and yes to clean energy. Last year more than 100,000 people took part in this event in all 50 states and in 43 countries around the world.

This year’s Hands Across the Sand could not come at a more important time and that is why CLF has joined as a sponsor of the event. With memories of the BP Horizon disaster fading from the public memory, and gas prices hovering around $4 a gallon, the oil industry and their allies in Congress are mounting a major effort to dramatically expand oil drilling in US waters. They are even bringing back a proposal that seemed unthinkable a year ago—oil drilling on New England’s Georges Bank, one of the richest fisheries on earth. The truly scary part is that Big Oil is making progress. In Washington DC the House of Representatives recently passed 3 bills that would have required a massive expansion of offshore drilling, and a recent poll shows that public support for drilling is on the rise as gas prices tick up.

The drilling bill was rejected in the US Senate (no thanks to Senator Scott Brown) but the threat of oil rigs in New England’s waters remain a very real possibility, threatening New England’s critical fishing, tourism and outdoor recreation industries which employ tens of thousands and sustainably generate far more revenue than oil drilling ever could.

There is an old saying that if you give a man a fish he will eat for a day but if you teach a man to fish he will eat for the rest of his life. Drilling in New England might create a few jobs years down the road for as long as the oil lasts, but we would be risking far more jobs in other ocean industries such as fishing. However by improving the health of our oceans and fisheries, and promoting the responsible development of renewable energy, we will create jobs that last for generations to come.

That is why this Saturday CLF is joining with the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association to sponsor a Hands Across the Sand event at noon this Saturday, June 25^th on Pavilion Beach in Gloucester. Environmentalists, fishermen and beachgoers will all be there to join hands and say no to offshore drilling and yes to a clean, renewable energy future and yes to healthy oceans and the jobs they support. I hope you can join us in Gloucester but if you can’t make it, click here to find an event near you.

P.S. If you need another reason to come, the Gloucester Hands Across the Sand event will coincide with the annual Saint Peter’s Fiesta so you can speak out for our ocean and have a great time in Gloucester too!

A package of three major new renewable energy bills has just passed both houses of the Rhode Island General Assembly unanimously.  Taken together, the bills will give Rhode Island one of the best and one of the most coherent sets of renewable energy laws in the country.  Over the past three months, CLF staff have worked extensively with the leadership of both the RI House and the RI Senate on drafting the actual language of these major bills.

One bill addresses what is called “net metering.”  Net metering occurs when an electric customer’s meter can run not only forward but also backward.  Net metering is important to individuals and companies that have small renewable projects (like solar panels on the roof of a home) because net metering often makes the difference between those projects being economically viable and being non-viable.  Until now, net metering law in Rhode Island was a shambles:  for example, some renewable energy technologies qualified for net metering but (for no apparent reason) other did not qualify; moreover, many portions of the law were so vague (or incoherent) that no one was sure what they meant, and there was even litigation challenging net metering by alleging that Rhode Island net metering law conflicts with federal law.  The newly passed statutes fix all those problems.  The new law makes clear that net metering is available to all renewable technologies, gives a generous price to renewable energy generators, and outlines exactly the boundaries between Rhode Island and federal law.

Another of these bills addresses “distributed generation.”  The DG Bill seeks to fix an unforeseen problem in an earlier renewable energy law, the Long-Term Contracting Statute (LTC Statute) that the General Assembly enacted in 2009.  Long-term contracts are especially important to renewable energy developers because such long-term contracts enable the developers to get financing for their projects.  The LTC Statute turned out to have one unexpected problem.  It worked very well for large companies, like Deepwater Wind, that wanted to develop and build utility-scale projects.  But the LTC Statute was not so good at helping smaller developers that were unable to afford an army of lawyers to negotiate individual contracts with the utility.  The  DG Bill solves this problem.  The DG bill carves out a portion of the long-term contracting obligation created in the 2009 LTC Statute and sets that portion aside just for small, local projects (like a town that wants to put up a single wind mill at its Town Hall).  In order to obviate the need for that (expensive) army of lawyers, the DG Bill creates a very simple, standard contract for developers of small, local renewable energy projects.  Basically, the law says:  If you have a small, local renewable energy project, you do not need to negotiate your own contract with Grid; instead you can automatically get a standard, short, easy-to-understand two-page contract.  The DG Bill also sets a standard price for such small renewable energy projects — the price is set by a board and is designed to be high enough so that such small projects are economically viable, but low enough so that the public is not forced to over-pay for renewable energy.  The big, utility-scale projects can still be built; but the DG bill will now make it easier for smaller projects also to be built.

The third bill in the set makes it easier for renewable energy developers to connect to the electricity grid by setting a timetable and prices for such interconnections.

CLF worked long and hard on this package of renewable energy legislation, and we are very gratified to see its success in the General Assembly.  We were also pleased to see the package of bills highlighted in the lead editorial of the Providence Journal on June 21.

It is appropriate that Maine Public Broadcasting did this solid little story about the Supreme Court decision in AEP v. Connecticut.

The Supreme Court decision makes it clear that Congress, by enacting the Clean Air Act, entrusted the US EPA with the job of tackling air pollution emissions like the greenhouse gases causing global warming – and that if EPA does not use that power to address harm to the environment that the door is opened to private lawsuits against polluters.

This all means that Congress, particularly key “swing votes” like the Senators from Maine, should resist calls to distract EPA from doing its job.   The time for political game playing around this critical issue is long passed and EPA action, meeting its Clean Air Act responsibilities, is long overdue.