Collins (left) and Snowe. (Photo credit: Office of Olympia Snowe)

Maine’s “Sister Senators,” Republicans Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, should be applauded once again for breaking rank with Republicans and voting in favor of the measure to eliminate billions in tax breaks for the five largest private oil and gas companies. These tax breaks cost the U.S. Treasury $43.6 billion over the last decade. Although Democrats fell short of the 60 votes they needed last night, it’s good to see our Senators acting fiscally responsible. Our sincere thanks also goes out to Sens. Sanders, Leahy, Shaheen, Kerry, Reed, and Whitehouse. Connecticut’s senators Lieberman and Blumenthal also voted against oil subsidies.

Rewarding these companies for continuing to pursue dirty energy options that only end up costing our society more is simply nonsensical – it is quite simply, a double tax. Not only are we directly handing over our tax dollars to the fossil fuel industry to conduct exploratory drilling for yet more dirty fuels, but we also get hit on the backside. We pay for healthcare costs and environmental clean-up and enforcement costs associated with increased pollution.

By contrast, continuing to provide subsidies for renewable, clean energy makes sense for society.  Many Republicans have argued that if we eliminate the tax incentives for dirty fossil fuels, we should eliminate them for clean fuels too – after all, isn’t that capitalism at its finest? Eliminate all subsidies and let the best fuel win?  But that argument fails to acknowledge the benefits clean fuels create for our health, our environment, and as a result, ultimately our checkbooks. Those sort of benefits needs to be encouraged on a broad scale. Until the market-driven demand breaks free from the artificially depressed prices of dirty fossil fuels, we will never get on board with clean energy in a meaningful way.  Dangling a carrot for continued development of clean energy in the form of tax incentives while simultaneously scaling back the incentives to dirty energy is the only way to begin to adjust this playing field and get moving in the right direction. What would clean energy in America look like today if we spent $43.6 billion on it every year for the past decade?

Today, the US Senate is poised to vote on legislation that would massively expand oil drilling along each coast of our nation. This new legislation would provide even less regard for oversight and safety than is required now. Click here now to tell your senators that you want our coasts protected from unsafe oil drilling.

Fire Boats Attempt to Control Fire on BP's Deepwater Horizon

US SENATE VOTES TODAY ON OIL SUBSIDIES AND DRILLING TOMORROW

The biggest oil companies in the US receive billions of dollars of US tax subsidies each year. The most profitable companies in the world are making billions in profits while speculators boost the price of each gallon of gas and home fuel oil. In fact, in the first quarter of 2011, the major oil companies made $30 billion in profits.

Some in the Congress seem to think that oil companies profits are not high enough. Last week, the House of Representatives voted to approve three bills that would increase oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, Alaska, and along the Pacific and Atlantic coasts — including in New England’s ocean and on historic Georges Bank. These bills did nothing to reduce the taxpayer subsidies enjoyed by oil companies.

This week the US Senate has a choice to either remove $20 billion in taxpayer subsidies that go to oil companies OR to make it drastically easier for oil companies to drill in our most sensitive ocean and coastal areas. In the next two days the Senate will vote on two separate bills: The Menendez bill, S 940, would eliminate $20 billion in taxpayer subsidies that could be used for debt reduction. The McConnell bill, S.953, will allow oil companies to stay on the public dole by keeping their taxpayer-funded subsidies AND it would increase dangerous oil drilling in America’s most sensitive ocean areas. In a move that would give oil companies an even greater gift, Sen. McConnell has indicated that he could swap his introduced bill with the text of the pro-drilling bills that were passed by the House last week.

One of the House-passed bills, HR1231, actually requires the Department of Interior to “make available for leasing and conduct lease sales including at least 50 percent of the available unleased acreage within each Outer Continental Shelf planning area” or “any state subdivision of an Outer Continental Shelf planning area that the Governor of the state that represents that subdivision requests be made available for leasing.” This bill would require oil and gas development in New England’s ocean despite test drilling in the 1970s and early 1980s that shows New England’s ocean has only 3 percent of US oil and gas deposits. The harmful effects of oil drilling on New England’s ocean wildlife and recovering fish populations would likely create more economic costs than gain. The industrial development that accompanies oil drilling such as onshore pipelines and infrastructure would irrevocably alter our coastal communities.

New England needs clean, renewable energy and deserves to be allowed to leave polluting, dangerous fossil fuels in the past. Instead, short-sighted Congressional politics could force industrial scale oil drilling operations in New England’s ocean waters for the first time. We can do better. Call your Senators today and tell them that oil subsidies and unsafe oil drilling should not be in the future of New England’s ocean or coastal communities.

Call your Senators today — Tuesday, May 17 — through the Capitol Hill switchboard at 202-224-3121.

Urge your Senators to SUPPORT Senate bill 940, the “Close Big Oil Loopholes Act.”

Urge your Senators to OPPOSE Senate bill 953, the McConnell Dirty Drilling Bill.

CLF is a proud founding member of Renewable Energy New England (RENEW) – a group that brings together renewable energy developers and technology companies with environmental advocates.

In a major milestone in the life of RENEW (a relatively new organization) ISO New England (ISO-NE), the operator of the region’s “bulk” power system and wholesale electricity markets, has elected to perform a regional economic study requested by RENEW.

The RENEW economic study will evaluate how much of the approximately 4,000 megawatts of wind energy projects that have applied to connect to the New England system (the technical phrase is, “in the interconnection queue”) could be developed over the next five years without significant transmission upgrades (that is, building new power lines or supporting hardware) and what the economic impact of making those upgrades would be in order to develop the remaining wind power projects.

ISO-NE performs annual economic studies drawing from requests submitted by stakeholders.  In recent years ISO-NE has undertaken studies at the request of the Governors of the New England states that looked at long-term scenarios for building wind energy resources and transmission for supporting such resources. In the past two years ISO-NE has studied high penetration renewable resource scenarios for the year 2030 in the course of doing a New England Wind Integration Study (NEWIS). RENEW hopes the 2011 study will inform development and transmission upgrade decisions over the next few years as the states work to meet their renewable portfolio standard requirements, address the climate imperative to reduce emissions from the power sector and work to build a new clean economy.

More information on NEWIS and the economy study can be found at the ISO-NE section on the RENEW website.

Special mention and recognition is due to Abigail Krich, the President of Boreas Renewables, transmission consultant to RENEW who was the primary representative of RENEW in the NEWIS process and in the development of the economic study request (and whose material I have shamelessly borrowed from in crafting this blog post).

Throughout human history one overarching story has been that as our society became wealthier we traveled more. The reality that our ancestors generally were born, lived and died in the same place with rare opportunities to “see the world” is hard to deny – so is the reality of our world where it is not unusual to find people walking the streets of our cities who woke up that morning on a different continent and rubbing elbows with masses of people who have lived, gone to school and worked in a wide and complex array of places.

But new academic research is suggesting that the upward surge in travel that has become such a feature of our world may have come to an end.

This could be very similar to well documented phenomena of air pollution rising as a society becomes more wealthy but then reaching a point where the relationship between economic activity (or income) flips -   air pollution increasingly declines as wealth/income rises.  This is know as an “inverted U-Shaped Kuznets curve” by economists (who are almost as poetic when they name things as lawyers).  This analysis suggests that as income rises people collectively take action to reduce pollution.  There is some controversy about applying this principle to pollution that is not as visible and obvious – like the Carbon Dioxide (CO2) that is a major cause of global warming, but some scholars believe that as income and wealth rises that emissions of CO2 drop very suddenly after a critical break point under some conditions.

But the possibility that we may have passed a critical “break point” where travel stops growing would be very good news in terms of slowing and reversing global warming given the critical role of the transportation sector in the emissions of these greenhouse gases – and the major role that travel growth plays in driving (pun intended) such emissions.

These trends are not handed down from above though – whenever we choose to build communities where people can walk, bike or even drive short distances to their offices, schools, stores, friends and families who move our world in a positive direction.  And when we build good transit systems that allow us to move around those communities quickly and cleanly everyone benefits.

Conservation Law Foundation joined more than 30 national, regional and local environmental organizations today on a letter to Massachusetts senator Scott Brown chiding him for his response to a series of ads taking him to task for his votes on environmental issues. Brown’s public remarks and a Boston Herald editorial have attempted to deflect attention away from the issues raised in the ads and onto the tactics of the League of Women Voters, the organization behind them. The letter details Brown’s recent votes for two pieces of legislation that, if enacted, would severely impact public health, including the health of children. Brown has said in the wake of the ads that “as a father, I would never do anything to put my two daughters or anyone else’s children in harm’s way.” The letter supported the ads as being “scientifically accurate.” In a press release, CLF’s Seth Kaplan urged Brown to respond to the issues at hand, saying, “By voting to undermine EPA’s ability to protect public health and the environment, he is choosing to protect out-of-state polluters, not his constituents.”

Major voices in the New England Fishing community speak up in support of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) in this letter to SeafoodSource (a fishing industry website):

The oceans provide food for the world. As fishermen, growers, employers, and participants in the seafood industry, we are gravely concerned about the silent toll that ocean acidification has begun to take on marine resources. Seafood supplies, and our jobs and businesses, depend on healthy oceans.

That’s why we support continuation of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). RGGI helps to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from large power plants in the 10 states from Maryland to Maine.

These emissions don’t just foul the air. They mix into the oceans and increase the acidity of seawater. More than 30 billion tons of CO2 poured from the world’s tailpipes, smokestacks and cleared lands in 2009, mostly from burning coal, oil, and gas. In seawater the CO2 forms carbonic acid. The acid depletes the ocean’s rich soup of nutrients that support shellfish, corals, many plankton species and the marine food webs that underpin the world’s seafood supply.

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CLF and Vermont Public Interest Research Group (VPIRG) today jointly filed a motion in the U.S. District Court to intervene on the side of Vermont in the lawsuit brought last month against the state by Entergy, owner of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant. The two groups maintain that Entergy should follow Vermont law and shut down Vermont Yankee as planned in March 2012.

“This is an important case that will decide the direction of our energy future,” said Chris Kilian, VP and director of CLF Vermont. “CLF and VPIRG will support the state of Vermont in its efforts to uphold Vermont law and ensure that the people’s voice and vision for their energy future will prevail over the interests of out-of-state polluters.” More >

CLF's Peter Shelley accepts EPA's Environmental Merit Award on behalf of CLF and CRWA. (Photo credit: Emily Long)

Yesterday, CLF and the Charles River Watershed Association (CRWA)  received an Environmental Merit Award from the New England office of the U.S. EPA in recognition of their exceptional work on reducing discharge of heated water from the GenOn Kendall Cogeneration Plant (formerly known as Mirant Kendall) in Cambridge, MA. The award was presented at a ceremony at Faneuil Hall in Boston.

Led by CLF Senior Counsel Peter Shelley, the two groups and other key stakeholders, undertook five years of negotiations to reduce the massive amounts of heated water that the plant was discharging into the Charles River, killing fish and destroying the river ecosystem. As a result, in February 2011, EPA issued a new water quality permit that requires the plant to reduce its heat discharge and water withdrawal by approximately 95 percent, and to ensure that any heated discharge does not warm the river enough to cause harm. In addition, the plant will capture most of the heat generated by the plant and distribute it as steam through a new pipeline to be built across the Longfellow Bridge over the next few years, at which point the excess steam will be used to heat buildings in Boston. More >

Recovered Oil Sample from Spill in Buzzard's Bay

CONGRESS VOTING TODAY ON BILL TO MANDATE OIL DRILLING ON EAST COAST

Congress will vote today on a highly flawed bill which will require oil and gas leasing to take place in New England’s ocean — including on Georges Bank or any other historic fishing grounds or important ocean wildlife areas.

The text of HR1231 actually requires the Department of Interior to “make available for leasing and conduct lease sales including at least 50 percent of the available unleased acreage within each Outer Continental Shelf planning area” or “any state subdivision of an Outer Continental Shelf planning area that the Governor of the state that represents that subdivision requests be made available for leasing.”

This bill would require oil and gas development in New England’s ocean despite test drilling in the 1970s and early 1980s that shows New England’s ocean has only 3 percent of US oil and gas deposits. The harmful effects of oil drilling on New England’s ocean wildlife and recovering fish populations would likely create more economic costs than gain. The industrial development that accompanies oil drilling such as onshore pipelines and infrastructure would irrevocably alter our coastal communities.

HR1231 would also require drilling along the rest of the east coast, the entire west coast, the Arctic and other places in Alaska. HR1231 would also require taxpayers to pay half of the costs of certain oil exploration. This is a bill we do not need and cannot afford.

Call today Thursday, May 12. Call early – the vote could happen as early as noon.

Please call your Representative through the Capitol Hill switchboard at 202-224-3121 and urge him or her to vote against HR1231.