Recommended reading:  A good piece in Slate about the folks in the Evangelical Christian community who are serious about taking on the challenge of global warming.   Because if you think a loving god gave us a wonderful world that we have a duty to preserve and protect you oppose damaging it through flooding the atmosphere and seas with pollution that will cause global warming and acidify our oceans.

Regional is the new national. Solutions to the environmental problems that threaten our economy, our security and our health are not coming from Washington. Instead, they’re being forged by energetic and creative problem-solvers like CLF who work in regions and states and strive to create models for the rest of the country. This is CLF’s moment.

But we can’t do it small.

To be truly effective in the face of the unprecedented challenges facing New England, we need a movement behind us. We need neighborhoods standing up for their right to clean air and water, cities and towns demanding better transportation options, and a whole region clamoring for clean energy.

About a year ago, we started work to ensure that our story was clear and compelling and inclusive enough to engage a whole region in our mission. We began by asking employees and board members, partners and adversaries, long-time members and new friends what draws them to CLF. Resoundingly, we heard: “CLF protects my New England.”

This notion of protection is inherent in CLF’s brand: our region’s abundant natural resources, as well as its historic cities and towns, are in peril from the impacts of climate change and other realities of modern life. CLF has a long and successful history protecting New England’s environment – from a landmark lawsuit that prevented oil and gas drilling off of our shores to developing green car insurance that rewards people for driving less. At CLF, protection is not about keeping things the way they were. It anticipates the reality of a changing environment and is on the cutting edge of planning for it, to ensure that our region will continue to thrive. This kind of protection requires pragmatic, science-based approaches, fearless creativity, and a willingness to collaborate to find solutions to our most complex challenges.

To convey the many facets of CLF’s brand, built painstakingly over 44 years, we needed to refine, not redefine, our story. We started with articulating our mission:

CLF protects New England’s environment for the benefit of all people.  We use the law, science, and the market to create solutions that preserve our natural resources, build healthy communities, and sustain a vibrant economy.

And our vision:  A healthy, thriving New England – for generations to come.

Our new logo, with the emphatic red “zing,” is the ultimate distillation of CLF’s brand. It’s at once humble and outspoken, pragmatic and creative, patient and dynamic. And yet, it’s simple. Similarly, our new marketing and communications materials – both digital and print – are designed to let our stories stand out. There is lots of white space, an antidote to our tendency to accumulate. Our new design will discipline us to be economical with our words and keep our messages crisp and clear.

Economy of words is never more important than in a tagline. Our five are the answer to every question about why we do what we do:

For a thriving New England

There is no doubt that our ability to communicate our story effectively is key to achieving our mission. It is the currency with which we develop relationships with our members, with foundations who share our vision, and with influencers in the legislature and the media who help further our cause. With a great story to tell and, now, a great way to tell it, we are ready to seize this moment for CLF and galvanize all who would join us in protecting our New England.

In the wake of Dominion’s announcement that it would not be cost effective to continue to operate and invest additional capital for pollution controls at Salem Harbor Station, the Patrick Administration has sent a message to ISO-NE calling for action.  In a letter to the President of ISO-NE, Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs, Ian Bowles, highlighted the need to invest in clean energy instead of propping up old, environmentally obsolete coal plants such as Salem Harbor Station.  Secretary Bowles urged ISO-NE to “quickly implement” a solution to allow Salem Harbor Station to retire.

Clean energy policy has been one of the centerpieces of the Patrick Administration, and this letter signals not only the Administration’s commitment to building clean, new energy infrastructure, but also the important role they have in hastening the retirement of the coal-fired power plants that cause significant damage to public health and the environment.

ISO-NE is responsible for finding an alternative that will remove any need for Salem Harbor Station; however, after 7 years of transmission upgrades and planning, ISO-NE rejected Dominion’s request to remove Salem Harbor Station from the market over concerns that the plant could be needed on the hottest days of the year.  CLF has been pushing ISO-NE to expedite its planning process so that ratepayers will not be forced to bear the costs of keeping this 60 year old coal and oil plant on line despite its continued struggles to meet environmental regulations. 

The Secretary’s letter is particularly timely given that ISO-NE will host meetings on December 15 and December 16 to discuss the planning process for replacing Salem Harbor Station.

A logo is a funny thing. At first, you want to compare it to everything you’ve ever seen before. Ask 10 people and they will all see something different, but will grasp for the familiar in it. But over time, a logo takes on meaning of its own. Even with no words attached to it, we can identify the organization behind it. It says something startling about us that we can process the thousands of visual impressions we take in every day, mix in the messages we hear, and bring all those to mind when we flash on an image as simple as, say, a red line.

In our new logo, we hope you will see both the CLF you’ve come to trust, and the energy we have for tackling the environmental challenges ahead. The red line, or “zing,” as we’ve started calling it around here, is our version of the exclamation point. It says, “And we mean it.”

Our new logo is just one element of a whole new look and feel for CLF’s marketing and communications. We invite you to be among the first to get a glimpse at our brand new website, launched today. We hope you will tell us what you like and what you don’t, and come back often, as we are adding more content every day about our work and ways you can get involved. Starting today, you will also see our new look on Facebook and Twitter and coming soon in our print and digital publications, online communications, advertising and more.

We have some work to do before the zing means:  those people who cleaned up Boston Harbor, or that group that saved the cod, or the ones who made our cars cleaner. We’ll continue solving New England’s toughest environmental problems, and telling you about it here on our blog, on our website, in our publications, and in the media. In time, we hope, when you see the zing, you will say, “CLF: they’re the ones who protect my New England.”

Before Lori Ehrlich was elected to the Massachusetts Legislature she was a committed local activist fighting to protect the health and environment of her family and community.  In fact, CLF’s journal, Conservation Matters, ran a profile of Lori describing her critical role in the advocacy around the Salem Harbor Power Plant back in 2003 under the title “Mother Grizzly from Marblehead” – a good five years before a similar phrase was employed on the national scene to describe a very different person.

Lori (now “Rep. Ehrlich”) continues in her role as the voice of reason and truth with regard to the Salem Harbor plant in an articulate op-ed in the Salem News in which she argues that by ignoring “unequivocal statement of closure” that the Salem News editorial voice is “‘shamefully out of sync with the plant owners and city elected officials who have begun to take important steps to accept and plan for the inevitable”.   Rep. Ehrlich notes that given Dominion’s own statements, the cost of keeping the plant limping forward and the planning for the future now underway that the time has come for collaborative problem solving, not finger pointing:

The ratepayer deserves better than the false choice of “plant or no plant.” Ratepayers have borne the burden of keeping this plant afloat for years and now are paying above-market rates to the tune of $20 million for the next two years to import and burn cheap coal here.

Dominion’s CFO made clear in his remarks at the Edison Electric Institute gathering that the company will not invest its dollars in this plant. Why should we invest ours? With a just transition, local businesses and tourism can be bolstered without ruining our health, killing workers and destroying our natural resources.

Private citizens and several brownfield developers are coming forward with creative and potentially lucrative development ideas. Any development will also enjoy the benefit of a 2002 $6-million cleanup of on-site contamination from unlined impoundment ponds. With a federally designated deepwater port, it’s not a stretch to imagine this 65-acre property hosting cruise ships or other types of maritime commerce.

There will no doubt be unique challenges transitioning this property. But it’s not the only coal plant in the country going by the wayside, just the oldest.

The Salem News and those naysayers who spend so much time and energy pointing out what cannot be done, need to change their tune and join Dominion, city and state leadership, and the air-breathing public, in imagining other possibilities.

Rep.  Ehrlich is doing what our leaders are supposed to do: she is leading. Specifically, she is leading us forward towards a cleaner and more prosperous future and is trying to do so in a manner that heals wounds, considers the values and needs of many communities and she is using honest, tough but civil language to build a real conversation about what needs to be done.

Tonight on WBZ radio’s “Nightside with Dan Rea” starting at 9 pm CLF’s Sue Reid will debate Audra Parker, Executive Director of the anti-Cape Wind “Alliance for the Protection of Nantucket Sound.”  The show will run until at least 10 PM and could go longer.  Tune in to AM 1030 or listen live online and call in at 617-254-1030.

The show is likely to focus on the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities decision approving a long term contract between Cape Wind and National Grid but is sure to be full of discussion of Cape Wind generally.

Yesterday’s decision by the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities (DPU) to approve a 15-year contract for the sale of half of Cape Wind’s power to National Grid removed yet another major hurdle for the nation’s first offshore wind farm and confirmed what CLF and other project supporters have long known to be true: Cape Wind is a good deal for ratepayers.

In finding the contract “cost-effective” and “in the public interest,” the DPU overrode opponents’ most recent objections that the project supposedly is too expensive and will lead to huge profits for the developer.  In fact, the decision pointed out again – for those who chose to overlook the terms spelled out in black and white in the Cape Wind contract – that the developer will not reap windfall profits because the profits are capped and cost savings will flow back to the ratepayers.  And, the contract price is fixed and predictable over the entire 15-year term of the contract.

CLF is thrilled, if not entirely surprised, that the DPU found the project to be good for ratepayers.  As noted in the DPU’s decision, the estimated price impacts are very small and are significantly outweighed by the benefits. Customers will get some relief from the volatile fossil fuel price rollercoaster while Cape Wind takes a major bite out of global warming pollution and forces some of the most expensive and dirty fossil fuel-fired power plants to reduce their operation.  This is a major win for the environment and the emerging clean energy economy.

As an intervening party in the DPU proceeding, CLF took the lead working with the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), NRDC and Clean Power Now to introduce extensive expert testimony, cross-examine one of the opponents’ principal witnesses (an avowed climate skeptic), and draft detailed legal briefs to make the case for approval of the Cape Wind contract.

John Rogers, senior energy analyst at UCS said, “With this decision, Massachusetts has taken a real step forward on behalf of the commonwealth and the country as a whole. We know that offshore wind represents a real opportunity for economic development and environmental progress.  This move means we’re ready to say yes to that opportunity.”

Over the past decade, Cape Wind has withstood exhaustive environmental and permitting reviews, demonstrating over and over that its benefits will far exceed its impacts.  Since the contract was so thoroughly vetted, we are confident that today’s decision paves the way for a much more streamlined review and approval of a contract for the second half of Cape Wind’s power, renewable energy credits and other output. With federal, state and local approvals, a lease and a long-term contract, Cape Wind is looking more and more like a sure thing.

Photo credit: Marilyn Humphries

It may come as no surprise that Dominion Energy ‘s spokespeople don’t want to admit that Dominion’s  recent moves to “delist” Salem Harbor Station are signs that Dominion plans to shut the plant down (read recent statements here and here).  Dominion has been spinning stories about the plant to local audiences for years.  But apparently, Dominion CFO Mark McGettrick has no such trouble. At a financial conference at the Edison Electric Institute on November 2, McGettrick confirmed that the plant will shut down within five years. “We have announced that two of our coal plants will shut down in the future when the environmental rules are clear. The first is Salem Harbor in the Northeast. We’ve already tried to delist a few of those units, but the ISO has required the two biggest ones for reliability. But in the near future, certainly within this five year horizon, we would expect Salem Harbor plant to shut down. We will not be investing any capital for environmental improvements at Salem Harbor.”* No mincing words for McGettrick.

So there you have it. Salem Harbor is going to shut down within five years.  Dominion says it will not invest any more money in environmental improvements at the plant. So, if ISO-NE continues to find the plant is needed for reliability, who will pay the price for those improvements? Ratepayers. Specifically, the ratepayers who live in the shadow of this plant in northeastern Massachusetts. That’s why ISO-NE must act now to find an alternative to Salem Harbor Station.  CLF has stepped in to ask the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to order ISO-NE to meet its responsibility, so that ratepayers can avoid these costs.  CLF will continue working to accelerate shutdown to prevent further damage to public health and the environment and to stop Dominion and ISO-NE from forcing ratepayers to prop up this polluting dinosaur of a plant that should have been closed years ago.

*Listen to the announcement via Google Finance
Clip can be found at 22:30

From November 15, 2010 Boston Globe:

There are reasons aerotropolis didn’t get off the ground