Conservation Law Foundation warmly welcomed the news that Vermont Yankee will soon close. The closure is long overdue for this tired old plant, following a history of leaks, false testimony, broken promises and poor management.

For over ten years, CLF has been actively showing that Vermont Yankee is not a good deal for Vermont. The state has been saddled with this poorly managed, uneconomic dinosaur for far too long, enduring environmental damage and the persistent threats to public health and safety that come with operating a nuclear power plant well beyond its planned life.

Image Credit: Tim Newcomb

With no place to put the waste that will remain dangerous for thousands of years, no power contract that would provide reliable and low cost power to Vermonters, and rapidly escalating costs to shut down and clean up the site—and little money available to make that happen—the numbers just never added up. The plant has been a pig in a poke for some time. The schemes from the plant’s wily owners to eke out a profit and keep the plant running, finally failed.

Vermont Yankee’s closure is good news for Vermont and the region’s economy and energy future. It heralds a transition away from older and polluting power supplies. Old technology, whether nuclear or coal-fired, cannot compete with newer, more efficient resources, renewable energy and energy efficiency. As New England undergoes a massive technology transition that hastens the demise of old polluting power plants throughout the region, we can begin investing in cleaner supplies that will meet our energy needs and create good, green jobs, instead of propping up polluting old plants and paying too much for their power.

Throughout the past decade, CLF added a strong oar pulling to move away from Vermont Yankee. We explained to state regulators, courts, legislatures, federal agencies and blue ribbon commissions the problems with water pollution, management and poor economics of the plant operation. Our advocacy built on a history of holding states and power plant owners responsible for acting in the best interest of ratepayers.

In the 1980s, we led a successful campaign to prevent a second reactor from being built at the Seabrook Station nuclear power plant in New Hampshire because the economics didn’t make sense. In 2000, we helped avert a fire sale of Vermont Yankee that was a bad deal for Vermont ratepayers. And in 2006, CLF showed how cleaner energy efficiency could help meet our power needs and reduce the need for massive transmission that would prop up older plants.

Throughout New England, whether it’s these old nukes, or old coal-fired power plants, we and our allies—the people who have paid and continue to pay with their health, their wallets and their children’s futures to keep them running—are shaking the region from simply accepting business as usual. The demise of Vermont Yankee—and the Salem Harbor and Somerset Station coal plants—was the result a changing energy landscape brought about by  advocates like CLF, who held  plant owners to account year after year, and  built legal, political and popular support for a better deal for New Englanders. Who knows how much more life their owners may have tried to wring out of these old plants at our expense if CLF and others had not been there to keep the pressure on for them to move aside?

Economics and advocacy are closely intertwined. Regardless of which straw finally broke Yankee’s back, the end of these old, polluting power plants is clearing the way to a cleaner energy future in our region. Thanks to the persistence and dedication of many, that is now within our reach.

The Vermont Public Service Board will be holding a public hearing on the proposed expansion of Vermont Gas facilities.

Vermont Gas Systems Expansion

Tuesday evening, September 10, 2013

7:00 p.m 

Middlebury Union Middle School, 48 Deerfield Lane, Middlebury, Vermont 

At a time when climate change is upon us we must think carefully about putting in place new fossil fuel systems that will be around for a very long time. Keeping us hooked on fossil fuels for many years is a bad idea.

The Board is considering a proposal to expand the Vermont Gas Systems pipeline to Middlebury and then beyond. The proposed project would run through valuable wetlands and farmland, and expands Vermont’s reliance on fossil fuels at a time we need to be moving away from these polluting sources. This is the beginning of a bigger project to supply gas across Lake Champlain to New York. It also moves Vermont closer to being able to access gas supplies from fracking in the United States.

Come let the Board know what concerns you have. Tell the Board you want to make sure energy is used wisely and that Vermont takes steps now to reduce our addiction to fossil fuels. It is important for the Public Service Board to hear from you.

photo courtesy of lydia_shiningbrightly@flickr.com

If your doctor puts you on a diet to prevent major health problems, it is a bad idea to fill your pantry with potato chips. Simply hoping you don’t eat the chips staring you in the face is a bad way to try losing weight.

Likewise, if you want to reduce fossil fuels and combat climate change, it is a bad idea to blindly expand pipelines that deliver these fuels to your doorstep and beyond. These are pipes that will be in place for the next 50 to 100 years. In that timeframe we need to move away from dirty fossil fuels, including fracked gas.

In Vermont, the proponents of a proposed gas pipeline expansion are sadly ignoring the long term impacts.

Instead of proposing a project that actually meets our climate change diet needs, the proposed gas expansion in Vermont is doing the equivalent of filling our energy pantry with potato chips. Chips that we will stare at every day and try not to eat in order to stay on our diet.

This is a bad idea.

The gas cheerleaders, including the Shumlin Administration, are hoping folks will only eat the chips as a small snack. But sadly they are not proposing any limits on the use of the gas, or sizing the project to meet our very limited dietary needs. They are not even considering the use of the full pipeline capacity in their analysis.

Testimony from Conservation Law Foundation provided by Dr. Elizabeth Stanton, explains the considerable uncertainty underlying the claims of Vermont Gas and states:

“As long as there is significant uncertainty in the emissions from natural gas, Vermont risks adopting long-lived natural gas infrastructure that is not compatible with meeting Vermont’s 2050 greenhouse gas reduction goals. Approving Vermont Gas’ request represents a gamble, on the part of the PSB, that Vermont’s current and future sources of gas will be at the low end of the current range of possible emission rates in the literature and not at the higher end, and that the uses of the gas will only replace oil or propane. Both assumptions are unlikely and as a result the project proposed will most likely increase greenhouse gas emissions over the life of the project.” (Stanton Testimony at 9-10).

The testimony from the Public Service Department, which is responsible for the State’s energy plan, and helping us meet our climate goals, provides various manipulations of others’ testimony but still simply assumes all the gas in the pipeline will replace oil use. (Poor testimony at pg 8). That is an analysis that is far too limited.

The testimony from the Agency of Natural Resources recognizes that if any gas supply sources have emissions as high as some of those documented, then the claimed emissions benefits of the project “could be reduced or even result in a scenario of increased GHG emissions relative to oil.” (Merrell Testimony at pg. 3). Instead of recommending ways to reduce that impact, however, the Agency calls for annual reporting. While more information is always good, the Agency’s suggestion will be about as effective as closing the stable door after the horse has already run away.

It is past time for Vermont to begin taking its climate change goals seriously. Expanding our addiction to fossil fuels by expanding gas pipelines in Vermont is irresponsible.

A version of this article first appeared in the Sunday August 11 edition of the Rutland Herald /Times Argus.

A cleaner energy future looks bright. It means less pollution, lower costs and better service. Getting there takes some work.

It’s a pretty good bet that a cleaner energy future includes lots more “distributed generation” and fewer large, centralized power plants. Think about your PC or MacBook in place of a huge central computer, or your cellphone — and computer — in your pocket. Examples of distributed generation include solar panels on roofs of homes and parking garages and community wind power.

Linking these sources together so they can power our cars, run our refrigerators and keep us cool is a challenge — one that we must embrace. Failing to meet it leaves us with yesterday’s dirty coal plants or problematic new pipelines for tomorrow’s power needs.

The challenge is that our electrical grid operates without storing energy. The grid is a marvel of human ingenuity that delivers power from any electrical plant to anyone in the region who turns on a switch. It is a bit like a seesaw. The grid must keep in balance the power coming in with the power going out.

Our grid was built and designed to keep this balance by operating mostly with large regional power plants, some of which can be turned on and off fairly easily. When we add more, smaller power sources, keeping the balance becomes a different challenge.

The seesaw must balance with a handful of marbles instead of a few large buckets. But the marbles are more nimble, and the solar panel on your roof delivers power that doesn’t need to travel far. The challenge in the next decade is making our grid as nimble as our power resources to make the most of these new advantages.

If we fail to figure out how to balance our grid with the use of smaller, cleaner resources, we will have more situations where we keep burning fossil fuels instead of allowing wind power on hot summer days, a situation that occurred during our most recent hot spell.

A group of environmental organizations and businesses known as the E4 Group is working with the region’s grid operator to help us meet this challenge. To start, we must correctly account for the amount of new smaller sources that will be used.

A recent report prepared for the E4 Group, “Forecasting Distributed Generation in New England,”  by Synapse Energy Economics shows how billions are being spent in the region now to improve our electric transmission system. Yet these efforts are moving forward without a clear estimate of how much local, distributed generation will be used. It is like projecting the needs for telephone service without considering how many cell phones will be used.

As a result, our electricity system is likely being overbuilt — and we are paying far too much for it. We are building our electrical grid as if the likelihood that you or the school nearby will put up solar panels doesn’t exist. That just doesn’t make sense.

The opportunity is to better tailor our electrical grid investments to take advantage of distributed generation and avoid costly investments for delivering power from far away.

A key finding of the report is that the plans for the grid significantly underestimate the amount of distributed generation that will be installed in the region by 2021. The report forecasts 2,855 megawatts of power from distributed sources by that date, compared to the 800 megawatts assumed by the current plan. This means we will have more than three times the distributed generation than previously estimated.

But the grid and the resources required to meet power needs are being planned as if the real contribution from distributed generation won’t even exist. By ignoring the cleanest, local generation we will be overbuilding and overpaying for bigger, more expensive power upgrades than we actually need.

The report is a clarion call that shows how distributed generation can be better integrated into our regional system and as a result lower pollution and costs for everyone.

CLF’s Vermont office is getting connected to the District Heat Project’s renewable biomass energy.

Local, renewable wood will heat CLF’s Montpelier office this winter.  Construction is now underway for the Montpelier, Vermont District Heat project. This will steer many of Vermont’s capital city’s buildings away from using fossil fuels for heat. With this project, CLF and Vermont are well on their way to kicking the fossil fuel habit through renewable heat.

The project will replace Montpelier’s outdated central heating plant with efficient, modern wood-fired biomass boilers. Heat will travel underground through insulated pipes to connect the State House, City Hall, and other State buildings as well as privately owned downtown buildings – including CLF’s office.

The new boilers will process 12,200 tons of sustainably harvested green wood chips per year, replacing an estimated 300,000 gallons of oil and reducing Montpelier’s annual greenhouse gas emissions by about 3,100 metric tons of CO₂ equivalents. This is equivalent to taking 646 cars off the road annually.

The system will be fully complete by February and will provide heat to many of Montpelier’s biggest buildings. The project advances CLF’s and Montpelier’s renewable energy economy, creating green jobs, stabilizing fuel costs and increasing Vermont’s energy security – all while keeping us warm in our cold Vermont winters.

CLF Intern Ari Rockland-Miller amidst the construction outside the Vermont office

courtesy of Jen Sorensen available at: http://jensorensen.com/2013/07/01/giving-gas-a-pass-fracking-cartoon/

A thoughtful New York Times opinion piece from an oil and gas engineer, Anthony R. Ingrafea, recently noted that:

“gas extracted from shale deposits is not a ‘bridge’ to a renewable energy future – it’s a gangplank to more warming and away from clean energy investments.”

This is a refreshing insight.

The leaks of methane from gas production and transportation “eviscerate” and advantage natural gas has over oil. Conservation Law Foundation provided a similar analysis last month regarding the Vermont Gas expansion in Addison County.

Even if natural gas burns cleaner it is still a fossil fuel. It still contributes to climate change. It still ties us to a dirty fuel at a time our climate demands we move toward cleaner sources.

It is disappointing to hear Vermont Gas and others tout claims that natural gas is clean and affordable. Glossing over the real impacts doesn’t eliminate them. As the cartoon says, it is time for a little honesty. Time for some real action toward clean energy as well.

A version of this article first appeared in the Sunday July 21 edition of the Rutland Herald /Times Argus.

Helping farms and Vermont businesses thrive while cleaning up the environment is a win all around.

Conservation Law Foundation is pleased to serve on the Executive Committee to help Vermont’s homegrown Green Mountain Power Cow Power program to pave the way for cleaner air, happier farm neighbors and more successful Vermont businesses.

The program works by turning farm manure into electricity. The average cow produces more than 30 gallons of manure a day. Multiply that amount by 1,000 — the numbers of cows on a typical Cow Power farm — and you have a lot of cow manure. That means there is also a lot of methane, which can be used to create electricity.

Here is how it works. The manure is placed in a digester at the farm that converts the waste into methane gas. The gas fuels an engine that runs an electric generator.

Gases that would otherwise create a nuisance and release harmful and very potent greenhouse gases are instead captured to produce electricity.

Farms have an additional revenue source, and the rest of us have cleaner air and renewable power.

Currently GMP Cow Power farms are producing electricity for nearly 3,000 Vermont homes and businesses. With the expansion of GMP Cow Power so that it is now available to any GMP customer, there are opportunities to grow the program even further. Customers can sign up and make a voluntary 4-cent-per-kilowatt-hour payment on all or a portion of their electric bill. The contribution goes directly to support Cow Power projects to reduce pollution and produce 100 percent renewable power that gets used in Vermont.

Methane is one of the most potent greenhouse gases. Its global warming impact over a 20-year horizon is nearly 75 times more potent than carbon dioxide because methane traps radiation much more effectively. But instead of simply being released into the air, farm methane can be used to produce electricity. This reduces pollution and makes the farm methane projects some of the best fighters of climate change.

These projects don’t just create renewable energy; they effectively capture some of the most potent global warming gasses.

Twelve GMP Cow Power farms remove the equivalent of over 40,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year, in addition to replacing 6,800 tons of carbon from other electric sources. This is equivalent to removing more than 9,000 cars from the highway each year that would have burned 5.3 million gallons of gasoline. These are big numbers — and the biggest benefit comes from removing methane.

Removing farm-generated methane is great but it comes with some real challenges. The first is financial. The equipment is expensive and requires steadfast maintenance to operate smoothly. It is not like a refrigerator you plug in and forget about, and is mostly economically viable only for our larger farms at this stage of technological development.

To be a real success, we need to make this work for smaller farms as well. A few smaller-scale applications are underway that look promising. For instance, some simpler digesters are used in other parts of the world. The ingenuity of Vermont’s farmers and engineers will undoubtedly yield a product that works well on smaller farms within the next decade, but we don’t have it yet.

One way to improve the economics is to find a way to value and pay for the many real benefits of farm methane projects. They are counted now as renewable power, but offer additional advantages as well. One approach would involve credits or payments that recognize their value in reducing methane pollution. That could make it economically feasible to operate smaller-scale projects, or even applications that use digesters alone, without producing electricity.

Another opportunity – and challenge – is expanding the materials used in the digester. Some farms now use additional organic waste in their digesters, such as waste from ice cream manufacturing or fish production. Currently only pre-consumer waste can be used on farms, and off-farm substances cannot make up more than 49 percent of the total digested waste.

New opportunities arise as Vermont moves to expand digesting for managing solid waste. Some organic wastes are very good fuel for digesters and can produce more methane per pound than manure, but the challenge is to make sure the waste is handled well from beginning to end. After digestion is complete and electricity is made, waste and nutrients still remain. We must be careful not to import or spread more nutrients than our land is capable of absorbing on our farm fields. Lake Champlain is already suffering from excess nutrients, and digesting our waste should not be allowed to make this problem worse.

Another new possibility includes expanding how the “products” made with farm digesters are used. Currently farms use the heat produced from the digesters to keep the digester warm. But this heat could also be used to support greenhouses or a new district heating project, among other possibilities. The challenge is to be as resourceful as possible and, like our farms, use as much of the output as possible. This will expand the reduce, reuse and recycle practice even further by adding “upcycling” — converting waste materials into products of better quality or with greater environmental value — while providing an additional revenue source.

Cow Power presents real, exciting opportunities and challenges. The leadership and innovation Vermont’s farms, businesses, utilities and customers have already shown are poised to take these efforts even further.  If you are a GMP customer, your participation in GMP Cow Power and your 4 cents per kilowatt-hour makes a huge difference. Sign up now at: http://www.greenmountainpower.com/renewable/cow/enroll/

Yesterday, EPA sent Vermont’s clean water agency, the Department of Environmental Conservation, a Clean Water Act “Corrective Action Plan,” outlining permitting and enforcement improvements and updates the state has made or needs to make to ensure that the state provides all the protections required by law to its citizens and the waters they have a right to use and enjoy. This marks a major milestone in CLF’s long-running efforts to secure clean water for all Vermonters.

The federal Clean Water Act is one of the most important and successful laws our nation ever enacted. Before its passage more than 40 years ago, massive volumes of raw sewage and industrial wastes flowed freely into our lakes and rivers. Polluters responsible for this mess faced little in the way of meaningful consequences. The patchwork of state permitting and enforcement programs Americans relied on to keep our waters safe and clean simply had too many holes in it.

The law’s passage reflected a national commitment to restoring and protecting all of our nation’s waters, ensuring that they are safe for drinking, fishing, swimming, and boating, with water quality that also supports healthy populations of fish and shellfish. It established a national goal of eliminating water pollution. As important as this law is, its effectiveness depends on its faithful execution by political appointees and career professional regulators at EPA and partner state clean water agencies like Vermont’s Department of Environmental Conservation.

In 2008, CLF acted on its longstanding concerns that Vermont’s waters were suffering from excessive pollution in part because state officials were falling far short of fulfilling all of their Clean Water Act responsibilities. CLF, with tremendous assistance from its able pro-bono counsel from the Vermont Law School’s Environmental and Natural Resources Legal Clinic,  petitioned EPA to order significant improvements in Vermont’s water pollution control permitting and enforcement efforts. If Vermont officials failed to make needed improvements, CLF asked EPA to take over the lead in issuing permits and enforcing against polluters in Vermont.

After several years of investigation by EPA and negotiations with state officials, the Corrective Action Plan EPA issued represents a validation of CLF’s core concerns. It also represents a positive re-commitment to the Clean Water Act by the administration of Governor Peter Shumlin. Among the positive corrective actions Vermont has taken or will take to better control pollution per the EPA plan are:

• The final issuance of the state’s first ever permit to control pollution discharges from “Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations”—animal feedlot operations meeting certain regulatory criteria—in a manner that complies with the Clean Water Act.
• Commitments to increase annual inspections of actual and suspected “Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations” to detect unlawful pollution discharges and ensure that CAFO dischargers apply for and comply with Clean Water Act permits.
• Changes to state law allowing citizens to have a voice in the resolution of Clean Water Act enforcement proceedings.
• A plan for limiting the amount of nutrients discharged by municipal wastewater treatment plants into the Connecticut River and Long Island Sound.
• Enforcement against the Village of Waterbury sewage treatment plant that will significantly reduce one of the largest single phosphorous discharges into Lake Champlain through installation of state-of-the-art technology
• Conforming the state’s policy relating to the use of polluter’s penalty payments to EPA’s requirement
• Implementing a requirement of the Clean Water Act to prevent the degradation of existing high quality waters

The declining health of Lake Champlain and numerous other Vermont waterways underscores how far we. By implementing all of the Corrective Actions outlined above, Vermont is taking an important step in the right direction toward clean water solutions. Vermonters’ quality of life, economic vitality, and maintenance of our state’s green “brand” requires nothing less.

Vermont Gas’ proposed pipeline expansion is an ill-conceived pipe dream that would exacerbate Vermont’s contribution to climate change and fuel our continued reliance on non-renewable energy. Adding insult to injury, this fundamentally misguided expansion would pose both immediate and sustained threats to vital wetland ecosystems, state-significant natural communities, and threatened plant populations. The pipeline demands a full NEPA review and environmental impact statement, just as Governor Shumlin called for environmental review of the Portland Montreal Pipe Line reversal in a recent letter to Secretary Kerry.

As Conservation Law Foundation articulates in this letter to the Army Corps of Engineers, the pipeline expansion would have undue adverse impacts on aquatic resources and fails to meet the criteria established by federal law for a Section 404 individual wetland permit.

The proposed route impacts 25.16 acres of wetlands and streams, including 5.29 acres of Class II wetlands deemed “significant” under the Vermont Wetland Rules and an additional 6.22 acres of Class II wetland buffers. Testimony from Alan Quackenbush, Wetlands Program Manager for the Department of Environmental Conservation, says trenching poses permanent risks to wetland hydrology:

“If the hydrology changes or the soil layers are not removed and replaced in order, these impacts will be permanent.”

Vermont Gas plans to use open cut trenching throughout the majority of the pipeline route, even though horizontal directional drilling (HDD) is a far less environmentally damaging practicable alternative. Despite the availability of HDD, the invasive open trenching method will be used in areas up to 75 feet wide, including parts of state-significant natural communities.

Even testimony submitted by Vermont Gas recognizes the “permanent Project impacts” to state-significant natural communities. These permanent impacts extend to four areas, totaling 3.68 acres, of Pine-Oak-Heath Sandplain Forest designated by ANR as an S1 “extremely rare natural community.” Vermont Gas testimony acknowledges that this ecosystem is “appropriate to be considered RINA,” or a Rare and Irreplaceable Natural Area under 10 V.S.A. § 6086(a)(8).

Testimony from botanist Robert Popp adds that the pipeline construction and permanent removal of forest canopy pose risks to seven state-listed “Threatened” plant species, as well as an additional seven “Rare” species:

“There is concern about the pipeline acting in some areas as a conduit for invasive, exotic species to spread into the interior of what were formerly unfragmented forests and wetlands.”

We’ve been down this road before – the pipeline would rely in part on sections of the same wetland-rich right-of-way of the thwarted CIRC Highway project. The EPA came down hard on the CIRC’s wetland impacts:

“Even if the mitigation were fully implemented, the proposed project will cause or contribute to significant degradation of waters of the U.S. in violation” of federal law.

Vermont needs to maintain in tact wetland ecosystems and actively pursue forward-thinking climate solutions. Let’s wake up from this pipe dream before we get sucked down its slippery slope.