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 read more…

For over 15 years CLF has been incubating an important new concept – car insurance that rewards you for driving less.  We have made it a reality through our affiliate – the Environmental Insurance Agency. But to move into full scale operation of the concept we needed a full blown academic grade review of hard data to show that when you drive less you get into fewer accidents (yeah, I know it sounds obvious but we really needed to do that). While the study is done, the results are in.  Read our press release about it. Read more information and the study itself (warning for the mathphobic, it has equations but you can skip them, they will not hurt you). Or you can read about it on the Boston Globe read more…

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 read more…

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 read more…

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 read more…

From November 15, 2010 Boston Globe: There are reasons aerotropolis didn’t get off the ground REGARDING PETER Canellos’s recent essay about the decision not to build another major regional airport: While looking back at such decisions is a worthy exercise, Canellos draws the wrong conclusion (“Aerotropolis,’’ Ideas, Oct. 31). He argues that we would have been better off if with a so-called aerotropolis — modeled on the edge city that has sprung up around Dulles Airport — near the former Fort Devens. The immediate and obvious cost of building such an airport-centric edge city would have been rapid consumption of the apple orchards, farmland, rural towns, and open space of Worcester County and western Middlesex County by low-rise (and low-value) industrial and commercial development. Siphoning off development and energy from read more…

For the first time the U.S. Government is moving to manage, and reduce, the amount of Greenhouse Gas emissions from Heavy and Medium Duty vehicles (which means trucks and buses).  These regulations “have the potential to reduce GHG emissions by nearly 250 million metric tons and save approximately 500 million barrels of oil over the life of vehicles sold during 2014 to 2018” One of the two public hearings on this proposal will be right here in our backyard at the Hyatt Regency Cambridge, 575 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, (their fair city) Massachusetts 02139–4896.  More information on the hearings are available online.

In the movies the best tools for fighting off zombies are torches, flamethrowers or the odd chainsaw.  When confronting climate zombies a more sophisticated approach is called for. Political and financial tools, like the massive clean energy business mobilization that saved the California Global Warming Solutions Act, are very important. So are efforts to bring to bear unexpected and powerful cultural forces, like military leaders, on the problem. Information and evidence rebutting nonsense, like the ideas that scientists have swung from thinking there is global cooling to global warming or that climate science is all new and manufactured, is essential as well.  Joe Romm, who runs the influential Climate Progress blog has an excellent compilation of material pushing back on those myths.   Some highlights: Yes, I know everybody used to read more…

Articles in this morning’s Boston Globe and Salem News describe an important shift in the status of Salem Harbor Station and highlight the need for ISO New England (ISO-NE) to go beyond the analyses it has done in the past so that it can finally identify an alternative that will actually solve the reliability issue that has dogged efforts to retire the plant since 2003.  That is the subject of the recent protest filed by CLF asking the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to require ISO-NE to perform an expedited analysis of the alternatives and establish a timeline for implementation. ISO-NE’s failure to identify solutions that will relieve the need for Salem Harbor Station has resulted in decisions that will cost ratepayers up to $18.5 million in above market payments in read more…