clean power plan – RI Future

January 29, 2016May 3, 2016

Siting Board acting on Invenergy’s schedule for Burrillville gas plant

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EFSB Chair Margaret Curran said that because of the “tight time schedule” it’s critical that the board get advisory opinions “as soon as possible,” raising the question as to why the board feels the need to rush Invenergy‘s application process.

The EFSB also denied all but two motions that were brought before it today.

The Energy Facilities Siting Board (EFSB) met today to decide a number of issues pertaining to the “Clear River Energy Center” a new methane gas power plant planned by Invenergy for the Town of Burrillville.

Things did not go well for opponents of the plan.

Curran began the meeting reminding those in attendance that their would be no public comment. This did not stop people from standing and loudly declaring their dissatisfaction with some decisions made by the board.

EFSB board member Janet Coit, director of the Department of Environmental Management (DEM), asked that people “respect the process” and stressed that there would be ample opportunity for public comment. Then the board began making their decisions.

Dennis and Kathryn Sherman and Paul and Mary Bolduc whose properties are near the site of the proposed plant and whose interests are not covered by any other intervenors, were granted intervenor status by the EFSB.

The Rhode Island Progressive Democrats (RIPDA) were denied. They do not have an adequately expressed interest.

Fighting Against Natural Gas (FANG) and Burrillville Against Spectra Expansion (BASE) are also denied, their intervention was decided to be not in the public interest.The simple allegation “however heart felt” of public interest is not enough.

Fossil Free Rhode Island (FFRI), Sister Mary Pendergast and Occupy Providence filed identical applications, and there is no reason to grant intervenor status said Curran and Coit.

Peter Nightingale, from Fossil Free RI, issued the following statement upon the group being denied intervenor status:

“Rhode Island government may decide to sell Rhode Island down the “Clear River.”

“If it does, it may have acted in accordance with twisted statuary law.
“But government, in that case, will have failed in its fiduciary duty to protect the natural resources —air, land and water— it holds in trust for the People.
“When the time comes, those responsible will be held accountable for their crimes against humanity and nature.”

Nightingale was escorted from the room by security when he rose and loudly read his statement to the board.

Pat Fontes, representing Occupy Providence, also rose and spoke, as she left the room. Fontes said, in a statement, “The predator’s pursuit of profit produces pain for poorer people. It’s the weakest who inherit the consequences without ever having their opinion about the risks taken into account.” She said, “Remember Flint, Michigan!” as she left.

Sally J. Mendzela‘s motion was dismissed because her ideas were “outside the scope” of the process.

The Burrillville Land Trust‘s motion for intervention was denied. Their concerns will be dealt with by the DEM, said the board. “I think their will be other opportunities” said Coit, for the Burrillville Land Trust to make their concerns known. The Land Trust’s motion to close the docket was rendered moot by their denial of intervenor status.

Paul Roselli, president of the Burrillville Land Trust was not surprised by the Board’s decision. He maintains that the issue of biodiversity will not be covered. The impact on species is dependent on an individual species’ status as endangered or threatened, etc. The overall or “holistic” impact of something like Clear River is not considered, and this is the perspective Roselli hoped the Land Trust would bring.

Still, some good came out of the Land Trust’s motion. Invenergy’s application has been updated to ensure compliance with section 44 of the Clean Water Act.

RI Administration for Planning, Office of Energy Resources, the DEM, the RIPUC, RIDOT, the Department of Health and other state agencies will all be asked for advisory opinions. Curran says that because of the “tight time schedule” it’s critical that we get advisory opinions “as soon as possible.”

This raises the question: Why is the EFSB on a Invenergy’s time table?

The Office of Energy Resources will render advisory opinions regarding all issues per the Resilient RI Act. as bought up by the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF).

The board will be looking for specific limitations on the use of “secondary fuels,” said Curran. The proposed power plant is made to run on fuel oil as well as methane, as discussed on RI Future here.

There was also some consideration given to Obama’s Clean Power Plan.

The EFSB is chaired by RI Public Utilities Commission (RIPUC) Chairperson Margaret Curran and has only one other sitting member, Janet Coit, director of the Department of Environmental Management (DEM). The third position on the board is usually filled by the associate director of the RI Administration for Planning, a position currently unfilled.

The first public hearing will be on Thursday, March 31 in the cafeteria of the Burrillville’s High School. The meeting will be officially announced soon.

January 22, 2016January 23, 2016

“Zero-emission” cars running on fracked gas

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In an editorial this week in the ProJo, Janet Coit and Marion Gold come to the rescue of embattled Governor Gina Raimondo. Janet Coit is Director of Rhode Island’s Department of Environmental Management and Marion Gold is Commissioner of the Rhode Island Office of Energy Resources. Both serve at the pleasure of the governor and whatever strengths, independence is not one of them.

Governor Raimondo has troubling connections to Wall Street going back to her days as Rhode Island treasurer. Here are just two of a recent flurry of publications questioning the pension fund reforms that she pushed through in those days:

One of Governor Raimondo’s key supporters is John Arnold, a former Enron trader who went on to found a profitable hedge fund.

The irony of the Coit-Gold ProJo editorial is that it’s based on Enron-style accounting, used in this case to hyper-inflate Governor Raimondo’s “visionary” contributions to the climate change battle.

In their editorial Coit and Gold mention that RI ranks number four on the State Energy Efficiency Scorecard put out by ACEEE. You do not have to know how this ranking is produced to understand that it is pure bunk. Just look at what the Energy Information Adminstration web site has to say about Rhode Island:

Natural gas fueled 95% of Rhode Island’s net electricity generation in 2014.
Rhode Island is the second-lowest emitter of carbon dioxide among all states. Like the lowest emitter, Vermont, Rhode Island does not have any coal-fired electricity generation.

Natural gas is mostly methane. It is a greenhouse gas that is about 100 times as potent as CO₂. Methane is burned and escapes unburnt to generate Rhode Island electricity, but we put all of those climate threatening emissions on our neighbors’ tabs.

There is more about the ACEEE rating of Rhode Island as fourth in the nation that is disconcerting. Scan the ACEEE web site and you quickly discover that they mention EPA’s Clean Power Plan again and again. There are some minor problems with this plan:

Obama’s “Clean Power Plan” is a huge gift to the methane (“Clean Energy”) industry — we’ll show you how in a minute. And guess who’s big in methane? Big oil, of course […]

The plan fits perfectly with Obama’s general practice of saying one thing and doing the opposite.

Director Coit is one of the members of the Energy Facility Siting Board that is currently deliberating the fate of the new fracked-gas power plant with the Orwellian name Clear River Energy Center, Invenergy’s plan to sacrifice Burrillville to unfettered greed.

Coit is publicly on record with her support of methane:

With her so-called pragmatism, doesn’t Director Coit not sound remarkably like House Speaker Mattiello?

In the Coit-Gold editorial there is not a word about Clear River, nor about the natural gas that already produces 95% of RI’s electrical power. There is no mention that Governor Gina Ms Wall Street Raimondo is on record supporting fracked gas. That silence must be “because there is a fire wall,” as Director Coit said in the preliminary hearing of the siting board last week. How convenient!

As the Clear River theater of the siting board progresses, we might hear about the CO₂ emissions the power plant will produce in Rhode Island. What we will not hear from the Governor and her allies on the board is to whom we will charge the fugitive methane. Most of that escapes at the wellheads in Pennsylvania and along the pipelines and from the compressor stations. Nor will we hear about the suffering it causes to the people on the frontlines in Burrillville and across the globe. None of that, but we’ll follow the statutes, because we are a nation of laws.

Indeed, all of the Enron-style accounting is perfectly legal, but, dear reader, you surely do not believe any more than I do, that Mother Nature is impressed.

There is yet another accounting trick buried in the Coit-Gold editorial: the Zero-Emission Vehicle Action Plan. True, we need electric cars and they have no tail pipes that emits CO₂. Still, the electric energy such cars use has to be generated somewhere. If it comes from renewables we win; if we generate it with fracked gas, we loose. The latter is of course exactly what will happen if we let Invenergy build the Clear River Energy Center.

We are constructing a 30 megawatt wind farm off Block Island and are talking about a frack-gas facility with 30 times that capacity in Burrillville. Accounting gimmicks devoid of physics may fool the people, the editor of the the ProJo and our hapless leaders, but none of that will change the laws of nature.

Update after the original post: Senator Sheldon Whitehouse from National Grid has finally made up his mind and now supports the Clear River Energy Center. He uses his same old arguments about choke points and price spikes. That was none of that last winter is but an irrelevant detail: As New England freezes, natural gas stays cheap.

January 21, 2016October 6, 2016

Raimondo: States need ‘broader view’ of renewable power

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The Governors’ Wind Energy Coalition announced that it “will pair its advocacy work for wind with work for solar energy as well” and has changed its name to the Governors’ Wind and Solar Energy Coalition (GWSC).

Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo, who serves as Vice Chair of the Coalition, said, “I support the foresight of my colleagues to broaden the Coalition’s focus and include solar energy development as a policy priority. Wind and solar provide complementary benefits to the U.S. electric grid and will help diversify the country’s energy mix. The need for states to take a broader view of renewable power is clear.”

Raimondo’s support of wind and solar seems at odds with her support for Invenergy‘s proposed Clear River Energy Center, a fossil fuel power plant slated to be built in Burrillville. John Niland, vice president of business development at Invenergy said in an interview with Ted Nesi that his company is “very keen on renewable energy” but not, apparently for Rhode Island. Is this new embrace of solar and wind power a sign that Raimondo is shifting her position on methane gas?

According to an American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) press release:

“This bipartisan governors’ coalition has been highly effective at getting policy results and have helped grow wind energy for nearly a decade,” said Tom Kiernan, CEO of the AWEA. “The governors’ decision to combine forces with solar energy reflects the economic and environmental value of diversifying our nation’s grid with clean, reliable renewable energy.”

Technological innovations and performance-based policy continue to help lower wind and solar energy’s costs, making both homegrown technologies more affordable than ever. Wind and solar power are important job creators, putting Americans to work in all 50 states.

Wind and solar energy added 61 percent of all new generation capacity in 2015 through November according to SNL Energy. As states make plans to comply with the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Clean Power Plan, the nation’s first-ever rule to reduce carbon emissions from existing power plants, zero-emission wind and solar power are expected to continue supplying large amounts new electricity in the years ahead, resulting in numerous consumer and environmental benefits.

American wind power now supplies enough electricity for 19 million American homes after surpassing the 70 gigawatt (GW) mark of installed wind capacity late last year. Wind energy could double to supply 10 percent of the U.S. electricity mix by 2020, and double again to supply 20 percent of U.S. electricity by 2030. It can become one of the largest sources of electricity in the U.S. by supplying 35 percent by 2050. According to the Department of Energy’s Wind Vision report, by meeting the 2030 scenario American wind power could support 380,000 well-paying jobs, a number that could grow to 600,000 by 2050.

Emerging opportunities to invest in the rapid growth of the U.S. wind energy industry will be on full display at this year’s WINDPOWER 2016 in New Orleans from May 23 – May 26. The event is the Western Hemisphere’s largest annual wind power trade show.

January 20, 2016January 21, 2016

EJLRI confronts the EPA in Boston

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Environmental justice leaders from frontline communities hardest-hit by climate change and pollution converged on all 10 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regional office headquarters yesterday, to mark the end of the final public comment period for the Obama Administration’s federal Clean Power Plan (CPP) to reduce power plant carbon emissions 32% by 2030.

Members of the Environmental Justice League of Rhode Island (EJLRI) lead the efforts in Region 1, meeting with Curt Spalding, Administrator for the EPA’s New England Region, headquartered in Boston.

After their meeting with Spalding, I spoke to Dania Flores, EJLRI’s Executive Director and the coordinator of the action, and Julian Rodríguez-Drix, an EJLRI board member, in the hallway of the EPA offices.

“We’re part of the Climate Justice Alliance (CJA), a national alliance of climate justice grassroots groups. We decided that no one has engaged on the side of the people on the CPP plan which is a power generation plan on how the states are going to clean up their act,” said Flores.

The CJA is a collaborative of over 35 community-based and movement support organizations uniting frontline communities to forge a scalable and socio-economically just transition away from unsustainable energy towards local living economies to address the root causes of climate change. They have developed an “environmental justice counterpoint to the Clean Power Plan” they call “Our Power Plan.”

“One the first things in our plan is to engage with the EPA in each region to try to convince them that no one has actually meaningfully engaged the people,” said Flores, “We’re asking the EPA to comply with the law. They have the power to ask state governments to engage in meaningful engagement with frontline communities.”

Under Obama’s CPP, states have “until August to come up with a plan [reduce power plant carbon emissions] or they can ask for an extension,” said Flores, “but we are asking the EPA to tell states that already have a plan, ‘No, we don’t believe that you have actually meaningfully engaged with [frontline] communities.’”

Flores says that states have until 2018 to present their plan and that the CJA wants the plans “to include exactly how states engaged in meaningful engagement [with frontline communities.]”

Rodríguez-Drix said, “Here in Region 1 the issue we see is that the transition away from coal and oil very much favors natural gas as a fuel source and we have a number of very strong reasons that we do not believe that’s [a viable solution].”

The EJLRI’s position is that “if there’s energy infrastructure being built it has to be true renewables,” not energy based on extraction and burning.

Right now, to satisfy a requirement to invest in weatherization and renewables, National Grid tacks on a surcharge to all energy customers, “but the fund is mostly used for solar panels in the suburbs,” says Rodríguez-Drix. This means that poor communities are helping to subsidize the energy conversions of their richer neighbors.

“It benefits white homeowners, primarily,” says Rodríguez-Drix, “We need to look at the whole system and the economics behind it so that the system benefits frontline communities, not just in terms of jobs installing solar panels, but in terms of generating energy that is owned by people of color.”

This problem is exasperated by another issue primarily faced by poorer communities of color. “Slum lords aren’t the ones paying [energy] bills and they don’t care about [weatherization and energy efficiency]. [The communities we represent] have a lot of housing insecurity. We need incentives and investments that will put people of color to work installing and benefiting from increased weatherization and energy efficiency.”

“I had the sense that Spalding was sympathetic to what we had to say,” said Rodriguez-Drix.

“A lot of the conversation revolves around what the translation of certain words in the law is,” said Flores, “What it means to them and what it means to us. When we talk about community engagement, what does it mean to be meaningful? We think we are going to be engaged and be part of the conversation. When they talk about engagement it means they are going to leaflet someplace and schedule two meetings.

“Real meaningful engagement is a lot more work than they have been doing.”

Though this was a nationwide effort, not every EPA office allowed for this level of engagement from CJA aligned groups. “In some EPA offices, meetings like this did not occur,” said Flores, “In some offices an activist would hand over written material to a secretary.”

“EPA welcomes public input from all parties on the Clean Power Plan,” said Spalding when asked for a comment, “We are pleased that stakeholders and communities are actively engaging in the public comment process because robust public participation leads to better outcomes for our health and environment. It is important that environmental justice communities provide EPA with their unique perspective on proposals like the Clean Power Plan.

“EPA is committed to ensuring meaningful public involvement throughout implementation of the Clean Power Plan, so that all communities benefit equally from this vital step to address climate change and protect our health and environment. EPA will consider the input we have received before taking final action.”

Flores, the EJLRI and the CJA see this contact as the beginning of a series of conversations. “We’re going to up the ante as this develops. If the EPA doesn’t push states to wait until 2018 to submit plans, after meaningfully engaging with frontline groups, we will be pushing towards a national gathering in the Summer,” said Flores.

12400573_1009301082459381_7511060132359889040_n — Photo (c)2016 EJLRI

June 2, 2014June 2, 2014

New EPA rule will be boon for RI renewable energy sector

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Rhode Island’s renewable energy industry is sure to benefit from the EPA’s new Clean Power Plan, said Abel Collins, program director of the Rhode Island chapter of the Sierra Club.

“The new EPA Carbon Rules are great news for Rhode Islanders, because the coal burning fire plants in the Midwest that have been poisoning our air for decades will either be closed down or cleaned up, preferably shuttered for good,” Collins said. “That will mean significant public health benefits, healthcare savings, and that’s even before we look at the climate impacts. Rhode Island’s economy is poised to capitalize on renewable energy development, and the planet will be better for it.”

Seeking a 30 percent cut in power plant emissions by 2030, the New York Times called President Obama’s executive order that the EPA tighten regulations on coal-based power plants “one of the strongest actions ever taken by the United States government to fight climate change.” It’s called the Clean Power Plan.

State Rep. Art Handy, primary sponsor of the Resilient RI bill that would develop a plan to address climate change said:

“While there has been much hand wringing about the new rule from the coal industry and their allies about these reasonable new rules, the truth is they will spur innovation in clean energy and efficiency, prevent thousands of deaths and millions of asthma attacks and will move our country in the right direction to reduce the impact of climate change on our economy and our society. Rhode Island with other northeastern states already started on this path with the successful RGGI program – the new rules will bring the rest of the country along with what we have been working towards for years.”

Channing Jones, campaign director of Environment Rhode Island said: “This announcement is exactly what we’ve been waiting for. EPA’s announcement is a huge win for the health of our families and our environment.”

He added, “The dirty energy companies that oppose this move may question the science and predict economic apocalypse if we act. They can make up whatever claims they want. But a cleaner, more energy-efficient economy and environment is not going to undermine our prosperity. In fact, our kids’ future depends on it.”

Jones’ comments echoed a post Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse wrote for Vice News, published Sunday night:

Sight unseen, the polluters have been characterizing the rules as part of a “war on coal” that will kill jobs and impose unfair costs on industry. Don’t believe them.

Their claims are exaggerated at best, and flat-out lies at worst — and they look at only one side of the ledger, ignoring the effects of carbon pollution on the rest of us.

The EPA proposal, according to Vox “will set different emissions targets for each state — which, when taken together, will aim to cut carbon-dioxide emissions from the nation’s power sector as much as 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.” After a one-year period to finalize and tweak the new rule, Rhode Island and other states will have until June 2016 to develop a plan to reduce emissions. “States will be given a variety of options for cutting their emissions — using more efficient technology at coal plants, boosting their use of solar or wind or nuclear power, or even joining regional cap-and-trade systems that require companies to pay to emit carbon-dioxide.”