Emboldened by Students Taking Action

Weight of the world got you down? Stressed out by visions of exploding mountains, warming planets, and mounting to-do lists? Me too. Thankfully, I had a major ray of hope recently that I would love to share with you, in the hopes that it will lift your spirits as much as it lifted mine. Yesterday, I had the great privilege of joining 30 youth clean energy leaders when they met with Environmental Protection Agency chief Lisa Jackson at Howard University in Washington, DC.

These students had come to DC as a culminating event in their campaign to hold 100 clean energy events at their colleges and universities in the month of October. From flash mobs to press conferences, these youth leaders have been working overtime to send a clear message - they want their campuses to move beyond coal, to 100% clean energy. Like me, many of these student's cited the devastation caused mountaintop removal coal mining as their first motivation for getting involved in helping move the nation beyond coal.

They've been making headlines and making a difference, and now they were bringing their message to the nation's top environmental official.

Administrator Lisa Jackson gave the students a warm reception. She talked to them about some of the accomplishments she's most proud of, including stronger mileage standards for cars and trucks, and reducing air pollution from coal-fired power plants across the eastern US.

She also talked about her big priorities moving forward, primarily finalizing long-overdue standards that will slash mercury pollution from our nation's biggest source - you guessed it, coal-fired power plants. She also told the students that the basic environmental protections we all take for granted are under attack, and that it's up to all of us to ensure we stop polluters from unraveling our basic clean air and water safeguards.

Yes, it was great to hear that these important health and safety protections are still a priority for the White House. What was even more inspiring were the stories of the students, who asked Jackson about youth engagement, the mercury standards, and the Keystone XL pipeline.

And after meeting with Jackson, the students went to a meeting at the White House. Here is how one student saw the day of action in Washington, DC:

Maura Friedman, University of Georgia.

Yesterday, 35 students from across the country, from the Midwest to the Southeast and everywhere in between, met with White House officials to discuss the work they've been doing within their campuses and communities and press administrators to stand with youth in their fight for public health.

Our first meeting was with Lisa Jackson, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. She listened to the personal stories of students and took questions, confirming her commitment to those affected by pollution.

Addressing students working on Campuses Beyond Coal campaigns targeting on campus coal plants, Jackson said, "It's not fair when colleges that are supposed to be teaching people are costing local children IQ points," referring to mercury emissions.

At the White House, we met with Jon Carson, the Director of the Office of Public Engagement, and Ronnie Cho, White House Liaison to Young Americans. Students shared personal stories but also delved into the organizing we’ve engaged in to produce positive change.

Our exchanges were met with nods and notes; I felt heard. But I’m waiting to see if we were actually listened to - I'm waiting for action.

As a Southerner, I feel forgotten by environmental protections, but we’re on the frontline of the battle for public health. In Georgia alone there are 13 coal-fired plants, as well as two new proposed plants and a coal boiler on my campus at the University of Georgia.

Our health can't wait for the politics of public health to work itself out - we're sick from pollutants now. We need mercury safeguards from the EPA to curb the health costs of coal. The Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline needs to be rejected, lest we expose American families to oil spills and, in Lisa Jackson's own words, cut the nation in half.

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Thank you to these youth leaders for being such an effective, strategic, and tireless voice for clean energy, and for moving our nation beyond coal. The Sierra Club is proud to stand with you.

-- Mary Anne Hitt, Director of the Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaign. Photo by Javier Sierra. See more photos on the Sierra Club's Flickr Page.

Comments

[Bob McChesney]

Thank you. This picture and story worked very well to lift my spirits!

[Eric Mair]

Hi there and well done to the students.
I am unreservedly in favour of replacing coal-fired power plants with renewable energy and I can, and regularly do, talk for hours on the technology currently available to make this possible.
However, the elephant in the room, along with his 900lb gorilla handler never get talked about. His name is Storage.
There are renewable energy technologies which either don't need storage e.g. hydro and biomass or have storage taken care of e.g. most solar thermal applications, but the most popular and widely recognised disciplines, wind and photovoltaics, don't have any way to mitigate for the variability problem that prevents them from offering base load or dispatchable power to the grid.
There are a number of small scale storage options available under the general heading of "batteries" but these are expensive and have to be replaced fairly regularly and they are limited in their capacity to store power.
There are medium scale options such as flow batteries and some of the more exotic metal halide batteries which are also expensive and carry replacement penalties and capacity limitations, but the real challenge comes at utility scale where we need to store GWh of power and be able to release it as and when it is required i.e. base load or dispatchable power, at an affordable price.
There is currently only one system that is able to meet these specifications and that is pumped hydro but there are serious constraints (mostly environmental) to the deployment of sufficient installations to meet the needs of the growing RE market.
It is clear to me that this is the "Holy Grail" of the successful integration of renewables into our national grids, yet the companies which are trying to research this subject are not receiving the government support they need and there are some very promising possibilities out there.
Take Gravity Power (www.gravitypower.net) as an example. The concept is simple, the components are already in use in separate applications, all the company needs is the funding to put these components together into a viable GW scale storage solution that can be economically deployed almost anywhere. But they aren't getting it because not enough of us have seen far enough into the future to see that storage is essential once the penetration of renewables (wind and PV) reaches the 20% or so mark.
This type of storage facility also has applications in the coal-fired community which needs to be able to shift loads from day time to night. A utility scale storage system can do that and help reduce the emissions from coal plants by keeping them running at economical outputs 24/7, storing any excess power for later use instead of dialing the power plants back because of reduced demand to the point where they are running hopelessly efficiently and pumping even higher volumes of GHGs into the atmosphere.
The much vaunted "smart grid" won't be so "smart" either without storage to smooth the flow of renewable energy into the system.
So how can we get some essential funding to these storage research companies? Because if we don't find a viable storage solution, much of what we are proposing in terms of renewables just won't be able to meet the demand when the rubber hits the road.