Go Get "Revenge"

If you're lucky enough to live near one of the 30+ cities where the film Revenge of the Electric Car will be showing now and in the coming weeks, don't miss the chance. And if you're even luckier to live near San Francisco, Ann Arbor, Cambridge, Portland (OR), or Chicago, you are cordially invited to walk the green carpet to a special viewing of the film. Tickets are going fast, so I recommend you order them online where available.

Not only is Revenge a really fun and fast-paced documentary (yes, even a documentary can be fun), but it's an important look into an industry that is both a big part of the climate change problem and can be a big part of the innovative solutions we need.  A switch to electric vehicles (EVs) offers us one essential way to reduce emissions and our dependence on oil –- even on today's electricity sources.

On Friday, November 4, the film will premiere in Cambridge, MA ("my fair city" as the Car Talk guys and I would both say) at the Kendall Theatre. After the 6:45pm screening, we'll have a post-film panel discussion and audience Q-and-A with automotive journalist Jim Motavalli, MIT expert Jarrod Goentzel, and me. We've also invited a representative from the Boston Mayor's office and Congressman Mike Capuano (who has a small cameo in the film from a Capitol Hill hearing with automaker executives when he shows  off both his passion for improved fuel economy as well as his strong Boston accent: "Give us the cahhhs that we want!").

This EV conversion belongs to Greg "Gadget" Abbott, who appears in the film.

 In Portland, OR on November 4, filmmaker Chris Paine will be doing a Q-and-A with the audience after the 7pm Revenge screening at the Hollywood Theatre. The Oregon Electric Vehicle Association and other allied groups will be leading an electric vehicle plug-in caravan to the event and free EV charging at the theatre.

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.

Wind and Solar Wars

If anyone needed proof that clean energy is the future we need, look no further than the recent trade disputes the US has filed against China over wind and now solar power. Nations simply do not fight over unprofitable, unviable sectors. Instead they do exactly what China, India, the EU, and the US are all doing: positioning themselves to capture as large a portion of the booming market as they can.

With the distributed solar segment alone forecast to explode to $150 billion by 2015, it’s clear that now is the time to get the solar boom right. Debilitating trade wars and evisceration of manufacturing in key economies only serves to weaken the industry. This is something the world can ill afford, because at the end of the day, the much bigger game is already underway: dislodging the entrenched fossil fuel industry

Part of the problem is optics. Just days after the US trade dispute was filed, India was forced to defend the domestic content provisions of its solar mission at the World Trade Organization largely due to concerns of future disputes from the US and the EU. However, despite heavily criticizing India for protecting domestic manufacturers through local content rules, important exceptions (thin film, for instance) have created tremendous opportunities for US companies. Domestic content rules clearly do not necessarily preclude wider benefits to the industry as a whole.

The Future of the Thermostat Has Arrived

You can describe it as a thermostat with the design of an iPod. It's called Nest, and it will likely revolutionize thermostats, because it's a programmable thermostat that programs itself. This is a big deal, considering that ninety percent of programmable thermostats are rarely programmed at all despite their effectiveness in reducing energy bills.

So how does a Nest work? Well, besides the fact that you'll be able to control the thermostat from your smart phone, the technology behind it will learn your behavioral patterns and adjust itself on its own:

Nest's staff of 100, mostly mobile phone engineers, have developed an algorithm that they say "learns" a household's activity patterns and automatically adjusts the temperature accordingly to save energy, lowering heating and cooling temperatures when occupants are away for extended periods of time. The "Auto Away" feature uses motion sensors to detect the presence and absence of occupants.

Another cardinal feature of Nest's Learning Thermostat is the Leaf, a green leaf icon that appears on the thermostat every time the user manually switches the device's temperature to a more energy-efficient setting, either using the dial on the outside or remotely from anywhere via a smartphone or tablet app. The goal is to subtly train people to be more energy efficient.

-- Brian Foley

An Opportunity for EPA to Improve Air Quality Protections for Natural Gas Drilling

Yesterday, the Environmental Protection Agency announced a month-long extension to the comment period for their oil and natural gas air quality standards, giving everyone more time to share their stories of why we need clean air now.   If you haven't yet, click here to tell the EPA to clean up our air!

Together, we've already submitted more t han 25,000 comments to the EPA, letting them know we’re sick of the natural gas industry polluting our air.  You also helped us pack EPA hearing rooms as we explained the serious health problems associated with this out of control pollution.

Yesterday's announcement allows us the opportunity to continue to tell the EPA we need strong clean air protections  immediately.  This is our last chance to tell the EPA our clean air is more important than dirty fossil fuel industry profits.

As we move into the final month of this comment period, we trust that EPA's deadline for these important air quality measures will not slip further.  We expect that they will use this extra time to consider all of our comments. 

We also expect the EPA to use this time to strengthen the rules by including many existing, uncontrolled sources of air pollutants including methane, which is a potent cause of climate disruption, and toxic pollutants, which pose significant public health threats.  EPA now has a chance to plug these gaps, so please voice your concern in support for these safeguards. 

We understand the EPA is taking the time to get this rule right.  The Sierra Club will continue to show our support and push for the strongest safeguards possible. 

-- Deb Nardone, Sierra Club's Natural Gas Reform Campaign Director

"My neighbors and I feel coal pollution up close"

Those are the words of William Anderson, the chairman of the Moapa Band of Paiutes in southeastern Nevada, in his recent editorial on the need for air pollution protections for coal plants.

Anderson's column is one of many news hits we want to highlight this week on coal and clean energy. His piece appeared in the St. Lake Tribune and eloquently discusses how coal's pollution isn't out of sight and out of mind for him and his community - and shouldn't be for the rest of the nation, either. From the column:

Because coal-burning power plants operate largely out of the sight of most Americans, worries about coal pollution might seem remote. But the soot, nitrogen, sulfur and carbon pollution coming from these plants lands not just on our heads (and inside our lungs); it gets carried across the West by the wind. The Reid Gardner plant’s emissions, for instance, cloud the Grand Canyon in Arizona and worsen particulate and ozone pollution across southern Nevada and Utah.

We also saw an excellent editorial from the Minneapolis Star Tribune on the need for mercury protections related to coal plants - and how Congress must stop attacking the Environmental Protection Agency's attempts to protect public health from coal pollution such as mercury:

Unfortunately, House Republicans have voted nearly 170 times this year alone to erode clean air and water laws and thwart other environmental protections. In addition, most GOP presidential candidates are calling for a moratorium on EPA regulations, and Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and Georgia's Newt Gingrich want to abolish the agency altogether.

Not only are these views irresponsible, they reflect gross ignorance of the impact that EPA rules make toward safeguarding Americans' quality of life and health. While the Tea Party and GOP leaders may distrust the EPA, the majority of Americans want stringent regulations to protect air and water qualities, according to studies.

Meanwhile, some great activism news is highlighted in this NPR story on the community fighting back against a proposed coal export terminal in Bellingham, Washington.

Another great Beyond Coal activist story? Check out this Grist profile of Texas Beyond Coal organizer Flavia de la Fuente.

Finally, in clean energy news - the U.S. military is looking to clean energy to free it from the security risks of relying on fossil fuels:

"We're doing this to become a better military, to make us better war fighters. We're doing this as a matter of security," (said U.S. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus).

"Tar Sands Pipeline Will Comfort Our Enemies"

Army Brigadier General Steven Anderson (Ret.) penned an editorial in The Hill today against TransCanada's proposed Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline. In it, he writes of his experiences in Iraq helping with truck convoys transporting oil to our troops and how those were prime targets for terrorists. He passionately writes about how this pipeline will only worsen our nation's fossil fuel addiction:

Becoming energy independent must be a top priority of the United States.  It certainly is for veterans like me.  TransCanada and its allies know this, and cynically play on our hopes by presenting the pipeline as a solution. Let's not be fooled. The Keystone XL pipeline would perpetuate our deadly oil dependence and will  not make us more secure.

We love Gen. Anderson - and we have this footage of his powerful testimony to the State Department at the public hearing on Keystone XL earlier this month.

 

Will you join us on November 6th as the Sierra Club and allies from around the country encircle the White House and rally against tar sands?

Three Cheers for Geothermal

Rock beats scissors. Paper beats rock. And someday geothermal will beat coal. But by how much? An updated map of new thermal data has found that geothermal energy can produce 10 times the energy of installed capacity of U.S. coal, according to Southern Methodist University's Geothermal Laboratory.

This new map was made possible by incorporating thousands of newly compiled Bottom Hole Temperature (BHT) readings from oil, gas, and water wells in parts of the country that hadn't previously been surveyed. The data shows that the continental U.S. has nearly 3 million megawatts worth of the renewable resource. That's a whole lot of power!

Previous maps were nowhere near these numbers because recent technological innovations have made geothermal development possible "in areas with little or no tectonic activity or volcanism." While current geothermal energy production mostly takes place in the West, some parts of the eastern two-thirds of the U.S. are actually hotter underneath the surface. In fact late last year, SMU, thanks to a grant from Google.org, determined that West Virginia's geothermal potential could easily bypass the state's current coal industry in terms of energy capacity.

This week the Geothermal Energy Association is hosting a worldwide energy expo in San Diego, which is expected to draw 3,000 people. California leads all U.S. states in geothermal capacity at about 1,800 megawatts, or "two-thirds of the total United States' geothermal generation. It is estimated that the state has a potential of more than 3,000 megawatts of additional power from geothermal energy, using current technologies," according to the GEA. But that's nothing compared to the potential.

"The jobs in this industry are definitely going to grow," GEA executive director Karl Gawell told the E-Commerce Times. "We've got this investment in technology that will pay off in the next several years....We're looking for how to solve our energy problems, and this is a huge resource we're only starting to tap."

(Image via google.org.)

-- Brian Foley

National Plug In Day Revisited

Seeing this clip from last weekend's National Plug In Day brings to mind the column written earlier this year by EV owner and Middle East veteran Tim Goodrich, who appears toward the start of this video feature. In May he wrote, "My decision to purchase an electric car was driven by a variety of reasons, but the simplest reason was this: The cost of filling up with gas is just too much. I'm not just writing about the price we're paying at the pump; I am also referring to the cost to our future generations, our national security, and our economy." Read the rest of it here. Get more info on EVs by visiting the Sierra Club's Go Electric campaign.

Congress Ignores the People When Dismantling Public Health, Environmental Protections

As a mom, I often take for granted that the water I put in my daughters sippy cup is safe, and the air that she breathes when she’s playing outside is cleaner than it was when I was a child. This is no accident – it's the result of decades of enforcement of basic health and environmental safeguards. Unfortunately, it looks like we can’t take those protections for granted anymore.

Last week the House of Representatives continued its assault on public health and environmental protections by passing bills that would prevent the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from doing its job. Yes, it's hard to believe. But it's even more astonishing that our representatives are taking these radical actions in the face of new polling information that shows overwhelming majorities of Americans support stronger health and environmental standards, and they also think Congress should back off and let EPA do its job.

First, the House passed legislation that would block critical protections against toxic mercury and other dangerous chemicals and metals emitted by industrial boilers, which are among the nation’s biggest and dirtiest sources of mercury pollution. Boilers exist in and around hospitals, schools and communities across the country, exposing Americans to toxic mercury pollution, a known brain poison that threatens the development of young children.  

Then, as I detailed in my column last week, they passed a bill that would put a weak scheme in place that requires more protections on household trash than toxic coal ash, even though coal ash pollution includes health risks like cancer, neurological disorders, birth defects, reproductive failure, asthma and other serious illnesses.

Not only are House members not paying attention how important these critical protections are, but they are also not listening to Americans. Last week, Ceres released a poll showing that American voters overwhelmingly support two critical EPA rules that limit air pollution from electric power plants. Some (77%) support the stronger protections now in the works that would reduce emissions of mercury and other toxic air pollution from coal fired power plants.