Bio-Mass Rules Go To Far?

by Morris Housen
CEO & President
Erving Paper Mills

Erving Paper Mills operates 24 hours a day, 355 days per year and has done so continuously since 1905.
We employ 120 people in Central Massachusetts and we buy almost all of our purchased goods and
services from other Massachusetts / New England companies. As a 120 tons per day manufacturer of
recycled napkin, toweling and tissue paper, our operations are energy intensive. In fact, each year we
use almost 50 million kilowatts of electricity (enough to power 4,500 average homes) and about 2.9
million gallons of oil (enough to heat 4,000 average homes).

Erving Paper Mills is committed to environmental stewardship. Every day, we recycle 9 truckloads of
wastepaper that would otherwise go to a Massachusetts landfill. We constantly manage our system
of pumps and motors to ensure that they are optimized for energy efficiency and we recycle the water
used in our production process in order to minimize our ecological footprint.

The time has come for all of us, including Erving Paper Mills, to transition away from fossil fuels and
towards local renewable fuel sources. To this end, in late 2008, our plant commissioned an exhaustive
study to look at energy alternatives. The study found that a biomass-powered combined heat and
power (CHP) system would meet our needs perfectly. Biomass delivers a solution that is both the most
economically viable solution and, unlike solar and wind power, leverages the only renewable source of
energy that can provide a continuous stream of power within a reasonable amount of real estate. We
would need 46 acres of solar panels or 15 industrial-sized wind turbines and a steady 30 – 55 mph wind
to meet our electricity needs alone.

What is biomass? Biomass is organic material, primarily waste wood and brush that is generated during
proper forest management and unusable as timber, which can be used to power an industrial facility
such as ours. The shift is analogous to switching from heating one’s house with oil to heating one’s
house with a wood-burning stove. Yet, we would not just heat our factory, but actually power our
entire process with waste wood. In Central New England, we are surrounded by a natural, abundant,
sustainable and renewable supply of waste wood, clearly a compelling energy source for us.

Two months ago, in September, the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources (DOER) released

draft rules on the qualification of biomass as it relates to the state’s renewable energy portfolio. The
original purpose of these rules was to properly incentivize the more efficient and appropriate use of
biomass and other alternate fuel sources. Unfortunately, due to political meandering, the effect of the
rules as currently drafted will prevent us and others like us from moving away from fossil fuels. Even
though, biomass (32% efficient) is more efficient than wind (25%) or solar (17%) power, its use is being
singled out and unfairly targeted by legislators. Efficiency benchmarks are being established that will
restrict biomass installations in the Commonwealth.

We strongly urge Massachusetts lawmakers to amend the draft rules. We suggest that the
Commonwealth implement an efficiency standard that is achievable for alternative energy sources
like biomass and provide a full renewable energy credit for CHP facilities. We also suggest that
thermal RECS be introduced that will specifically incentivize CHP plants Without attending to these
changes, the ability of Erving Paper Mills and Massachusetts companies like ours to transition away
from fossil fuels will be severely hampered. Our companies will be less competitive, economic value
to the Commonwealth will be lost and an opportunity to reduce our carbon footprint will have been
squandered.

In addition, we support science-based forest sustainability standards and believe that the proposed 15%
limit on what can be counted as biomass is arbitrary and does not allow for site-specific conditions to
be taken into account. We believe that a better approach would be the recommendations made by the
Forest Guild in the Manomet Study.

Erving Paper Mills is fully committed to deepening our investment in the local community and to
providing environmental stewardship by transitioning away from fossil fuels towards a renewable,
locally-sourced alternative that will not only lower our future emissions but also make us more
competitive. This is exactly the type of energy strategy that the DOER and the Patrick Administration
should want to encourage. Unfortunately, the rules, as currently proposed, would not allow us to make
this transition. A significant change is needed so that the final rules will take our situation and that of
companies in a similar situation into account.

Sincerely,
Erving Paper Mills, Inc.
Morris Housen
CEO & President

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The Rise of the New Power Co-Op Movement

by Brendan Smith and Jeremy Brecher

Breakdown at Copenhagen. Climate legislation stalled. EPA regulation of greenhouse gasses threatened. Is climate protection dead?

Maybe not. Climate protection has gone local. Political leaders may fiddle while the world burns, but grassroots groups around the country are organizing to cut greenhouse gas emissions and build a greener future for their communities. Block by block and using every tool at their disposal, groups are fighting to green schools and workplaces; setting up networks of green job training centers; installing solar water heaters in low income communities; and halting new coal-fired power plants with both political and direct action.

One of the least known but most promising examples of this "localization" of climate politics is the greening of utility co-ops to create affordable and renewable energy, green jobs, and regional green development. These efforts may well represent the beginning of a "New Power Co-Op Movement" that can help jump start the shift to a new green economy.

Electric co-ops are owned by their customers, who are called "members" due to their dual role as customer/owner. Their primary mission is to provide access to electricity at affordable prices for every potential member in their service area.

Electric co-ops were created as one of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal programs in order to promote rural development. The first electric co-op was born in 1934 in the back of a furniture store in Corinth, Mississippi. Within a few years, it had thousands of counterparts across the nation.

Today, America's 930 electric cooperatives are the sole source of electricity for 42 million people in 47 states -- nearly 12 percent of the nation's population. They control $100 billion in assets and $31 billion in member equity.

What Matters in Kansas

In western Kansas, rural communities, farms, and businesses get their electricity from Midwest Energy, the electric co-op based in Hays, Kansas. The co-op has pioneered an energy conservation strategy known as "on-bill financing." It has developed a program called How$mart that provides money for energy efficiency improvements such as insulation, air sealing, and new heating and cooling systems for residential and small business consumers. Co-op members -- whether owners or tenants -- don't have to put up any money "up-front." Instead, they repay the funds through energy savings on their monthly power bills.

Members start with an energy audit to determine potential savings. The co-op develops an individualized conservation plan. Members choose a contractor. If the member moves or sells the property, the deal passes to the next customer at that location.

The program started with a pilot in four rural counties in the summer of 2008; it then spread through rural Western Kansas. A year later it had invested $1 million in more than two hundred rural homes and businesses. It is estimated that customers will save over 400,000 kilowatt-hours per year, enough to power forty homes. That will put 13,000 fewer tons of carbon dioxide into the environment over the next twenty years. The Environmental Defense Fund recently recognized How$mart as one of America's best energy innovations.

"New Power" in Kentucky

For decades residents of eastern Kentucky have been fighting Big Coal's destruction of their majestic environment and cherished way of life by coal extraction. Much of that fight is led by the statewide citizens organization Kentuckians For The Commonwealth. KFTC has deep roots in the state's impoverished mountain communities where coal is mined; many of its leaders are former coal miners. While it has engaged in direct action against mountaintop removal, it recognizes that such action is not enough. Kentuckians desperately need a new strategy for economic development, energy, and jobs. KFTC is now promoting a plan for "New Power" that would make eastern Kentucky's electric cooperatives the pivot for such a strategy.

East Kentucky Power Cooperative (EKPC) is a cooperative that is owned by 16 local electric distribution coops. EKPC generates and sells power to these co-ops, which serve half a million members in 87 counties. EKPC is proposing to build a new 278-megawatt coal-burning power plant in central Kentucky along the Kentucky River at an estimated cost of nearly one billion dollars.

The Smith plant would only increase the dependence of Kentucky on coal for its energy supply and thereby increase the pressures for mountaintop removal. The struggle against the Smith plant has led KFTC to accompany its fight to save the mountains with a search for a "New Power" alternative.

With the help of KFTC, co-op members are now proposing that the co-ops not waste their funds on the Smith coal plant, but instead invest in an alternative plan to meet the power needs of their members through energy-saving and renewable energy programs. These local energy needs will be met by a combination of energy efficiency and weatherization initiatives paid through on-bill financing, along with local renewable energy, such as small-scale hydroelectric plants and rooftop solar hot water heaters. The New Power plan would cost less than the Smith Plant while meeting the same energy demand.

Such a plan would not only provide for eastern Kentucky's energy needs in a way that would protect the local environment and the global climate, it would also provide far more and better jobs. According to EKPC itself, the Smith plant will create only 700 temporary jobs at the peak of construction and 60 permanent jobs. Yet, according to the Ochs Center for Metropolitan Studies,an energy plan based on efficiency and renewables will create nearly 4,600 direct jobs over the same period it would take to build the Smith Plant. Members of local communities could be trained and hired for these green energy jobs.

The New Power plan would also significantly lower the utility bills of co-op members (some co-op members in eastern Kentucky spend more than 50% of income on energy). The estimated cost of electricity from the alternative plan is 17% less than the Smith coal-burning plant. Money saved could be invested in affordable housing, environmental restoration, healthcare, and other job-creating activities. (For more on KFTC's alternative program read: "A Cooperative Approach to Renewing East Kentucky".)

Co-op members in Kentucky are weighing the trade-off. According to Rachel Harrod, whose stepmother ran for a local co-op board this summer: "I believe there's an alternative that will be better for the environment, less costly to co-op members, and far more beneficial economically. The jobs generated by a clean energy portfolio would be a welcome boost to our local economy. I can't tell you how significant this would be to an area that has lost much of its agricultural base in recent years."

In addition to saving co-op members from paying for dirty power, a New Power program in eastern Kentucky could kick-start a broader agenda for transitioning Appalachia to the new green economy. Co-ops already have the key infrastructure in place. And instead of being controlled by for-profit investor utilities, the new facilities will literally be owned by eastern Kentucky -- the co-op owners, not distant stakeholders. These economic benefits will stay in Kentucky and reverberate through the region.

Greening Economic Democracy

Rural electric co-ops were once a model for economic democracy. David Lilienthal, a founding director of the Tennessee Valley Authority, described an electric coop annual meeting in the 1940s: "Throughout a whole day as many as 2,000 farmers and their wives and children discussed the financial and operating reports made to them by their [co-op] superintendent and board of trustees, and later while we ate a barbecue lunch watched new uses of electricity demonstrated."

He added, "These membership "town meetings" are not simply business sessions. They have an emotional overtone, a spiritual meaning to people who were so long denied the benefits of modern energy."

But many electric coops have become distant from such town meeting democracy. In eastern Kentucky, for example, elections to coop boards are rarely contested, with many of the officers serving for decades. Policies are often controlled by coal and other energy companies; as a result, Kentucky's rural electrical cooperatives are more than 90 percent dependent on coal. That makes rural Kentuckians vulnerable to rising fuel prices and coal depletion.

Building the new green economy will require the revival of democracy -- at every level. That's why co-op members, with the help of KFTC, have begun challenging the entrenched leadership of local co-op boards. This year, KFTC members Dallas Ratliff and Tona Barkley ran for the board of the Owen Electrical Cooperative. In her campaign materials Barkley says: "As a board member, I will strive to make the co-op more open and democratic. I'll also promote a stronger approach to helping members improve the energy efficiency of their homes and businesses and a more aggressive approach to transitioning into more renewable sources of energy -- to protect members from rising energy costs, to protect our health, and to create local jobs."

Like Tona, hundreds of KFTC members throughout the state see a clear link between new democratic power and new clean energy power.

Such a program could be a model for the 400 rural electrical co-ops with 40 million members nationwide. And that could be a significant contribution to a new strategy for protecting the global climate -- from below.

Brendan Smith and Jeremy Brecher are the editors, with Jill Cutler, of In the Name of Democracy, American War Crimes in Iraq and Beyond (Metropolitan, 2005). Brecher, a historian who has authored more than a dozen books including Strike!, writes for the Nation magazine among other publications. For his documentary film work he has received five regional Emmy Awards. Legal scholar Brendan Smith (blsmith28@gmail.com), a former senior congressional aide specializing in defense and human rights policy, is coauthor of Globalization from Below, and has written for the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, and the Baltimore Sun.

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Despite Spending Millions Lobbying, Nuke Industry Losing.

Image by EasyEcoBlog via Flickr

Published on Sunday, July 25, 2010 by CommonDreams.org

Why Stewart Brand is Wrong on Nukes - and is Losing

by Harvey Wasserman

Stewart Brand has become a poster boy for a "nuclear renaissance" that has just suffered a quiet but stunning defeat. Despite $645 million spent in lobbying over the past decade, the reactor industry has thus far failed to gouge out major new taxpayer funding for new commercial reactors.
In an exceedingly complex series of twists and turns, no legislation now pending in Congress contains firm commitments to the tens of billions reactor builders have been demanding. They could still come by the end of the session. But the radioactive cake walk many expected the industry to take through the budget process has thus far failed to happen.
The full story is excruciatingly complicated. But the core reasons are simple: atomic power can't compete, and makes global warming worse.
In support of this failed 20th Century technology, the industry has enlisted a 20th Century retro-hero, Stewart Brand. Back in the 1960s Brand published the Whole Earth Catalog. Four decades later, that cachet has brought him media access for his advocacy of corporate technologies like genetically modified foods and geo-engineering.....and, of course, nuclear energy.
In response to a cover interview in Marin County's Pacific Sun, I wrote the following to explain why Stewart is wrong wrong wrong:

Stewart Brand now seems to equate "science" with a tragic and dangerous corporate agenda. The technologies for which he argues--nuclear power, "clean" coal, genetically modified crops, etc.--can be very profitable for big corporations, but carry huge risks for the rest of us. In too many instances, tangible damage has already been done, and more is clearly threatened. If there is a warning light for what Stewart advocates, it is the Deepwater Horizon disaster, which much of the oil industry said (like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl) was "impossible." Then it happened. The $75 million liability limit protecting BP should be ample warning that any technology with a legal liability limit (like nuclear power) cannot be tolerated. Thankfully, there is good news: We have true green alternatives to these failed 20th-century ideas. They're cheaper, safer, cleaner, more reliable and more job-producing than the old ways Stewart advocates. Stewart and I have never met. But we have debated on the radio and online. Thank you, Pacific Sun, for bringing us to print. Stewart's advocacy does fit a pattern. He appears to have become a paladin for large-scale corporate technologies that may be highly profitable to CEOs and shareholders, but are beyond the control of the average citizen, and work to our detriment. Because he makes so many simple but costly errors, let's try a laundry list: 1. Like other reactor advocates, Stewart cavalierly dismisses the nuclear waste problem by advocating, among other things, the stuff be simply dumped down a deep hole. This is a terribly dangerous idea and will not happen. Suffice it to say that after a half-century of promises (the first commercial reactor opened in Pennsylvania in 1957) the solution now being offered by government and industry is...a committee!!! Meanwhile, more than 60,000 tons of uniquely lethal spent fuel rods sit at some 65 sites in 31 states with nowhere to go. Like the reactors themselves, they are vulnerable to cooling failure, terror attack, water shortages, overheating of lakes, rivers and oceans, flooding, earthquakes, tornadoes and hurricanes, and much more. This is no legacy to leave our children. 2. Equally disturbing is the industry's inability to get meaningful private liability insurance. The current federally imposed limit is $11 billion, which would disappear in a meltdown even faster than BP's $75 million in the Gulf. According to the latest compendium of studies, issued this spring by the New York Annals of Science, Chernobyl has killed some 985,000 people, and is by no means finished. It has done at least a half-trillion dollars in damage. The uninsured death toll and financial costs of a similar-scaled accident in the U.S. are incalculable, but would clearly kill millions and bankrupt our nation for the foreseeable future. 3. Stewart points out that there are also risks with wind and solar power. But clearly none that begin to compare with nukes, coal or deep-water drilling. If reactor owners were forced to find reasonable liability insurance, all would shut. A similar demand for renewables and efficiency would leave them unaffected. 4. Renewable/efficiency technologies today are cheaper, faster to deploy and more job-creating than nukes. It takes a minimum of five years to license and build a new reactor. The one being done by AREVA in Finland is hugely over budget and behind schedule. There is no reason to expect anything better here. Among other things, the long lead time ties up for too many years the critical social capital that could otherwise go to technology that can quickly let the planet heal. 5. Like others who doubt the possibility of a green-powered Earth, Stewart posits the straw man of reliance on a deployment of solar panels that would blanket the desert and do ecological harm. In fact, the National Renewable Energy Lab estimates 100 percent of the nation's electricity could come from an area 90 miles on a side, or a relatively modest box of 8,100 square miles. But as we all know, that's not how it will be done. Solar panels belong on rooftops, where there is ample area throughout the nation, and an end to transmission costs. Likewise, wind farms do not "cover" endless acres of prairie, their tower bases take up tiny spots that remain surrounded by productive farmland. In this case, currently available wind turbines spinning between the Mississippi and the Rockies could generate 300 percent of the nation's electricity. There's sufficient potential in North Dakota, Kansas and Texas alone to do 100 percent. Cost and installation times put nukes to shame. The liability is nil, as is the bird kill, which primarily affects obsolete, badly sited fast-spinning machines in places like Altamont Pass. Those must come down, and there will certainly be other surprises along the way. No technology is perfect, and we need to be careful even with those that are green-based. But as we have seen, further threats on the scale of Chernobyl and the Deepwater Horizon cannot be sustained. 6. As for GMO crops, Darwin was right. Plants evolve to avoid herbicides just as bugs work their way around pesticides (which Stewart correctly decries). Now we see that "super-weeds" are outsmarting the carefully engineered herbicides meant to justify the whole GMO scheme, bringing a disastrous reversion to horrific, lethal old sprays. Chemical farming may be good for corporate profits, but it can kill global sustainability. In the long run, only organics can sustain us. 7. Stewart mentions that he is paid only for speeches. But a single such fee can outstrip an entire year's pay for a grassroots organizer or volunteer. What's remarkable is that the nuclear power industry spent some $645 million lobbying for its "renaissance" over the past decade--more than $64 million/year. It has bought an army of corporate lobbyists and legislators. Yet only a handful of folks with rear guard environmental credentials has stepped forward to fight for the old fossil/nuclear/GMO technologies. 

Stewart is certainly welcome to his own opinions. But not to his own facts. Pushing for a nuclear "renaissance" concedes that it's a Dark Age technology, defined by unsustainable costs, inefficiencies, danger, eco-destruction, radiation releases, lack of insurance, uncertain decommissioning costs, vulnerability to terrorism and much more.
That the industry must desperately seek taxpayer help, and cannot find insurance for even this "newer, safer" generation, is the ultimate testimony to its failure. By contrast, renewables and efficiency are booming, and are a practical solution to our energy needs, which the corporate clunkers of the previous century simply cannot provide.
It's been a long time since the Whole Earth Catalog was published. Its hallowed founder should wake up to the booming holistic green technologies that are poised to save the Earth. They are ready to roll over the obsolete corporate boondoggles that are killing Her. Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, the disasters in the coal mines and the Gulf remind us we need to make that green-powered transition as fast as we possibly can.

Harvey Wasserman's SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, A.D. 2030, is at www.solartopia.org. He is senior advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information & Resource Service, and writes regularly for www.freepress.org.

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Published on Wednesday, June 16, 2010 by Creators Syndicate

BP Is a Corporate Criminal

by Jim Hightower

Gosh, how quickly things turn. One day, you're a strutting peacock — the next day, you're just another gasping, oil-covered bird.
In early April, BP was strutting about in full corporate splendor, showing off the $9 billion in profits that it had soaked up in just the first three months of this year. It was also basking in a corporate re-imaging campaign, depicting itself as a clean-energy pioneer and declaring that BP now stood for "Beyond Petroleum."
Since its Gulf of Mexico well blew out on April 20, however, BP has proven to be beyond belief. The wider and deeper that this catastrophe spreads, the more we discover just how oily this giant is.
From the time it was known as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company and set out to grab and control the rich petroleum reserves owned by what is now Iran, BP has been a recidivist global criminal. In the past three decades, it grew huge by swallowing such competitors as Standard Oil of Ohio, Amoco and Arco. Along the way, it has been implicated in bribery, overthrowing governments, plunder and money laundering, plus having established one of the worst safety and environmental records in an industry that is notoriously reckless on both counts.
And now, its rap sheet grows almost daily. In fact, the Center for Public Integrity has revealed that the oil giant's current catastrophic mess should come as no surprise, for it has a long and sorry record of causing calamities. In the last three years, the center says, an astonishing "97 percent of all flagrant violations found in the refining industry by government safety inspectors" came at BP facilities. These included 760 violations rated as "egregious" and "willful." In contrast, the oil company with the second-worst record had only eight such citations.
While its CEO, Tony Hayward, claims that its gulf blowout was simply a tragic accident that no one could've foreseen, internal corporate documents reveal that BP itself had been struggling for nearly a year with its inability to get this well under control.
Also, it had been willfully violating its own safety policies and had flat out lied to regulators about its ability to cope with what's delicately called a major "petroleum release" in the Gulf of Mexico.
"What the hell did we do to deserve this?" Hayward asked shortly after his faulty well exploded. Excuse us, Tony, but you're not the victim here — and this disaster is not the work of fate. Rather, the deadly gusher in the gulf is a direct product of BP's reckless pursuit of profits. You waltzed around environmental protections, deliberately avoided installing relatively cheap safety equipment, and cavalierly lied about the likelihood of disaster and your ability to cope with it.
"It wasn't our accident," the CEO later declared, as oil was spreading. Wow, Tony, in one four-word sentence, you told two lies. First, BP owns the well, and it is your mess. Second, the mess was not an "accident," but the inevitable result of hubris and greed flowing straight from BP's executive suite.
"The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean," Hayward told the media, trying to sidestep the fact that BP's mess was fast becoming America's worst oil calamity. Indeed, Tony coolly explained that the amount of oil spewing from the well "is tiny in relation to the total water volume." This flabbergasting comment came only two weeks before it was revealed that the amount of gushing oil was 19 times more than BP had been claiming.
Eleven oil workers are dead, thousands of Gulf Coast people have had their livelihoods devastated and unfathomable damage is being done to the gulf ecology. Imagine how the authorities would be treating the offender if BP were a person. It would've been put behind bars long ago — if not on death row.

© 2010 Creators.com

National radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the book, Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow, Jim Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be - consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks.

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Too Big To Fail Means Too Big

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Andrew Lakoff

Our Energy Production System: Too Big to Fail


The eerie timing of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, just a month after the Obama administration announced plans to expand offshore drilling, has been widely noted. But a second coincidence is equally striking. The Congress is currently debating legislation developed in response to another man-made disaster: the financial meltdown of 2008. As attention turns to the regulatory reforms necessary to avoid the next environmental catastrophe, what can we learn from the debate over financial reform?

As in other disasters, the initial response to the financial meltdown was to find the guilty parties. And there were many candidates: the collapse of an inflated housing market, irresponsible lending practices, the negligence of governmental regulators, nefarious investment schemes. The search for such culprits helps only in demanding redress, but also in narrating the significance of the event. However, such a narrow purview distracts attention from a bigger issue: the characteristics of the overall system that made it vulnerable to these specific failures.

In the case of the financial disaster, legislators have finally turned to this latter question. One of the prominent features of the financial reform bill currently under consideration is a focus on "systemic risk." In the context of finance, this term refers to the idea that our collective well-being depends on a complex and fragile system that is potentially vulnerable to catastrophic failure.

The concept of systemic risk points to the regulatory problem posed by the existence of firms whose failure could provoke a collapse of the entire system: firms that are "too big to fail." It is now recognized that the problem of systemic risk requires new forms of government regulation. The goal of such regulation is to provide the financial system with resilience against unexpected shocks so that catastrophic failures such as the 2008 meltdown are not repeated.

What would it mean to apply this lesson to energy and environmental regulation in the wake of the Gulf spill? So far, most attention has been focused on the search for specific culprits. Questions are asked mainly about proximate causes of the disaster: Did the cementing techniques used by Halliburton lead to the initial explosion? Did Transocean fail to install the necessary blowout prevention equipment? Did government regulators neglect to insist on further back up systems for shutting off the flow of oil? Was BP underprepared for a disaster of this magnitude?

The search for a specific culprit in this environmental catastrophe is necessary insofar as it helps us pinpoint who is responsible for the costs of immediate clean up and for the remediation of direct damages. However, it should not be the sole object of inquiry as we reflect on what the spill means for the future of energy production in the US. The danger is that we will focus only on the correction of narrow regulatory lapses and on technological fixes that will allow the expansion of offshore drilling plans to go forward.

Rather, the same broad lessons that were learned from the financial meltdown should be applied to this environmental disaster. New regulatory mechanisms and public investments should focus on the mitigation of systemic risks - that is, on forms of energy production that pose the danger of catastrophic failure to the broader ecological - and economic - system.

In the Gulf Coast, we are learning that the ecosystems in which energy production takes place are complex, interdependent and vulnerable to catastrophic shock. Brown pelicans, sea turtles, bluefin tuna and other endangered species depend on a functioning Gulf ecosystem. The marshlands, coral reefs, and sea-grass meadows that support coastal life are imperiled by ecological shocks such as major oil spills. And the livelihoods of fisherman and resort operators in turn are threatened by the disaster. Offshore drilling in the Gulf is best understood as a systemic risk to these fragile ecologies and local economies.

Our response to disasters is too often limited in extent and duration. Typically the onset of an emergency situation makes it possible to galvanize resources and provide immediate relief, whereas earlier proposals for preventive measures could not muster support. During a disaster, there is a search for the proximate cause in order to attribute blame and seek redress, while the deeper structural causes remain unaddressed. And then, with time, the sense of urgency to deal with the crisis fades, and it becomes more difficult to implement reforms that would reduce vulnerability to future catastrophe.

As we continue to watch the disaster in the Gulf unfold, and seek out its culprits, it is worth attending to the bigger questions the event provokes about the vulnerabilities of our ecosystems, and about the systemic risks posed by our methods of energy production. The energy bill Congress is about to debate is a perfect opportunity to address these risks and vulnerabilities. Building a concern with mitigating systemic risk into the energy bill means investing in resilient forms of energy production, and avoiding sources of energy - such as offshore drilling and nuclear power - that may seem viable in the short term but that threaten environmental catastrophe in the long term.

Andrew Lakoff is associate professor of anthropology, sociology and communication at the University of Southern California, and the editor of Disaster and the Politics of Intervention (SSRC/ Columbia University Press, 2010).

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• Weekly Address: New Oil Commission, More Drilling, and the Definition of Insanity (seminal.firedoglake.com)
• No oil spills with the nuclear option | Henry Miller and Elizabeth Whelan (guardian.co.uk)
• Gulf oil spill triples in size overnight; unimaginable environmental catastrophe looms (crooksandliars.com)
• Rep. Lois Capps: We need an Independent Commission for the BP oil spill (huffingtonpost.com)
• You Are Underestimating How Deadly the BP Gulf Oil Spill Will Be (treehugger.com)
• BP Gulf Oil Spill Cheat Sheet: A Timelinel of Unfortunate Events (treehugger.com)

Greening Greenfield Press Release for Nov. 27

Greenfield Business Association and Sandri Companies

Join Greenfield 10% Challenge

GREENFIELD, MA – The Greenfield Business Association (GBA) and The Sandri Companies have joined the Greenfield 10% Challenge to help the Town meet the goal of reducing its energy use by 10% by the end of 2010. The 10% Challenge was launched last April by the Greening Greenfield campaign.

“Reducing energy use is good for business and for the environment” said Becky George, coordinator of the GBA “We are proud to take the challenge. We are urging our members to join the 10% Challenge and reduce their energy use, and promote the Challenge to their employees and customers.” 

The Sandri Companies, a GBA member, has taken the challenge in a big way. As a local energy provider they have long held the belief that offering products that increase efficiency—and reduce the amount of energy it takes for people to heat their home—is the right thing to do. Taking the 10% Challenge for their own business and promoting the concept to their customer base is a natural extension of what they already try to get their home heating customers to recognize.

“We explain that reducing the amount of energy you use is the best way to cut your heating bills and reduce your environmental impact,” says Skip Dunnell, heating service manager of Sandri’s Home Comfort division. “We encourage an annual tune-up for your heating system to keep it running at peak efficiency, and replacement of outdated equipment with one of our many energy-star rated units when the time comes.”     

In line with signing on to the 10% Challenge, Sandri had an energy audit performed on their facility on Chapman Street. They have cut their energy use there by installing insulation, replacing an old roof, upgrading their lights to compact fluorescents (CFL) on timers, and consolidating numerous pieces of office equipment into a few multi-function machines. They estimate that these conservation measures will reduce their energy use by over 10% and have already begun to see a reduction in their electricity bills. “We recognize that energy efficiency is one of the quickest and most cost effective ways to reduce our environmental impact,” said Tim Van Epps, president of The Sandri Companies. “We also see the opportunities and logic of utilizing renewable energy where it makes sense. We are incorporating this technology into our own buildings and we’ve also begun to offer renewables to our customers.”

Sandri plans to replace their current heating system with an ultra-low emissions wood pellet-fired boiler, which their service department now installs for both residential and commercial applications. They also recently retrofitted the truck-wash that they use on a daily basis to maintain their fleet of 60 transport vehicles. “We replaced an oil boiler with an ultra low emissions wood pellet boiler from Maine Energy Systems and a 3 panel solar thermal system to preheat the water,” explains Mr. Dunnell. “Our goal was to reduce our own carbon footprint while also demonstrating that renewable energy technology can be used for a variety of applications, and that Sandri has the expertise to install and service solar hot water systems and pellet boilers.”

 

“While helping our customers use less oil may seem counterintuitive to our interests,” says Mr. Van Epps, “we feel it’s smart business.” Sandri’s service department has always embraced industry innovations in equipment efficiency and according to Van Epps renewables are logical addition to their business. “We’re working to reduce our carbon footprint at Sandri and we want to help others do the same.”

Sandri is also looking forward to helping train the “green workforce” of the future by offering internships to Greenfield Community College and the Franklin County Technical School students interested in energy efficiency and green energy career options.

The Greenfield Business Association (GBA) is a collaborative, community-minded membership organization. The GBA aims to develop, maintain, and promote the economic, environmental, and cultural assets of our classic New England Town, by serving the diverse and evolving business community, and improving the marketability of Greenfield to area residents and new businesses. In the last three years membership has tripled to 125 members.

“We are thrilled that the Greenfield Business Association has signed on to the Greenfield 10% Challenge,” said Becca King, co-creator of the Challenge and co-chair of the Greening Greenfield Energy Committee. “Sandri coming on board is an example of a GBA member that is not only taking the challenge for itself, but promoting the concept to its employees and customers.”

To find out more about the Greenfield 10% Challenge, go to Greening Greenfield’s web site at www.GreeningGreenfield.org and click on the 10% Challenge logo, or call Becca at 773-7004.

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The Greening Greenfield campaign is a joint effort of the citizen Greening Greenfield Energy Committee and the Town of Greenfield. The campaign aims to use “greening” as the inspirational and economic engine to build a sustainable Greenfield so that current and future generations can enjoy life in this beautiful abundant valley.

Columnist Susan Laing:

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Dear Friends and Fellow Citizens,

Please visit the website StopSpewingCarbon.com to find information about the citizen “Initiative Petition to Change the Law in Massachusetts” regarding the allowable limit of CO2 emissions from new power plants in MA. I am one of the 10 original petitioners, and now that the petition has been certified, we must collect 100,000 signatures in the next 6 weeks to ensure that the proposed new law can be debated and voted upon in November of 2010.

We are trying to stop biomass incinerators. Biomass is a nice sounding term that denotes a set of things including public forests, trash including hospital waste, construction and demolition debris. Those biomass power plants (incinerators that make a tiny bit of electricity) emit at least 50% more CO2 than coal per killowatt hour (depending on what exactly is burned) – not to mention the other greenhouse gases and toxins.

In western MA there are many companies strong-arming small towns with promises of jobs and real estate taxes, looking for permits to do exactly this incineration in the name of (and with the public subsidies for) "renewable energy." Those public subsidies should go to wind, solar and geothermal; with biomass in the renewable category, the money will be diverted to biomass—a fancy name for incineration. Combustion does not belong with renewables. Our investment in the future does not belong in the hands

In my town of Greenfield, Massachusetts, Pioneer Renewable Energy, LLC will build (unless we the people succeed in stopping it) an incinerator to burn 3 million pounds of green wood, 24/7, to produce one quarter of one percent of the electricity Massachusetts citizens are using now.

55% of that wood will come from public forests. There have been clear cuts from Mass public forests for a biomass plant in New Hampshire. I urge you to visit MaForests.org to see the evidence. It will also evaporate close to 600,000 gallons of water daily--water that the river is accustomed to receiving daily from our wastewater treatment plant. In case of a drought, the biomass plant will have the right to take what it needs from our reservoir. If there is not enough water for both the people and the power plant...

None of this is going in the right direction for climate change and sustaining life on this planet. We can do something to help shift the direction, and we must do whatever we can!

In Massachusetts, and in the Waxman Markey bill and now in the Senate Climate Bill, biomass is included among the "renewables," which means that the CO2 from those operations will be off the books, not counted in the CO2 emissions. This is the most alarming and nearly invisible treachery of all.

At the Zoning Board Hearing in Greenfield, for example, when the developer (a 34 year old grad of Tufts School of International Diplomacy) was asked, "What about the CO2?" the answer on the record was, "There will be no CO2." In the real world there will be TONS of CO2 emitted, but in the made-up world of pollution trading, it helps the game to define biomass among renewables and to define renewables as having zero CO2 emissions.

The real world in which our bodies live and breath is irrelevant to these climate bill operatives. The financial game is what matters to them. What matters to you? Will you have enough to buy your family's passage to the new planet when this one is cooked? It's time to prove that WE THE PEOPLE means something.

Please be in touch in with me if you can help gather signatures. It's easy, fun and satisfying citizen work. A voter’s signature says, “Yes, let my fellow citizens raise this question for public discussion and a vote in November of 2010."

Please help me get this initiative to the ballot! Call me (413-773-5529) or email me (vermontlives@gmail.com) and let me know what you think. I'll make it easy for you to help!

Sincerely, Susan Laing, originally from Somerset, Massachusetts

Greening Greenfield News

Greenfield Eyes “Greening” Grants to Further its Economic Development Goals

GREENFIELD, MA – Greenfield is taking numerous steps to make it a “Green Showcase Community,” marrying its interests in economic development and the environment.

“Revitalization of Downtown and Bank Row, the Wisdom Way Solar Village, and the soon to be constructed zero net energy transit station are putting Greenfield on the map,” says Mayor William Martin. “These efforts will improve our economy, our downtown, and the environment, and favorably position the Town to secure additional grants for future work”.

The Town of Greenfield recently collaborated with the Greening Greenfield Energy Committee (GGEC) and applied for a “Climate Showcase Community” grant from the Environmental Protection Agency. The $448,000 proposal would enable Greenfield to promote itself as a showcase community and take further steps to make it even greener. In particular the grant funds would enable the Town to explore creating a public power company committed to generate zero carbon electricity and/or heat; expand the citizen-initiated Greenfield 10% Challenge; upgrade Town-owned buildings and work with an Energy Service Company (ESCO) to cut energy use and climate change emissions; work with young people in the schools to institute a Zero Waste program, and rewrite our 8-year old Master plan using sustainability as its overarching theme.

Additionally, Greenfield is actively working to become designated a “Green Community”. This designation from the state will provide opportunity to access millions of dollars in state and federal monies as well as help Greenfield get recognition for energy work done to date. To facilitate this, the Town has applied for a grant to provide technical assistance to move forward quickly to meet the Mayor’s goal of obtaining the designation this fall. Last week the Mayor and his staff meet with James Barry, the new Regional Coordinator for the Green Communities Division, who was impressed with the Town’s progress to date toward the Mayor’s goal.

Greenfield is also working with the DEP to institute an composting program in the schools; Siemens Building Technologies, the Energy Service Company chosen for Franklin County, started doing detailed energy audits on the schools last week; and Greening Greenfield representatives have been working with the Franklin Regional Council of Governments and the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission on a $5 million grant proposal for an Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant (EECBG), which is part of the stimulus packet funds.

“It was tremendously exciting to work with Mayor Martin and his staff on the Climate Showcase Communities grant,” said Nancy Hazard, co-chair of the Greening Greenfield Energy Committee. “To write the grant we looked all the great things the Town has done, or is in process of doing, and then looked for additional areas where we could all benefit economically as well as environmentally - and we found a lot of opportunity and common ground. Everyone’s efforts in Town have made it possible for us to submit what we believe is a very competitive proposal that will further the goals of the Greening Greenfield campaign and the Town as a whole.”

The Greening Greenfield campaign is a collaborative effort of the Town of Greenfield and the Greening Greenfield Energy Committee (GGEC) which aims to revitalize Greenfield using “greening” as the economic and inspirational engine to build a sustainable Greenfield so that current and future generations can enjoy life in this beautiful abundant valley. To find out more about the campaign, hit the Greening Greenfield button on the Town of Greenfield web site or go directly to www.GreeningGreenfield.org or call 774-5667.

Conservation is Key

Image via Wikipedia

John Ward of the Solar Store offered his insight on energy policy recently on Local Bias. He mentioned that the average american household uses 29 kilowatt hours per day. He and his partner Claire use 4. This past month, my family used 8 kilowatt hours per day.
We do not have an energy crisis. We have an energy waste crisis. Because their own usage is so small, and they have a modest solar electric system; John and Claire use almost no energy generated by nuclear, coal, or bio-mass plants.
It is difficult for big business to monopolize root-tops. It is also difficult for them to monopolize the sun. Our present energy policy reflects the desires of the big energy companies to treat energy as an expensive commodity. I don't feel it serves our society, but it is reflective of our collective idolatry of capitalism.
Being a wise consumer of energy is something that each one of us can pursue. We can also write our representatives in government and let them know how we feel.

The Mess We're In

Dan McKenna was guest on Local Bias June 25. He owns and operates Principle Profits Inc. of Amherst. Dan is a financial adviser and invests in socially responsible stocks and bonds for his clients. Dan remarked how his new clients often ask how much money they will lose in order to sleep with a clean conscience at night. According to Dan, responsible companies outperform other companies in the long term. They have higher productivity, morale, and retention because of their culture and smart business practices.

When I originally booked Dan, it was well before the mayoral race in Greenfield, and the bio-mass controversy had yet to gain much notice. In order to accommodate Bill Martin on Local Bias, I was able to bump Dan to June 25. I had intended to talk with Dan about the national economy, but he suggested we talk about bio-mass because he has done a lot of research into the renewable energy field. He stated during the interview that the proposed plant for Greenfield was a poor idea.

The proponents of the plant have used the McNeil Power Plant in Burlington Vermont as an example of a successful bio-mass burning plant. Dan pointed out that they don't use only wood, they also use gas. This plant is owned by the municipality so they don't have the same profit motive to burn construction and demolition material down the road when the cost of green wood escalates.

Mathew Wolfe of Madera Energy, remarked at the ZBA hearing on the 25th that because the project was receiving federal clean energy credits, they were precluded from burning C & D waste. I'm curious how long they would be prohibited from doing so. Madera Energy plans to sell the credits in order to help leverage value for possible investors. Several years down the road after the market changes for wood chips and the credits have been paid for, is there any statutory reason they can't apply for a special permit to burn other cheaper materials?

Presently, the Commonwealth does not allow the incineration of construction and demolition debris. Will economic pressure cause that policy to be reversed?

To my mind, the plant's disadvantages outweigh any pluses. It seems inefficient compared to burning wood for heat, provides few jobs and may scare away good companies, such as Applied Dynamics. It seems out of scale with our town. The zoning by laws were created for a reason. For the ZBA to allow an exemption in this case is to show a callous disregard for the law which they are obligated to follow, and the needs of the neighbors, who will doubtless find their quality of life diminished.

We actually have an excess of energy supply facilities in the Pioneer Valley. These are not being used to support the regional grid because of a lack of demand.

The health effects are also worrisome. The smoke stack height may not be tall enough to disperse the particulate matter during periods of weather inversions in our valley. My understanding is that the weather data comes from Westover Air Force Base. I don't necessarily trust the modeling used to justify the plant.

Burning trees is not carbon neutral. Burning trees releases carbon into the air. Five hundred thousand pounds a year of green wood a year would be cut down to feed this plant, so there would be fewer trees every year to sequester the carbon being released. The oceans have been absorbing such a large amount that the chemistry of the oceans is changing and may not be able to support life as we know it. The acidification of the oceans leads to calcium being leached out of coral reefs, the nurseries of the oceans.

The fact that this plant is primarily viable to investors because of clean energy tax credits is an example of the failure of big government to fashion solutions that really make sense. They throw our tax money at problems and often exacerbate them by rewarding the very conditions that lead to the problem in the first place.

As a people, we have to learn how to consume fewer resources. We have to learn how to make do with less. In my view, The idea that we are going to benefit from this plant, beyond a short term burst of construction, is outweighed by the long term damage it will cause.