After the bad news about the Wise County Virginia plant being granted it’s permits and beginning construction that very same day - it sure was good to hear that not everyone has drunk the coal kool-aid. Yesterday Fulton County Judge Thelma Wyatt Cummings Moore overturned a ruling that allowed the construction of the $2 billion Longleaf Energy Plant, which would become Georgia’s first new coal-fired plant in more than two decades.

The decision marks the first time that a judge has applied a U.S. Supreme Court finding that carbon dioxide is a pollutant to emissions from an industrial source.

I’m guessing that Dynegy’s bankers (Citi and Bank of America to name just two) aren’t feeling particularly proud of their investment decisions today. How many coal plants need to be canceled or stalled before the financial sector wakes up to the fact that investing in coal power is not bad for the climate, but bad for their pocketbooks too?

Abigail: Thursday, June 26

Activists in Charlotte paid a visit to B of A’s headquarters today, holding a banner that read “DIVEST FROM COAL” and passing out information on the bank’s dirty energy investments to bank employees and passers-by. We were visited a few times by some cops on Segways (you know, those electro-gyroscopic scooters), cops on foot, and cops on bicycles, all seeming very concerned about just how much public sidewalk we were taking up outside B of A’s monstrous building downtown. We spoke with a bunch of Charlotte residents, some of whom were genuinely surprised to hear about B of A’s involvement in financing the coal industry, and were interested to learn about the campaign against them. We were having so much fun that some local high school students joined us in handing out fliers and talking with folks as the business day ended and the street filled with busy businesspeople. A rousing day of public education and outreach was had by all.

Activists from around North Carolina have come together in Charlotte to take citizen action against Bank of America in their own company town. To highlight the socio-economic abuses perpetrated by the bank against the communities and ecosystems of Appalachia, several ATMs and bank branches have been shut down, roped off and declared “global warming crime scenes.” Bank employees have been witnessing their employer being called out for its role in financing the wholesale destruction of the Appalachian Mountains and supporting King Coal’s ongoing tyranny over the Appalachian people. People were cautioned about our common proximity to the impacts of global warming – as a reminder of our common responsibility towards climate justice.

Activists in Chapel Hill, NC took further action against climate change and mountain top removal, this time bringing the message to Bank of America Director W.Steven Jones - also the Dean of Kenan-Flagler Business School at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Posters were put up in and around the UNC business school with pictures of Jones’ colleague - CEO Ken Lewis and information on the bank’s socially unethical and environmentally disastrous investment portfolio.

Activists also postered climate disaster posters in the boroughs of Charlotte’s finest – to remind them of our common future. We hope they will appreciate this effort to reach out to them directly, and choose to use their positions of power and influence to call on Bank of America to end its financing of massive social and ecological destruction during this critical time of global climate change.

One of B of A’s many large-scale coal investments is a loan to Duke Energy for the construction of their new Cliffside coal plant, located between Charlotte and Asheville, NC. This plant is currently facing several legal challenges and massive citizen opposition. The climate disaster posters call for the cancellation of Cliffside as well as an end to all of B of A’s investments in dirty energy projects.

Abigail

More from today’s Dynegy shareholder’s meeting in Houston today. CEO Bruce Williamson, a finalist for Fossil Fool of the Year, told his company’s shareholders “that only a few of the proposed coal-fired power plants in the United States will be built due to soaring costs and financing hurdles.”

He said that only plants that have “already started construction, have an EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) contract or equipment committed to them,”"

Pretty big news. That sounds like we’re winning. Does mean that King Coal is going to pack up and call it a day?

Not bloody likely. Sooner or later they will initiate the backlash.

Keep up the pressure.

Environmental activists from six states -Michigan, Nevada, Georgia, Texas, Iowa, and Illinois - converged today to urge the Houston-based Dynegy corporation to halt construction on its six proposed coal plants.

Outside the meeting 100 activists rallied to speak truth to Dynegy’s power.

40 activists from Georgia, Texas and Alabama staged a “die-in” inside the Westin where the meeting was being held. They held space until police and security got them out of the building.

Video here
More pix here

From their press release:

“Coal is a ticking time bomb for investors and the climate. From the destruction of Appalachian mountaintops to the millions of tons of carbon dioxide, mercury and other toxic pollutants emitted from power plants, coal plants are the country’s top source of global warming and mercury pollution. Yet Houston-based Dynegy plans to build six new coal-fired plants—more than any other company in the country.”

So this morning at the Carbon Capture and Sequestration conference I had the opportunity to hear the infamous Fred Palmer, Sr. Vice President of Peabody coal do his ‘I love coal’ rap. And jeez louise does that old boy know how to lay it on thick. I had been promised that he was likely to actually rub his hands together with glee when talking about his favorite black rock, but today he opted for the more measured ‘all the other fuels are going to run out except coal and that’s good because coal doesn’t just keep the lights on it also grows trees, teaches our children, gives us healthcare, makes the sky blue and the grass green’ approach. Not terribly convincing, but certainly amusing so long as you don’t think too hard about Peabody’s severe climate impacts and human rights violations.

Oh yes and Fred thinks we need to burn more coal, not less. He’s very excited about new coal-fired power plants, as you can probably imagine. I think his exact words were: “We’ve got 250 billion tonnes of coal that we’re gonna gasify, liquify and burn. When I get an anxiety attack about our growing energy needs I wrap myself in the security blanket of our coal reserves”.

At question-time I challenged Fred on Peabody’s treatment of coal-field communities and asked him how in the world he thought that any new coal-fired power plants were going to be built when coal and construction costs are rising exponentially (even without CCS), 60 plants have been canceled in the last year alone and 75% of the American public supports a moratorium on new coal development.

Fred almost sputtered with indignation at my assertion that Peabody doesn’t have a squeaky clean human rights record - but then he started rambling on about public coal-fired power plants and completely lost me in what seemed to be an effort to argue that the fact that he’d worked in civil service for a couple of years nullified the devastating impacts of Peabody’s mining operations.

But what really amazed me was this choice line:
“We’re going to put SNG in the pipelines, send it to California and they won’t even know they’re USING coal”.

I kid you not, he actually said that. He then followed up with another doozy: “If you go to the Powder River Basin you don’t see any scars - the land is better than it was before”.

Apparently so is Appalachia.

My sense listening to Fred’s reply to my question was that here is a man who is fighting for his industry’s life. Just like Ken Lewis at Bank of America when I questioned him about his coal investments - Fred Palmer knows that the writing is on the wall, that coal is over. That’s why he and the entire coal industry is clinging so desperately to the CCS life-raft. Trouble is, the thing doesn’t float.

I think the first time I ever heard the word ‘greenwashing’ was in the late ’80s or maybe early ’90s after I saw a flier from McDonald’s about how they didn’t use beef from the Amazon. I brought the flier home to show my mother, an environmentalist, because I was so proud to show her that even big giant companies were doing good things and that her work was really making a difference.

She looked at it for about three seconds and told me “that’s greenwashing.” She explained the word to me and although I was sad to see my evidence of the mainstream adoption of environmentalism debunked, I realized for the first time that in a lot of ways claiming to “go green” when you’re not can be worse than just doing bad stuff in the first place.

Well, I’ve obviously come a long way since then and you may have already seen one of our “Greenwash of the Week” posts.

You’d think I would be pretty aware of the scope and quantity of greenwashing out there. I thought I was too.

More »

In conjunction with the international release of a report by Greenpeace today – that identifies the ridiculous risk, uncertainty and cost associated with industry-driven plans for carbon capture and sequestration (CCS),

Public interest groups (from across the country) sent the following letter to Congress, demanding that taxpayer subsidies be disallowed CCS, and that safe, affordable and market-ready energy technologies such as wind and solar be funded instead.

Dear Members of Congress

On behalf of our members and supporters we are writing to express our opposition to any policies that promote or provide taxpayer subsidies for carbon capture and storage (CCS), the practice of trapping carbon dioxide from fossil fuel combustion and storing it below the sea or beneath the surface of the earth.

As you know, global warming is one of the greatest challenges facing the planet today. To avoid the worst impacts of global warming scientists have warned that we need to reduce global warming pollution by at least 80 percent by 2050. Climate stabilization, national security and economic prosperity depend on substantially reducing our use of fossil fuels. That means no new investments in major infrastructure that increases fossil fuel dependence. Every dollar invested in CCS is a dollar unavailable for investment in renewable energy, efficient vehicles and energy efficiency.

CCS raises a number of serious financial, environmental and safety concerns:

· CCS cannot deliver in time. The best-case scenario is that the technology would be ready by 2030. Every decision made about new power plants today influences the energy mix for the next 30-40 years. We need to make the smartest choices to address the global warming crisis and invest in proven solutions as soon as possible.

· CCS is cost intensive. It increases the cost of power generation by 40 to 80 percent compared with conventional coal plants. Current research shows electricity generated from coal equipped with CCS will be more expensive than other less polluting sources, such as, wind power.

· CCS technology reduces the efficiency of power plants. Up to 30 percent more fossil fuel must be burned when CCS is used to achieve the same power output.

· CCS poses a risk of carbon dioxide leakage. Continuous leakage, even at very low rates, could undermine the climate benefit of CCS and large releases of carbon can also pose significant risk to human health.

As evidenced by mountain-top removal and dangerous emissions, CCS cannot make coal clean. Renewable energy sources are already available without the negative environmental impacts that are associated with fossil fuel exploitation, transport and processing. It is renewable energy together with energy efficiency and energy conservation that has to increase so that the primary cause of climate change – the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas – is stopped.

We strongly urge you to oppose any policies that provide mandates or taxpayer funded incentives for CCS. We should instead fund clean, renewable, domestic sources of energy, energy efficiency and conservation. Congress must prevent the construction of new coal-fired power plants that are inconsistent with an energy future that is good for the economy, the environment, national security, and safe for communities.

Sincerely,

ActionPA • Alliance for Appalachia • Appalachian Voices • Black Mesa Water Coalition • California Communities Against Toxics • Canary Coalition • Cape & Islands Self-Reliance Corporation • Center for Coalfield Justice • Co-op America • Chesapeake Climate Action Network • Citizens Action Coalition of Indiana • Clean Power Now • Coal River Mountain Watch • Cook Inletkeeper • Energy Justice Network • Environmental Alliance of North Florida • Environmental Research Foundation • Friends of the Earth • Global Exchange • The Grand Canyon Trust • Green Delaware • Greenpeace • Heartwood • Help Our Polluted Environment • Indigenous Environmental Network • Jefferson Action Group • Kentuckians for the Commonwealth • Meigs Citizen Action Now • Mountain Watershed Association • North Carolina Waste Awareness & Reduction Network • Nuclear Information and Resource Service • Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition • Palm Beach County Environmental Coalition • Protect Biodiversity in Public Forests • Rainforest Action Network • Residents Against the Power Plant • Rising Tide North America • Save It Now, Glades! • Save Our Cumberland Mountains • Southern Energy Network • Valley Watch

Today’s Bank of America shareholder meeting was a packed house and CEO Ken Lewis was not having a very good day. Poor guy, first he had to deal with the crazy shareholder lady who launched into a monologue about how much she loved him, then with shareholder annoyance over the impending Countrywide deal and THEN there was coal. By the end of the meeting, I was quite sure that all that jaw clenching would have ground his teeth to nubs. By far the strongest showing at the event came from the eight people who spoke out against Bank of America’s financing of coal-fired power plants and Mountaintop Removal. Two coal-field residents (one of whom is a third-generation coal-miner) had this to say:

“I came all the way from Kentucky because I am trying to save my homeland from the total destruction caused by Mountaintop Removal (MTR) Coal Mining, which Bank of America is a leading financier of. The southern Appalachian Mountains have some of the most biodiverse forests in the world; MTR coal producers, funded by Bank of America, are exploding the tops off these mountains, and off our culture. This is not just about saving the climate, but also about the survival of our culture for our grandchildren and future generations.”
Carl Shoupe, Third generation Kentucky coal miner, city Council Member of Benham, Kentucky, and member of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth.

“While Bank of America’s Carbon Principles are important, I live with the extraction end of coal mining—Mountaintop Removal coal mining is responsible for the destruction of more than a million acres of the world’s most ancient mountains, and the transformation of healthy mountain woodlands into toxic sludge that has clogged more than 700 miles of rivers and streams. Bank of America must stop funding Mountaintop Removal coal mining, and, instead, start investing in clean, renewable energies.”
Teri Blanton, a survivor of a Superfund toxic waste site near her home in Harlan County, Kentucky, one of the poorest counties in Appalachia.

Then two Charlotte residents spoke eloquently, one about why Bank of America’s coal investments made her concerned for her grandchildrens’ futures and the other about why she had transferred ALL her Bank of America credit cards, accounts and loan agreements to another bank. Coal.

When Matt and I spoke up about the the climate, economic and reputational risk of continuing to invest in coal-fired power plant and mountaintop removal, Ken really started to get red in the face, but the turning point came however when Matt Wasson from Appalachian Voices commented that Bank of America was becoming the “face of Mountaintop Removal.”

86% of Bank of America shareholders were represented by the people in that room, and many of them had clearly never heard about mountaintop removal before so this was a fantastic education for them and for the Board of Directors who were also present.

All in all, concerns over coal investments by far dominated the meeting and I’m quite certain that Bank of America got the message.