Despite the tough economic times we’re living in, wind power continues to expand around the globe. According to the Global Wind Energy Council, the worldwide wind power capacity grew by 31% last year, adding 37.5 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy to the global mix. This just points out all the more clearly that it ain't just the answer to our climate woes that is blowing in the wind.


Spain's Maranchon Wind Farm is the largest in Europe with 104 generators, and is operated by Iberdrola, the largest wind energy company in the world. © Greenpeace / Daniel Beltrá

As we continue to search for ways to foster an economic recovery, the incredible growth of wind power capacity around the world shows that wind energy is not just the right choice for saving the climate, but also for creating jobs and putting folks back to work.

The American Wind Energy Association reports that the US didn't do too shabby itself, installing a record-breaking 10,000 megawatts (MW), or 10 GW, of new wind power capacity in 2009. This brings total wind capacity in the US up to 35 GW. But according to the GWEC, China contributed a third of the global wind power expansion last year, marking the fifth straight year in which the country at least doubled its capacity for generating power from the wind. China is now producing more than 25 GW of power from the wind, up from just over 12 GW the year before. Kinda puts our 10 GW increase into perspective. For a country that prides itself on innovation and forward-thinking, the US can and should do better.

Here we are in America still fighting for our first large-scale offshore wind project, Cape Wind. If you haven’t already, sign our petition calling on Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar to approve Cape Wind and help get us on the path to a clean, green future.

But even if we were to go all in for wind power tomorrow, how would we get that clean energy from the point of production to the point of consumption? Glad you asked! It just so happens we have just released a report describing how global electricity grids can sustain high levels of renewable energy. The report is called Renewables 24/7, click that link and you can download the whole thing as a PDF.

In the deep winter of New England, the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant is leaking radioactive tritium into the groundwater.

This is bad timing for Yankee’s owner, Entergy of Louisiana, because the Vermont legislature is currently considering Entergy’s request to extend the 38-year-old plant’s license to operate for another 20 years. (Vermont is the only state in which the legislature has the power to intervene in a nuclear plant’s license.)

Even Governor Jim Douglas, who has been an unabashed Entergy supporter until now, demanded the firing of Entergy Vice President Jay Thayer.  Mr. Thayer swore under oath that Vermont Yankee has no underground pipes.  Then it was discovered that the tritium was leaking from – underground pipes.  (Still a friend to Entergy, the governor has also called for a “timeout” to allow the corporation to rebuild the people’s shattered trust.)

It’s unclear at this point who is the dog and who is the pony in this dog-and-pony show, but Entergy did get rid of Mr. Thayer.  (Which is not to say he was fired.  He was placed on “administrative leave” pending investigation, which means he goes on vacation until this whole thing blows over; when he returns he will be sent off to tell whoppers about some other Entergy facility.)

The new face of Entergy in Vermont is Curt Hebert, Jr., Entergy’s vice president of external affairs and former head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).  Mr. Hebert is known as a lifelong opponent of government intervention in energy markets.  (Then why was he the federal government’s chief energy regulator, you ask?  He was appointed by George W. Bush.)

 

 

So up here in Vermont, the public, press and politicians are seriously cheesed off at the out-of-state corporation that has mismanaged the state’s only nuke since it bought it in 2002 and has been caught passing misinformation again and again.  What’s Entergy’s response?  To send a bitter foe of government intervention to the one state where the government has more power to intervene than any other.  It makes one wonder if Entergy’s CEO Wayne Leonard might be spending too much time in the radiation room.

Mr. Hebert’s greatest claim to fame is that he presided over the federal government’s deer-in-the-headlights inaction when the 2000-2001 energy crisis caused rolling blackouts in California.  (Heckuva job, Curty!)

According to published accounts, Mr. Hebert – acting on Dick Cheney’s orders – covered up the market manipulation by Enron and others that led to the California and instead encouraged California to cancel its environmental regulations.  Now his kind ministrations will be visited on Vermont.  Oh boy.  

To paraphrase Lord Acton, power corrupts and nuclear power corrupts absolutely.

Hard as it is to believe, Cape Wind still faces an uncertain future.

But Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar has said he will decide whether or not the project goes forward by February 12th — and he wants all of us to weigh in. You can sign our petition calling on Secretary Salazar to approve the project and show your support for Cape Wind right now. We'll send our petition with all of your signatures (over 12,000 so far — let's hit 15,000!) over to the Department of the Interior.

In case you don't already know all of this by heart, here's why you should support Cape Wind: The offshore wind project would be great for Massachusetts. Its 130 wind turbines would generate up to 420 megawatts of clean, green electricity – enough to replace the current power plant, which burns oil. This would reduce the region’s greenhouse gas emissions by 734,000 tons per year, which by some estimates is equivalent to taking 175,000 cars off the road.

Cape Wind would also be great for the United States of America. As the only offshore wind farm likely to be approved and built during President Obama’s first term, the completion of Cape Wind would go a long way toward showing the world that we're serious about cleaning up our act and converting to a clean energy economy. America needs to lead the world in solving global warming, and projects like Cape Wind are exactly how we can begin to do that.

The most recent snag is the concerns about the historic and cultural value of Nantucket Sound. These concerns obviously need to be properly addressed, and it seems like they can be met while still allowing this vital clean energy project to move forward. Because the thing is, the impacts of unchecked global warming — including sea level rise that would all but erase the region’s current coastline — are the far greater threat not just to Cape Cod but to the entire world. Building this first-of-its-kind wind farm in the US will be an important step towards tackling the climate crisis we’re facing right now and saving Cape Cod.

So please take a minute and sign our petition to Secretary Salazar and let him know that you support clean energy and Cape Wind. When you're done doing that, there's a link directly to a form on the Department of the Interior's website where you can submit a personal comment (or go here).

There’s currently a bit of a controversy broiling over how to describe the outcome of the Copenhagen climate conference, especially in regards to the so-called “Copenhagen Accord.” Some call it a good first step, some call it a complete failure.

But it is possible to discuss the Copenhagen Accord frankly while avoiding both the disingenuous spin that calls it a fantastic success as well as the unproductive criticism that labels it an abject failure. I see the Copenhagen Accord as a part of the broad global discussion moving us towards addressing global warming, which is exactly how the UNFCCC views it.

Some have hailed the Copenhagen Accord as a positive step forward for international climate negotiations. But there must have been some hard thinking behind those positive declarations that came from the environmental community. I understand and agree with the idea that we should give praise where it’s due to the US administration for their efforts to get commitments to reduce global warming pollution from countries like China, India, Indonesia, and Brazil, which now collectively represent about a third of global warming pollution.

However, praise for Obama and his administration’s work to secure these commitments has no place in a discussion of the Copenhagen Accord, as these commitments were mostly announced before the Accord was even established. So far, only Moldova and the Marshall Islands have used the Copenhagen Accord to announce pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and their share of emissions is about .03% of the global total.

There’s another reason to avoid the Accord in conversations about any positive influence of the US administration: US officials have stated that they don’t even agree with some aspects of the Accord. In particular, the administration has a contradictory position regarding the Accord’s mechanism for helping fund poor countries’ efforts to adapt to climate change. They want this fund to be housed outside of the UNFCCC, but the Accord clearly says this “green fund” will be within the UNFCCC. So I guess the US doesn’t want to “associate” with this part of it.

Many people have said that the Copenhagen Accord actually represents a breakdown of the international negotiation process. In this line of thinking, the Accord epitomizes a failure to have a real binding agreement in Copenhagen. Certainly the Accord represents something less than the US-proposed alternative to a global treaty, “pledge and review,” which was an outcome publicly opposed by most of the environmental community. (Essentially, “pledge and review” would have let countries state whatever arbitrary target they wanted, and then not even be bound to meet that, as they would be given the opportunity to “review” that commitment and adjust it to whatever they determine is feasible at the time of the review.)

One reason critics say the Accord represents failure is its textual incoherence: It was written to be a legal instrument of the UNFCCC, but that’s not how it’s turned out.

It is very important, in fact, to remember that the Copenhagen Accord is not a legal instrument. Most countries were absent when it was negotiated, and many may not ever officially “associate” with it. Today is three days after the January 31st deadline for associating with the Accord that was set by Secretary General of the UNFCCC, Yvo de Boer. But Secretary de Boer still has not heard from well over half of the member countries (USCAN has a great chart that tracks who has associated with the Accord and what commitments they've made here). Of those he has heard from, all who have submitted targets for reducing pollution have placed conditions on those targets. All of developed countries, with the notable exceptions of the United States and Canada, have said that a condition of their commitment is connection with a global, legal agreement.

My own position is that the Copenhagen Accord deserves neither praise nor lambasting. The thing I believe most strongly is that it should not become a distraction to continuing the UN-hosted negotiations toward a global treaty that includes the United States.

I “take note” of the Copenhagen Accord, as does the UNFCCC. Now let’s get on with the rest of the conversation.

Did you know that the Department of Homeland Security has identified 6,300 “high-risk” chemical plants in the United States? Examples of dangerous chemical plants are the ones that store and use large quantities of poison gases (like chlorine). If there were an accident or attack at a plant in a populated area, it could kill or injure 100 million people in as few as 24 minutes. That’s really disturbing news.

But, the good news is that these risks are preventable. Nationwide, 287 plants have switched to safer and more secure chemicals or processes since 1999 and eliminated these risks to 38.5 million Americans.

While some plants have switched voluntarily, others won’t do the same until a law is passed that requires it. That’s where the chemical security bill comes into play. Where feasible, the bill will make the most dangerous plants convert to safer manufacturing and aims to protect millions of lives.

The chemical security bill has been moving along in Congress. The bill has had quite a journey. In November, 2009 it was passed in the House and now it's waiting to be taken up by the Senate.

If you have forgotten the “ins and outs” of the US legislative process, maybe this School House Rocks video will refresh your memory. I remember watching it as a kid and find it’s a simple (and cute) way of seeing how a bill finally becomes a law in our Congress.

 

As you can see from the video, it’s not easy to become a law. The bill has to go through both the House and Senate and in between it goes into committees and even subcommittees. It’s enough to make your head spin.

On November 6, 2009, the House of Representatives approved the "Chemical and Water Security Act," (H.R. 2868). This was an amazing accomplishment because it marked the first time either house of Congress approved permanent and comprehensive chemical security legislation.

Next, the legislation moves to the Senate. The bill has a long way to go in the Senate and we’re going to need YOUR help every step of the way. With so many important issues vying for our Senators’ attention, we have to make sure they hear from us. We need to tell them repeatedly, that chemical security is critical and urge them to pass the legislation (at every single step of the long process)!

The chemical security bill has gotten this far. We can’t let it die in committee!! Please write your Senators and tell them to vote for the bill when it hits the Senate floor.

 

--Michelle

 

In last night's State of the Union address, President Obama said that "(t)o create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. And that means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country." Despite his statement, the President knows better.

Nuclear power is neither safe nor clean. There is no such thing as a "safe" dose of radiation and just because nuclear pollution is invisible doesn't mean it's "clean." For years nuclear plants have been leaking radioactive waste from underground pipes and radioactive waste pools into the ground water at sites across the nation. Mr. Obama was prompted to address the issue when radioactive contamination was found in drinking wells and off the nuclear plant site at Exelon's Braidwood nuclear plant.

In 2006, when the President was serving as a senator from Illinois, he introduced the Nuclear Release Notice Act to address the radioactive contamination of groundwater at several nuclear reactors in his state. Unfortunately, the bill never became law.

Rather than hold nuclear power plant owners accountable for the uncontrolled and unmonitored leaks, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) handed the problem over to the nuclear industry's lobbyists. Despite the fact that tritium releases to groundwater violate the terms of the nuclear plant's license, the NRC has failed to exercise its regulatory authority. Instead, NRC has allowed the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) to create a voluntary industry program to deal with the tritium contamination.

Since then, the trickle of operators of nuclear plants acknowledging that they've contaminated the ground water at their sites has grown into a deluge. The nuclear plants that have admitted leaking radioactive hydrogen or tritium into the groundwater include: Braidwood, Byron & Dresden in Ilinois; Indian Point & Fitzpatrick in New York; Yankee Rowe & Pilgrim in Massachusetts; Three Mile Island & Peach Bottom in Pennsylvania; Callaway in Missouri; Oyster Creek in New Jersey; Hatch in Georgia; Palo Verde In Arizona; Perry in Ohio; Point Beach in Wisconsin; Salem in Delaware; Seabrook in New Hampshire; Watts Bar in Tennessee; Wolf Creek in Kansas; Connecticut Yankee and most recently Vermont Yankee. This NY Times article explains it all.

This list is likely incomplete and still growing. It remains difficult for the public to track which nuclear plants are leaking radioactive contamination because the NRC has failed to update its website since October of 2007 when it abdicated its authority to the industry's voluntary initiative.

The President was then less than pleased with the industry's voluntary regulation of radioactive leaks. Then Senator Obama responded that "(w)hile it's encouraging that the nuclear industry recognizes it has a special responsibility to keep communities informed of tritium leaks, the voluntary guidelines recommended by the Nuclear Energy Institute would still allow tritium leaks to occur without the public ever finding out about it. The nuclear industry already has a voluntary policy, and it hasn't worked."

Obama's comments now seem prophetic. Recently, just one week after the government regulators extended the operating license for the 40-year-old Oyster Creek reactor in New Jersey, the plant owner admitted leaking radioactive contamination into the plants ground water. This most recent revelation has prompted several members of Congress to ask the U.S. General Accountability Office (GAO) to investigate the leaks and how regulators at the NRC have mishandled the issue.

According to Congressman Ed Markey, who over sees the NRC, "(u)nder current regulations, miles and miles of buried pipes within nuclear reactors have never been inspected and will likely never be inspected." Markey concluded that "(t)his is simply unacceptable. As it stands, the NRC requires-at most-a single, spot inspection of the buried piping systems no more than once every 10 years. This cannot possibly be sufficient to ensure the safety of both the public and the plant."

If President Obama truly wants a clean energy economy and the jobs that come with it, he should abandon the failed policies of the past. Nuclear power is a dirty and dangerous distraction from the clean energy future the President has promised America.

This post originally appeared on Huffington Post.

The announcement of Apple's new iPad, made today by Apple CEO Steve Jobs at an event right here in San Francisco, included a report on the tablet device's environmental stats: Happily, the iPad will be free of PVCs, BFRs, arsenic and mercury. It's very exciting to see that Apple is continuing its industry-leading policy of eliminating toxic chemicals from its products, once again proving that these dangerous substances don't belong in our electronics.

But while Jobs also made the claim that Apple is the industry leader in mobile technologies, he didn’t mention that mobile devices are growing increasingly dependent on cloud computing power, or the fact that the energy powering the cloud can have a big impact on the green cred of mobile devices like the iPad.

In case you’re not familiar with the term, “cloud computing” refers to devices that have little or no processing power and storage of their own, but instead connect to the internet and run web-based applications and access media stored on web servers (as opposed to applications and media stored on your computer's hard drive). Google Docs and Gmail, photos on Flickr, videos on YouTube – these are all part of “the cloud.”

While the rise of cloud computing means we get lots of cool new toys – more powerful smart phones and other high-tech gadgets like the iPad – data storage and cloud computing power are the single largest driver of new electricity demand worldwide. We launched our Cool IT Challenge precisely because tech companies have a huge impact on greenhouse gas emissions, not just in the sense that they're responsible for emitting lots of greenhouse gases but also because they have the potential to play a big part in solutions to climate change.

You can see how all the consumer electronics stack up against each other in terms of green cred on our latest Guide to Greener Electronics.

As a leader in mobile technology, Apple now joins the ranks of big data center users like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and IBM. These companies are building data centers around the globe at alarming rates, and where they choose to build these new data centers can have a huge impact on important decisions about energy policy. For example, we're seeing Google and Apple build data centers in places in the US where there are fights over coal power expansion, and their data centers are being used as justification by politicians and utilities to expand dirty energy power stations.

It's great that the iPad is green. Now Apple and other players in the cloud computing sector must be aggressive advocates for renewable energy to ensure that the cloud powering their products is itself fueled by clean, green energy, not the dirty fuels of the past.

We don't want our fancy new green iPads to be connected to a brown cloud.

Image credit: Gizmodo (via Flickr)

Kert Davies, Greenpeace Research Director and the Director of our Polluterwatch project, sent a letter today calling on Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) to come clean about his post Senate plans.  Senator Dorgan announced earlier this month that he would be retiring from the Senate at the end of the year, and that afterward he would like to "work on energy policy in the private sector."

As Davies writes in the letter;

As a longtime member of Congress I am sure you are aware that, regardless of your actual intentions, this language is often code for legislators who have begun trolling for an influence peddling job after they leave Congress. And, the path from public servant to influence peddler is a sadly well-worn one: Rep. Bob Livingston, Senator John Breaux, Rep. Billy Tauzin, and Senator Trent Lott.

I recall seeing you as a speaker at the oil industry’s controversial, pay-to-play forum on December 1^st, just five weeks before you announced your retirement. As you will recall, this highly questionable exercise was one in which Newsweek was caught renting out its name, credibility and top pundit to big oil’s influence peddler, Jack Gerard. We were able to document Mr. Gerard’s unwillingness to answer basic questions about the purchase price of Newsweek’s credibility, and you can see the results at youtube.com/polluterwatch.

Indeed, Senator Dorgan was the lone senator appearing beside American Petroleum Institute CEO Jack Gerard at the API sponsored Newsweek "Energy Forum," as shown in the photo below from that event.  Greenpeace called on the Senate Ethics Committee to investigate the Big Oil sponsored panel held inside the US capitol.

Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) appears with American Petroleum Institute CEO Jack Gerard at the API sponsored Newsweek "Energy Forum"

Greenpeace is calling on Senator Dorgan to:

• List the dirty energy lobbyists and their respective clients with whom you have had contact about your next job.
• Release all details of phone calls, emails or meetings you have had with prospective employers from energy interests who have lobbied you or your office. Of particular interest are Washington-area lobbying and public relations firms.
• Pledge that you will wait until after an energy bill is passed this year to engage in any further discussions about future employment with interests that lobby you.

You can read the full text of the letter to Senator Dorgan here.

It's a great day to be a fish!

In an unprecedented policy shift, the Target Corporation – one of the largest retailers in the United States and a direct competitor with Walmart – has just today announced the elimination of all farmed salmon products from its stores.  Fresh, frozen, shelf-stable, and smoked items will from here on out exclusively be made with wild Alaskan salmon — no exceptions.  Even its sushi department, which is notoriously the most stubborn part of this industry when it comes to change (thus the existence of this website), is in the process of phasing out the last bits of its farmed salmon.

While this act is truly staggering in its magnitude and its implications for the seafood retail industry, of equal importance are the reasons behind Target’s decision.  The company does not mince words when it comes to why they have made this transition — Target’s communications department clearly states that the company is not interested in supporting an industry that has done such harm to our marine ecosystems.  Their press release spells it out quite simply:  “Target is taking this important step to ensure that its salmon offerings are sourced in a sustainable way that helps to preserve abundance, species health and doesn’t harm local habitats… Many salmon farms impact the environment in numerous ways – pollution, chemicals, parasites and non-native farmed fish that escape from salmon farms all affect the natural habitat and the native salmon in the surrounding areas.”

This move will undoubtedly shake the salmon farming industry to its very core.  Target, after all, is not exactly a high-end gourmet market – rather, it’s a price leader that specializes in providing quality products for low prices.  How, then, does a market that worships price-driven competition manage to eschew an item that embodies the very concept of bargain seafood?

With help from Greenpeace and the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Target has opened the door to a new era of seafood – one that dares to question tired old paradigms that cannot withstand this kind of innovation.  Retailers which have parroted the weary excuse of farmed salmon filling an otherwise unattainable price point will now be exposed as complacent rather than pragmatic.  If a low-cost hypermarket like Target, which needs to sell salmon for $6.99 a pound, can manage to transition entirely to wild, sustainable product, how can the Whole Foods clones of the world defend their reliance on environmentally dubious farmed products that sell for over twice the price?

Conventional farmed salmon is caught between a rock and a hard place, and it is not a moment too soon.  Salmon farms have been the source of countless problems over the past decade – diseases in Chilean farms rip through penned animals like hot knives through butter; parasite swarms in Canadian farms threaten the very survival of co-habiting wild salmon runs, not to mention the essence of Pacific Northwest cultural integrity.

Salmon are the backbone of who we are here on the west coast.  It is the wild salmon runs that bring nutrients from the sea to the land, that fertilize the river banks and feed the yawning bears.  If we allow this, our greatest legacy, to perish at the hands of a small group of cash-blinded eco-criminals, it is doubtful that we will ever find another source of such selfless bounty.

We need courage, innovation, and foresight if we are to create a wise and responsible seafood industry that can steward our oceans in the coming decades, and it’s companies like Target that are leading the charge.  Remember this day — this was the day that we took our salmon back.

Ensuring polluter profits are safe from pesky environmental regulations sure is hard work. Just ask Senator Lisa Murkowski, who had to have polluter lobbyists and former Bush administration officials Jeff Holmstead and Roger Martella help write the Dirty Air Act, which she introduced yesterday in an attempt to block the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases.

Greenpeace activist and “PolluterWatch TV” correspondent Aliya Haq thought that Murkowski and her polluter lobbyist allies might be too busy devising new ways to gut the Clean Air Act and protect pulluter profits to properly thank one another for the roles they each played in getting the Dirty Air Act introduced on the Senate floor yesterday. So she dropped by their offices with flowers and cards:

There’s more about Murkowski’s working relationship with big polluter lobbyists, and the $50,000 she had their clients donate to her campaign fund even while Martella and Holmstead were helping write her legislation, over on PolluterWatch.