by Ellen Cardone Banks, Conservation Chair
The Atlantic Chapter celebrates the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) passed by the New York State Legislature in 2019 and signed by Governor Cuomo, followed by the Renewable Energy Growth and Community Benefit Act (REGCBA) in 2020. After years of advocacy by the Atlantic Chapter and many New York Renews coalition partners, our state is headed for a clean renewable energy future and a chance at holding back climate change by limiting greenhouse gas emissions to 45% of 1990 levels by 2030 and 85% by 2050, 70% renewable electricity by 2030, and more.
The path to these goals will be expedited by the REGCBA, through its recently launched Climate Action Council and the establishment of the Office of Renewable Energy Siting (ORES). Many acronyms, much hope.
At the same time, the fossil fuel industry in New York is not giving up without a fight. If we care about our climate and carbon-free energy future, we need to remain vigilant and fight back. The CLCPA means there should be no additions to fossil fuel power plants or pipelines in our state.
The Danskammer Generating Station above the Hudson River at Newburgh, originally coal-fired, was converted to gas in 2014 and “now operates as a peaker plant running just a few hours a week” during high power demands. Its owner has petitioned the NY Public Service Commission (PSC) “to rebuild it as a plant that would burn fracked gas all the time.” (Excerpted from Sierra volunteer Laura Burkhardt’s nyacknewsandviews.com Earth Matters column, 9/17/2020) The application is in the Article 10 review process.
The owners assert, contrary to evidence, that the new plant is needed to replace the shut-down Indian Point nuclear plant. Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign staff, Atlantic Chapter volunteers and coalition partners are working to stop it.
In Queens, near the East River, the NRG corporation proposes a new fracked-gas power plant, Astoria Gas Turbines LLC, at a multiple-plant site that burns gas and kerosene, and are trying to grandfather the proposal out of the Article 10 process, instead using the less rigorous State Environmental Quality Review (SEQR). NRG is meeting vigorous opposition, including a large “No Fracking Way” demonstration September 12, 2020.
Nearby in North Brooklyn, National Grid proposes a new gas transport pipeline through densely populated neighborhoods with many schools and health facilities. The Sane Energy project is organizing opposition www.saneenergy.org/nonbkpipeline.
Both the Astoria and Brooklyn fossil fuel projects would be in Environmental Justice communities with high levels of pollution from power plants and traffic, systemic racism, housing and job shortages, immigrant oppression and devastating respiratory disease rates that exacerbate very high infection and death tolls in the COVID-pandemic. The CLCPA was designed to begin to compensate communities of color and low income for the harms of fossil fuel plants, not to add to them. It is unjust for such communities to continue to be targeted as sacrifice zones.
Climate activists have had some victories in defeating pipelines: the Constitution Pipeline in the Southern Tier and the Williams Pipeline running through Pennsylvania and New Jersey to NYC are canceled. But the Northern Access pipeline in western NY, rejected by the NY Department of Environmental Conservation in 2017, continues to stay alive after a court decision favoring the fossil fuel industry-dominated Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and may still be allowed to confiscate land through eminent domain for a pipeline that is mainly for export to Canada and on to Asia. The best hope is that a change in market forces or in FERC after the 2020 election may still defeat it.
These are only a few examples of fossil fuel projects that are incompatible with the aims and goals of our existing climate laws. New York cannot rightly claim to be the nation’s climate action and renewable energy leader, and our opposition work will not be complete, while the state still allows new fossil-fuel power plants and infrastructure.
Return to the Fall 2020 Sierra Atlantic