By: Seth Bush
The MD Sierra Club Energy Committee mission is: “Moving Maryland beyond coal by advancing clean renewable energy and energy conservation”
The committee looks at the intersection of energy and the environment. That intersection is huge! This year we are focused on cleaning up the coal-fired power plants, raising the Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard (RPS), getting the dirty stuff such as waste incineration out of the RPS, and reducing energy waste through laws that would encourage benchmarking. We planning our support for renewing the Maryland Greenhouse Gas Reduction Act during the January through April 2016 legislative session.
The committee meets monthly usually on the first Wednesday of the month from 7 to 9 PM to review priorities and progress, to fine tune our goals, and discuss strategy. Our face-to-face meetings alternate among the Chapter’s College Park Office, the Sierra Club Baltimore office, and a member’s home in Silver Spring. We held a day-long retreat in January 2010 and will likely have these meetings annually.
Our broad priorities are:
- Coal plant retirement, especially the Crane, Wagner, Chalk Point, and Dickerson plants by 2020.
- Decarbonize the electrical sector by advocating for clean renewable energy, and specifically by improving Maryland's Renewable Portfolio Standard to incentivize more renewable energy and less dirty combustion technologies (i.e. - waste incineration, black liquor, and woody biomass). The energy committee will also provide support for the Federal Clean Power Plan and the state level Greenhouse Gas Reduction Act.
- Achieve a 2% aggregate reduction in energy demand per year through 2025.
On May 5, we had a briefer planning meeting where we reviewed and confirmed these priorities. During both meetings, we agreed that we would work toward those goals through working subgroups and outlined specific steps toward those goals.
Coal Plant Clean Up or Retirement
Operating coal plants emit a toxic mix of local pollutants such as nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulfur dioxide (SO2), particulates and heavy metals that cause and exacerbate lung disease. A University of Southern California Children’s Health Study released in March 2015 found that as laws were enforced and air pollution in Los Angeles went down, the more than halved the incidence of significant lung disease.
These plants are also a prime contributor to global warming pollution.
We will be working on multiple fronts toward getting the NOx regulations that were fully enacted released and enforced. We will testify and demonstrate for tough SO2 regulations that are expected to come before the Maryland Department of the Environment in 2015.
The Coal Plant Retirement Working Group of the Energy Committee will carry this work forward by focusing energies on base building and activism in the Greater Baltimore area, which is hardest hit by coal plant pollution.
The working group will be meeting on Sunday, June 14th at 3pm in the Baltimore Sierra Club Office (3000 Chestnut Ave). Contact charles.skinner@mdsierra.org or seth.bush@sierraclub.org for details.
Renewable Portfolio Standard
The RPS was intended to get Maryland off of fossil fuels and on to clean renewable energy. Unfortunately, the RPS is larded with incentives for dirty combustion technologies like burning municipal waste, black liquor, and wood. We will be working with our partners to clean up the RPS and increase it if it can be done in a way that mitigates pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
Efficiency and Energy Demand Reduction
Members of the energy committee are working with committees formed under the Maryland Energy Administration to expand and extend the EmPOWER Maryland law that encourages energy efficiency and fights energy waste. We seek to extend the law’s effect well beyond 2015, the year the original legislation was to end, increase the goals, and extend the law to saving fracked gas as well as electricity. This would directly support Maryland’s continued and expanded commitment under the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (a compact with many neighboring states) and the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Act.
Community Solar
This bill was passed in both houses with broad bi-partisan support and Governor Hogan signed it. The bill was needed because eighty percent of Marylanders cannot install and benefit from solar directly because they do not own their homes, they live in apartments, or they have excessive shade. This bill allows those people to invest in solar that would be built onto another building in their neighborhood; a portion of the solar energy generated at that project be credited to their energy bill each month. We will be working to monitor and foster the bill’s implementation.
Our next full meeting will be at my house in Silver Spring on Wednesday, June 3, from 7 to 9. All are welcome.