As another year nears its end, North Carolina's Sierrans can be pleased and proud of our Chapter's work, despite the ongoing adversities of a pandemic and partisan division heaped atop our usual challenges. We've continued to gather, rally, practice activism and celebrate nature - mostly virtually, but occasionally in person with strict protocols - to continue our work for environmental protection, climate action, and environmental justice.
The N.C. Sierra Club is pleased that, this year, our former deputy director and acting state director, Cynthia Satterfield, was promoted to the permanent role of State Director. Cynthia has led Chapter initiatives to promote electric transportation, renewable energy and environmental justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion. With the support of volunteer leaders and our professional staff, we're looking forward to what the Chapter will accomplish under her guidance.
In 2021, we continued and strengthened our statewide advocacy for the environment. As always, a top priority is to defend existing state environmental protections while fighting for stronger and better policies that protect air, water, forests, and public lands for all North Carolinians. For example, the Chapter worked to defend local tree protections, reduce single-use-plastics, preserve water quality, and set more stringent state water standards for chemicals. We fought against harmful regulatory rollbacks and against a proposed quarry expansion next to a state park.
"Green Roads State": Clean Transportation
The Chapter worked with clean transportation allies in 2021 to seek a statewide, equity-focused plan to reduce transportation emissions and oppose increased fees on electric vehicles, and will continue to do so in 2022.
Transportation is the second-largest contributor to climate change in North Carolina, and the greatest contributor in the United States. Electrification is key to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and combating the climate crisis.
As part of our Green Roads campaign, N.C. Sierra Club advocated to electrify North Carolina’s extensive ferry system and to expand electric vehicle charging at our historic sites and state parks.
We partnered with N.C. State’s Clean Energy Technology Center to host an educational clean transportation webinar series. Over 100 local government officials and clean transportation advocates joined to learn about converting auto fleets from gas to electric vehicles. We also led a coalition of environmental organizations to submit joint comments to the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to advocate for Volkswagen settlement funds to be spent on electrification rather than new diesel. North Carolina has $67 million remaining to spend from the federal settlement of Volkswagen’s diesel emissions scandal. We encouraged DEQ to prioritize electric vehicle projects when allocating the funding.
National Sierra Club staff with the Beyond Coal Campaign also prioritized clean transportation by participating in a stakeholder process for Phase 2 of the Duke Energy Electric Vehicle Pilot Program, which is currently being considered by the N.C. Utilities Commission (NCUC). Duke Energy proposes to invest $56 million to promote electric vehicle adoption. N.C. Sierra Club joined the N.C. Justice Center and Southern Alliance for Clean Energy to, together, encourage prioritizing investments in electric school buses, transit buses, and EV charging infrastructure as part of the program.
Clean, Affordable Energy & Fair Utility Regulation
The N.C. Sierra Club worked this year to guide our state toward clean energy and away from fossil fuels. We supported Gov. Cooper’s carbon emission reduction target - a 70 percent reduction from 2005 levels by 2030, and net zero by 2050 - which was passed into law as part of House Bill 951. Despite that positive development, we couldn't support the entire bill because it didn't do enough to protect low-income ratepayers.
We advocated for energy justice and programs to help low-income customers pay for energy bills. We advocated successfully against mandating fracked gas plants in legislation, and for allowing the financial tool called securitization to be used to save customers money on electric bills as the utility closes old, uneconomic coal plants. We also worked against a fracked gas industry bill that would ban local governments from restricting gas pipelines to new buildings; Governor Cooper vetoed the bill, but an override vote is possible.
Our Chapter joined a coalition of organizations advocating that North Carolina join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a cooperative, inter-state market program using carbon emissions caps and trading to limit greenhouse gases. DEQ is now working on a proposed rule.
Given our state’s massive offshore wind potential, N.C. Sierra Club strongly supports expanding this renewable energy source. We collaborated this year with the Southeastern Wind Coalition and other groups to develop a new coalition: Offshore Wind For North Carolina (OSW4NC). Its overall purpose is to make sure that the offshore wind permitting is done safely, with the highest level of environmental protections, all while ensuring offshore wind has a friendly legal and regulatory environment. The coalition broadly promotes responsible wind development and seeks to combat anti-wind misinformation that threatens to hamstring new wind energy development.
Additionally, Chapter staff has worked to emphasize the importance of the equitable and just transition to clean energy. Offshore wind energy unburdens traditionally targeted and underserved communities of color by placing energy generation far away from direct human impact. We have also been working with the national Sierra Club staff to connect offshore wind efforts across chapters so that we may support each other and learn from other campaigns.
Our colleagues at Beyond Coal intervened in the Duke Energy rate case and settled major litigation about the costs of coal ash cleanup. Our team argued that Duke Energy shareholders should pay for cleanup; the ultimate result was Duke Energy will be bearing 25 percent ($1.1 billion) of the cost.
The Beyond Coal campaign also pushed for the state plan to meet the federal Regional Haze Rule to include restrictions on coal plants that could help improve visibility in national parks (not yet finalized). Finally, the Chapter and Beyond Coal coordinated with elected officials to submit a letter to the N.C. Utilities Commission asking it to require Duke Energy to go coal-free by 2030.
Environmental Justice & Equity
The Chapter seeks to incorporate environmental justice, equity, diversity, and inclusivity into everything we do. Internally, we launched and carried forward initiatives to make Chapter governance more equitable. We also initiated a new internship program centering historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and tribal colleges and universities (TCUs), which will begin in summer 2022.
Externally, we lobbied for stronger protections for low-income and historically disadvantaged communities. We sent letters to Governor Cooper and to the N.C. Utilities Commission to support renewed utility shutoff moratoriums for at-risk ratepayers during the pandemic. We worked with environmental and community groups to oppose a giveaway to the industrial hog industry in this year’s Farm Act that raised environmental justice concerns. And we are working with the same groups to support a strong general permit for biogas operations at hog farms, as in previous years when we fought to end the outdated and polluting lagoon-and-sprayfield waste management systems used at concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). Our Chapter has been working more broadly on biogas throughout the region, including with chapter staff in Virginia and Beyond Coal staff in South Carolina.
Our volunteers continue to speak in support of environmental health justice protections for communities suffering pollution from industrial agriculture, as well as those suffering with pollution from wood pellet factories. The Chapter helped build a coalition to address the climate and environmental justice impacts of the wood pellet industry and called on Governor Cooper to limit economic incentives for wood pellet manufacturing and closely study its climate impacts. The Chapter voiced its desire for individual stormwater permits at each wood pellet facility, rather than including them in a general permit. We are spending time with impacted communities to discuss the nuisance and health issues the factories create.
Chapter staff thoroughly analyzed statutes governing the N.C. Department of Commerce's authority to grant incentive funds to wood pellet and other industries. We then asked the department to increase its transparency and due diligence by requiring such companies to report environmental violations when applying for state economic incentive grants. We have also recommended that Commerce coordinate with DEQ to evaluate the effects of the expanding wood pellet industry.
You can count on the N.C. Chapter of the Sierra Club to continue advocating for the people of our state and for our planet in the coming year. We look forward to working with you to make North Carolina a more equitable, livable place for everyone.