We all know 2020 was an absurd year, but despite the difficulties (and horrors), I am proud of how much we were able to accomplish inside and out of the Lone Star Chapter at the local level and across the state (as well as within other Sierra Club work).
At the start of the year, we picked up where we left off at the end of 2019 by accomplishing our goal passing a new Austin Energy Resource, Generation, and Climate Protection Plan to 2030 (Resource Plan). The 2030 Resource Plan is essentially Austin Energy’s energy master plan in which, for the first time ever, we set an end date for fossil fuel generation! We helped push Austin to become the first major city in Texas to set a carbon-free goal. But not only that—we tied in concrete ways to improve racial equity in both Austin Energy programs and future resource planning. On top of the Resource Plan, we joined in the update of Austin’s Community Climate Plan. I ultimately was selected by my peers to be co-chair of the Steering Committee guiding this process and worked hard with a Steering Committee that better represented than perhaps any other city body to change the last climate plan to start centering equity and begin fighting for climate justice in Austin.
More broadly in our Sierra Club work in Texas, we began working to shift the culture in all Sierra Club work in Texas to practice anti-racism and equity principles, particularly focusing on Austin and San Antonio (staff and chapter leaders). We did this largely through creating own curriculums / trainings on these issue in addition to bringing in training and accountability processes from other community organizations and are consulting with anti-racist practitioners to keep our process grounded and on track. In the lead up to this starting this work internally, I worked closely with the Austin Sierra Club’s ExCom to help endorse the city of Austin’s at-the time draft and now passed 11-0) resolutions to civilianize $100 million worth of functions currently carried out by APD—in other words to shift these offices out of APD and into other departments—as well a minor $20 million cut to APD’s budget after years of rampant police brutality and overfunding in Austin.
Around other cities across the state, specifically Bryan, Denton, and Garland, I worked toward creating grassroots networks and small volunteer teams in each to advocate for clean energy goals and programs, and equity and accessibility of those programs. Although we ended up not working so much on clean energy, we built a strong foundation and accomplished much to be proud of. In Bryan and Denton primarily, we organized central cadres of local community leaders to organize and help us put a stop to reconnecting the Gibbons Creek coal plant (co-owned by Bryan, Denton, and Garland).
Like a malevolent phoenix rising up from its own noxious coal ash, the retired coal plant came out of nowhere to be the most salient energy issue in these 3 cities. An out-of-state bad actor attempted to reconnect the plant to feed their profits while testing out a new patent for extracting industrial chemicals out of coal! After a couple months of mobilizing and pressuring the Texas Municipal Power Agency, it’s operator owned by the 3 cities, TMPA announced they would instead sell the plant to Charah Solutions, inc. a company specializing in cleaning up coal ash and remediating sites. Although we still have much more work to do to bring democracy back into the future of the land at the Gibbons Creek coal plant site, we can and should be proud of what we accomplished.