CLEAN Action Alert -- American Power Act is NOT the Answer!

Thursday, 20 May 2010 :00 AM

Dear Clean Activist:

We strongly urge you to contact your Senators to ask them to vote "NO" on the newly-released American Power Act, introduced by Senators John Kerry (D, MA) and Joe Lieberman (I, CT). As of this writing it is unknown when this legislation will come to the floor of the Senate for a vote.

The points to make include:

The bill gives large subsidies to the nuclear industry ($54 billion) and large subsidies for natural gas and offshore drilling, plus free permits for heavy emitters like manufacturers, oil refiners and merchant coal generators.

A unified and comprehensive national carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) strategy is mandated to address the key legal, regulatory and other barriers to commercial deployment of CCS. It also includes $2 billion in a grant program to support projects to accelerate commercial deployment of CCS.

Emissions are to be capped to 17% below 2005 levels by 2020, 83% below 2005 levels by 2050. States would also be prohibited from setting limits on greenhouse gas emissions, which would undermine initiatives already taken by midwestern and western states. Rather than base reductions on speculative numbers, Congress instead should introduce legislation that would accomplish better results through the deployment of energy efficiency and renewable energy while at the same time phasing out coal fired power from the mix. (see research below)

The bill reduces current federal energy efficiency provisions. According to the American Council on Energy Efficiency, this makes cuts to provisions that "provide emissions allowances to fund a variety of state energy efficiency programs and a requirement that gas utilities use a portion of their free emissions allowances to operate energy efficiency programs."
WHAT IS THE ALTERNATIVE?

A report, written by the Synapse Energy economics consulting firm with decades of experience in energy and utility analysis, released for the Civil Society Institute, maps the complete phase-out of coal-fired power and 28% of the nuclear fleet by 2050 (see the report at www.theclean.org). The report also projects a savings to ratepayers over business as usual by a 2040 time framework. There is no need for CCS and the problems associated with toxic coal ash. The report also takes into account the variability of wind by projecting that, existing gas fired plants, which are more flexible than coal fired plants, would pick up the slack where the wind stops blowing. Energy efficiency would reduce electric energy use by 40% over business as usual.

The report also demonstrates that the huge summer electric power reserve margins we enjoy today allow us to reduce demand systematically with efficiency measures while steadily deploying more renewable resources and customer owned generation that ultimately replaces the coal fleet, avoids new nuclear power plants and reduces standing nuclear power by nearly a third.

The Synapse report is available - here. Tell your Senators that this is the alternative to the Kerry Lieberman proposal.

To contact your Senate office, find your information here.

Thank you for taking action!