Something's brewing in Bihar. After decades of being India's most notoriously 'backward' state, the Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has tempered corruption, built roads and spurred development. Given the impressive achievements of his previous term, it's no surprise he rode to overwhelming victory in recent elections. What is surprising is that his campaign platform consisted of more or less a single promise – to deliver electricity access to the 82% of the over 100 million inhabitants of Bihar who lack it. With little fossil fuel reserves to speak of, Bihar will need to write a blueprint for a clean energy revolution to deliver on that promise.

As Shaibal Gupta, Secretary, of the Asian Development Research Institute puts it, Bihar now requires an infusion of energy to further 'lubricate' the wheels of development. That's putting it lightly. Bihar faces a 30% peak power deficit (highest in the country) due to its paltry 546 megawatts of installed capacity - about the size of one average coal plant. Worse, Bihar loses roughly 38% of the meager amount of energy it produces through transmission and distribution. That’s like taking almost half of this capacity and pouring it down a drain – while you pay for it.

The states chief minister has tried to construct new coal plants to reverse the situation but to no avail. Worse, India's coal crisis is raging, reducing the likelihood that any new coal plant Kumar is able to build will be able to secure coal at affordable rates. Add the lead time for a new coal plant (at least 5-7 years to complete) and it's pretty clear turning to renewable energy is the only way to make good on his campaign pledge.

As a result of the campaign, coupled with the headache of securing coal, the states politicians are seriously considering committing their citizens’ future to clean energy. While that commitment is exciting in and of itself, its significance for the other 1.3 billion people around the world without access to the grid could be tremendous. Bihar has the ability to lay a blueprint for developing countries across the world looking to deliver energy access in the cheapest, fastest, most sustainable way.

For Greenpeace that blueprint consists of scaling up mini grids that can eventually connect to the grid via smart grid technology if, and when, it finally makes its way to rural villages. Individual components like solar home systems can feed into these mini grids supplying power alongside small scale power plants using biomass or hydro creating a balanced set of renewable power options.

The most exciting thing is that this decentralized micro grid pathway is exactly what visionary advocates like Amory Lovins are advocating needs to occur in the United States. But in the US this means a significant change in entrenched industries and existing infrastructure. Bihar on the other hand can build this revolutionary new 'grid' from the bottom-up – getting it right from the start.

As the Bihar campaign gains momentum the world will be looking to Rio+20 as the halfway point of the United Nations Sustainable Energy for All campaign. Energy access practitioners have sent a letter to World Bank president Robert Zoellick seeking $500 million to finance an off grid clean energy revolution just like Bihar's in countries around the world. It's now up to institutions like the World Bank and other development finance institutions (DFIs) to catalyze their efforts and make good on universal energy access goals. Ultimately, it may not be much of a stretch to say as Bihar goes, so goes the world.

-- Justin Guay, Sierra Club International Program

Love from the Texas Roller Derby ladies and Chris Riley!

Best friends walk together!

Serious love!

The Central Austin Youth League All Star Sluggers show their love for playing together (and their moms). These kids do everything with enthusiasm.

True love.

He came up all the way from San Antonio to ride with friends.

Walking is good for the heart and soul–yes!

That’s just a few of the pictures–see all the rest here. Thanks to everyone who came out to say hello and share the love!

-- Kari Banta, Texas Sierra Club

The decision to finance a U.S coal exporter follows the Ex-Im Bank's long and sordid history of dirty coal investments abroad. Communities in India are still fighting the enormous Sasan project and its environmental, social, and economic degradation. This project was followed by the even larger and more controversial Kusile coal project in South Africa.

Sadly, we're not surprised. After the Ex-Im Bank's annual meeting it was clear they were still confused about which century they were in. The bank continually fights congressional mandates to increase its clean energy lending and fails to recognize the economic and employment opportunities that it can provide. This leaves us hopelessly behind in a clean energy race for a $260 billion global industry.  This industry creates employment opportunities, and sustainable economic growth.  

Rejecting new fossil fuel projects, especially coal projects, should be a no-brainer. U.S. tax payer dollars could be far better spent supporting clean energy exports – something Ex-Im has shown it can do. But callous investments like this clearly demonstrate that Ex-Im lacks vision, a commitment to clean energy, and accountability. All things congress should have mandated in reauthorization. Without it, it's quite clear Ex Im is committed to its destructive fossil fuel binge.

-- Anusha Narayanan, Sierra Club International Program

Vehicle fleets represent only about 7 percent of the U.S. vehicle stock, but account for more than 35 percent of the nation's transportation-related fuel consumption. If the country is going to kick the oil habit, solutions are going to have to include vehicle fleets.

Siemens had this in mind when it developed an electric freight trucking system and tested it out in Germany. Now this system has a taker in the second largest city in the U.S.: Los Angeles. This "eHighway" concept connects diesel hybrid trucks with electric wires. As you can see in the video below, these trucks run on electric when connected and seamlessly switch back to diesel where there are no wires.

L.A. plans to put in place a pilot program and build it into Interstate 710, a stretch of road that bustles with trucks because of its proximity to the nearby ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles.

More than 40 percent of freight that arrives in the U.S. go through those two ports. Estimates say freight transportation in the U.S. will double by 2050, and carbon pollution from it will increase 30 percent by 2030. 

"We are increasingly interested in what vehicle fleets are and are not doing to reduce emissions and dependence on oil," said Gina Coplon-Newfield, who directs the Sierra Club's Electric Vehicles Campaign. "For many companies with light and medium duty vehicles, switching to electric will be a very smart way for them to save on fueling costs and slash their pollution output."

Electrification would not only put a huge dent in the country's oil use and emissions, it would translate into health-cost savings. Pollution from Los Angeles' two main ports affect millions of nearby people and "causes billions of dollars in health-related costs annually," according to the South Coast Air Quality Management District -- which hopes the city can get the eHighway "off the ground in the next 12 months."

Let's hope L.A. drives this forward fast, and that other municipalities use it as a model as they too search for cleaner and more efficient ways to move goods.

-- Brian Foley

Hmm, is the coal industry astro-turfing again? The coal industry has to pay people to say they support coal?

A little Internet digging turned up the ad on Craigslist, only it had already been deleted. The best we could find for awhile was just this Google search showing part of the text (this is a screenshot -- click to enlarge it):

Here's the ad on Craigslist -- it's been deleted. Using some Google search skills (thanks, Dave Stroup!) with those words, we were able to piece together this much of the ad:

People needed to attend a public meeting (Tinley Park /Chicago) 

Reply to: px6mq-3031150602@gigs.craigslist.org (email address no longer valid)

Looking for people THIS THURSDAY, MAY 24 who want to make a couple of dollars for a few hours of your time.

All you need to do is wear a t-shirt in support of an energy project for two hours during the public meeting. We will be departing the Tinely Park convention center at 8:15 am for the meeting and we will be back by 1:30 pm. For your time we will pay you $50 cash and provide you lunch once we return to the convention center.

UPDATE -- Here are two photos of the pro-coal t-shirts at the Chicago hearing. Thanks to Lauren Kastner of Indiana University's Campus Beyond Coal group for these photos.

Here's one of our folks talking to a person in a pro-coal t-shirt at the Chicago rally:

-- Heather Moyer, Sierra Club

Thousands of Americans have already spoken out via email in support of these standards to protect our health and clean our air, and now hundreds more will do it in person at these hearings.

This morning I spoke at the Washington, DC, hearing. I want to share that testimony with you and encourage you to follow along with the hearings online to both voice your support and to see the support from Americans nationwide.

Here's what I said to the EPA this morning:

Good morning. My name is Mary Anne Hitt. I’m a mother, a concerned citizen, and the director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign. I live in West Virginia with my family, and because my husband is traveling on business this week, I am joined today by my two-year-old daughter, Hazel. Hopefully, her patience will match the length of my remarks this morning. We will see.

I’m here today to voice my full support for the EPA’s proposed carbon pollution standard.

Some were rejected by moms, dads, small business owners, and other local residents who feared a major new industrial polluter in their backyard would harm their children’s health, destroy their property values, and trap them in a town or neighborhood condemned to a downward spiral of pollution and poverty.

Some were rejected by governors, who wanted their states to be clean energy leaders in the 21st century, and thought major new investments in coal would take their state in exactly the wrong direction.

Some were rejected by state regulators, who feared that ratepayers would pay dearly on their electric bills if their state became locked into high carbon energy for the next fifty plus years.

And some were rejected by financial backers, who realized that these projects were an increasingly bad bet, because they simply could not compete with the rapidly dropping prices of cleaner sources of energy.

As a result, only one new coal-fired power plant has broken ground in the US since 2008, and the permit for that project was recently struck down in a unanimous decision by the Mississippi Supreme Court.

During this same decade, in 2009, the EPA issued its finding that carbon pollution endangers public health and welfare. As I just noted, Americans of all walks of life were simultaneously reaching the same conclusion -- from financiers to governors, from state regulators to local moms and dads.

In issuing this proposed carbon pollution standard, the EPA has taken an important step to safeguard our health and our families.   As I’m sure you will hear many times today, carbon pollution has been linked by scientists to increasing temperatures and increasing levels of smog, which triggers asthma attacks and other life-threatening health problems.

But carbon pollution doesn’t just threaten our children’s health today. As the main cause of climate disruption, carbon pollution casts a dark shadow over every aspect of their future, a future menaced by the threat of increasing droughts, wildfires, tornadoes, hurricanes, and rising sea levels, not to mention the resulting political instability around the world. 

My daughter Hazel is the light of my life. She is learning to sing, she never wants to come inside, and one of her favorite things is wandering around the alleys of our small town looking for cats. She is also an 11th generation West Virginian, through her father. With our deep Appalachian roots, we understand all too well the challenges that the clean energy future poses to some parts of our country. But I believe we have the ingenuity and know-how to tackle those challenges. Here is how the largest newspaper in West Virginia, the Charleston Gazette, put it in their editorial this past Sunday:

This topic [climate change] has special resonance in West Virginia, a fossil fuel treasure trove. And what happens here has a special impact on the future of the planet. Pollution controls seeking to reduce global warming are sure to impose tighter restrictions on coal and natural gas. West Virginia's energy should not be squandered on a shortsighted attempt to protect the status quo, or to discredit science in the public's eyes, or to vilify the Obama administration's very reasonable proposal that new coal-fired power plants be required to limit their greenhouse gas emissions.

The EPA’s proposed carbon pollution standard is a commonsense step toward addressing a very real threat to this nation -- and to the future that my daughter, and all our children, will inherit. If anything, the EPA is arriving late in the game, following in the footsteps of community leaders, governors, state regulators, and financiers who all realized, in the past decade, that new power plants in this country must deal with their carbon pollution. I support the proposed standard, and I encourage you to finalize it with all due haste. Thank you.

-- Mary Anne Hitt, Director of the Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaign

Keystone XL is a massive tar sands pipeline that would endanger the Ogallala Aquifer -- the nation's largest aquifer and the source of drinking water for millions of people. Farmers in the Sand Hills and other agricultural regions in Nebraska with sandy soils and shallow groundwater are at particular risk from the pipeline trenching. All of Nebraska is at risk from the contamination of surface water and groundwater sources in the event of a spill. And TransCanada’s dismal safety record means that risk is very likely, and very real.

After heavy lobbying by TransCanada the Nebraska legislature voted to hand Nebraska's future over to Big Oil on a silver platter. The law lets the governor grant pipeline companies such as TransCanada immediate eminent domain authority -- the right to force landowners to hand over their property to the company -- without having to wait for federal permits. This reckless law also eliminates transparent environmental assessment requirements, in effect giving Nebraska land to a foreign company without accountability or any need to review environmental impacts.

The lawsuit, Thompson v. Heineman, will focus on the fact that this law fails to provide for judicial review, lets the governor hand over eminent domain powers without any sort of standards, and gives favor to "a single company and not persons in general, which violates the Nebraska state constitution." In other words, it throws Nebraska families and communities -- people who have earned their livelihood on their land for generations -- overboard.

The Sierra Club's Ken Winston, a Nebraskan who first raised the constitutional question in the state legislature, recognized the Nebraska farmers who are leading this fight, saying, "Randy Thompson, Susan Luebbe, and Susan Dunavan are true American patriots standing up for the fundamental rights of all Nebraskans. The state cannot deny Nebraskans the right to protect property from a foreign company. And these Nebraska landowners, along with the Sierra Club and our broad coalition of partners, won't take the bullying and deception from an oil company lying down."

On track to produce 20 percent of the nation’s electricity by 2030, wind power has already created tens of thousands of good-paying American jobs while helping keep our families healthy by moving the country beyond dirty energy.

During his visit to Iowa, President Obama is expected to call for the much-needed extension of the Production Tax Credit (PTC), the federal policy that has given wind energy a boost by creating American jobs  at places like TPI Composites.  Currently, the PTC is set to expire at the end of the year -- and if Congress fails to renew it, they would deal a tragic blow to our economy, costing upwards of 37,000 jobs. 

The Sierra Club disagrees with Iowa Republican Congressman Steve King on many issues.  But we agree with him that the PTC needs to be renewed for the sake of American jobs, clean American energy, and American health.  He deserves credit for standing up to those in his party who would sabotage the growing success story that is the domestic wind industry. 

Still, many in Congress seem to have different priorities, and they might let these clean energy credits slip away – all while pushing for massive tax breaks for the same dirty energy industries that are raking in billions in profits while making our kids sick.

Time and time again, the President has called on Congress to end the more than $4 billion in annual tax giveaways that go to big polluting billionaires in the oil and gas industry. And, once again, the majority of Americans agree. According to a November 2011 report from the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, almost 70 percent of Americans opposed federal subsidies for big polluters, with large support from Republicans, Democrats, and Independents alike.

The fossil fuel industry has made it clear that they would rather put their reckless agenda and boundless profits before the health and future of American families. While these corporate polluters make huge profits dirtying our air and water, they’re getting tax breaks to help them out. There’s no reason they should get any more of our support when we have the opportunity to support a clean energy economy that creates new jobs and protects our air, water, and our families.

Iowans know it, the President knows it, and the bulk of America agrees: extend the PTC and let the wind blow and our economy grow.

-- Dave Hamilton, Sierra Club Director of Clean Energy

The Sierra Club is deeply concerned about the environmental implications of the TPP.  We understand and appreciate that U.S. negotiators are pushing for strong and enforceable standards in the environment chapter of the agreement, including binding language that would address environmental challenges such as illegal logging and overfishing.

As these provisions are core to the work of the Sierra Club, we should be satisfied, right? Well, since the text is being kept from the public, we don’t actually know the status or details of these proposals. And there are many other parts of the TPP that could directly undermine these very efforts to strengthen environmental protection while also putting the U.S. economy and workers at risk.

Why is this “21st century trade agreement,” with such purported benefits, being hidden from the American public? Let’s take a look at what they’re hiding:

2. Increase in dirty fracking.  The TPP may allow for significantly increased exports of liquefied natural gas without the careful study or adequate protections necessary to safeguard the American public. This would mean an increase of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, the dirty and violent process that dislodges gas deposits from shale rock formations. It would also likely cause an increase in natural gas and electricity prices, impacting consumers, manufacturers, workers, and increasing the use of dirty coal power.

3. Rollback of consumer rights. Just recently the World Trade Organization (WTO) ruled against U.S. dolphin-safe tuna labels. The WTO found that these labels, which allow consumers to choose to buy tuna that was caught without using dolphin-killing fishing practices, discriminated against Mexican tuna fishers. The TPP, we understand, has provisions that would leave the door wide open to such outlandish cases which not only threaten our environment, but consumers’ right to know and our government’s right to regulate.

4. Threats to American workers. While free trade agreements are often sold as job-creators, the evidence simply doesn’t stack up. For example, the Economic Policy Institute has found that nearly 700,000 U.S. jobs were lost as a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).  The TPP would likely give foreign corporations greater rights than domestic ones, providing an incentive for U.S. corporations to leave home and set up shop abroad. The TPP could also severely limit the U.S. government’s ability to set policies that would boost our domestic economy, such as giving preference to American goods or American workers in government contracts.

Many other areas of our everyday life, including access to affordable medicines, food safety, and internet freedom would also quite certainly be limited under the guide of “free trade” in the TPP. And if I’ve got any of this wrong, I invite someone to prove me wrong. Release the text.

So, now that we have a sense of what they’re trying to hide, the next question is, from whom are they hiding?

The answer: us.

Here's our group delivering a petition to United States Trade Representative (USTR) signed by more than 24,000 individuals.  The petition calls on the USTR to release the text of the TPP.

-- Ilana Solomon, Sierra Club Labor and Trade Program

Earlier this month, the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) issued proposals for rules on oil and gas production on public lands – but they were laughably weak. Their disclosure requirement really made our eyes roll – it said that oil and gas companies would disclose the toxins they use in fracking only after the deed was done. If it must be done, fracking for natural gas should be thoroughly regulated at all stages to protect our public lands and the water we drink.

BLM manages over 700 million acres of mineral rights below the surface of the U.S. Many of these acres are located under national forests, wildlife refuges, and federal lands. The federal government should take this as an opportunity to use rigorous rules to potentially minimize the impact of oil and gas production. Federal rules governing the extraction process should be the gold standard, requiring the best available technology so that the land we own is protected for future generations.

Clearly, BLM could use some help, and your voice must be heard! As the largest manager of oil and gas resources in the U.S., BLM’s in the spotlight to lead by example. We must demand that at the very least, drilling on sensitive lands should be totally off-limits—including wilderness areas, roadless areas, national parks and national monuments—just to name a few!

When BLM does lease land, it should follow rules that are at least as protective as those in other states. Here’s how we think the minimum requirements should look:

1. Full disclosure of chemicals: ALL chemicals used in drilling, including trade secrets, should be disclosed to the general public 30 days prior to drilling. Any land owner and tenant within half a mile of both the vertical and horizontal well should receive this disclosure so they can adequately monitor their drinking water.


2. A ban on the use of diesel fuel: Diesel and drinking water don’t mix, but it’s still being used by gas companies in their fracking chemical cocktails. Diesel fuel and diesel by-products pose serious risks to Americans’ health and belongs nowhere near our drinking water.


3. Direct control and monitoring of methane: While the technology exists, most states don’t require direct capture of methane at the surface of the well. The industry shouldn't be allowed to knowingly release this climate-disrupting compound into the atmosphere. Instead, they should be required to capture it and prevent it from entering the atmosphere. There’s even an incentive for them since methane is a valuable, sellable product. 


4. Strict management of ALL fluids: Billions of gallons of water are used every year for fracking, so it’s important that we know where this water is going and how it’s being adequately treated. That’s why the industry needs a comprehensive plan for tracking all water used in operation, including wastewater. Also, after a well has been fracked, fluids flow back up the well into open pits and centralized impoundments on the surface. It’s simply not safe to have toxic fluids released into our air, so these pits and impoundments should be banned. Furthermore, the industry should set a standard of using closed-loop systems for collecting, reusing, and transporting waste fluids. It’s the safest way to store and reuse water on-site.


5. Mechanical integrity of the well casing: Faulty casing could harm public lands and people’s drinking water. Well construction should reflect the highest technological advancements to fully protect public and private drinking water sources.


6. Compliance with existing requirements: Companies should follow the EPA’s New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) and National Emissions Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP) immediately.

Our public lands shouldn't be sacrificed, nor should the gas and oil industry get a free pass to pollute our lands. Tell BLM that protecting our public health and land from fracking is the most important measure for any proposed rules.

-- Deb Nardone, Director of the Beyond Natural Gas Campaign