Photo-by-Kristijan-Nikacevic

Michael Kohn, The Bulletin, September 15th

Boardman coal-fired power plant, Photo by Alan Journet

A coal plant seeking hundreds of millions in public funding submitted an analysis riddled with mistakes, according to a former Energy Department official. But the government published it anyway.

Nicholas Kusnetz  Inside Climate News September 16 2023

A former Energy Department official is warning that the government may not be prepared to assess the effectiveness of new clean energy projects, pointing to what she called serious errors in a recent analysis of a major carbon capture and storage proposal in North Dakota.

The errors came in what’s called a life cycle assessment, or LCA, published by the department last month for a $1.4 billion effort that would remove and store millions of tons of carbon dioxide annually from the smokestacks of a coal plant.

The assessment is meant to help estimate and compare all the ways a project could increase or decrease pollution. In this case, however, it was riddled with mistakes, said Emily Grubert, an associate professor of sustainable energy policy at the University of Notre Dame and former deputy assistant secretary of carbon management at the Department of Energy, where she oversaw certain carbon capture programs until last year.

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that will force big companies to fully disclose their climate emissions and climate-related financial risks.

Bill McKibben initiated the ‘divest from fossil fuels’ campaign over a decade ago.  Now, Third Act is trying to move the campaign forward as follows:

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Here’s perhaps a weird ask: we need all of you across the country to sign this petition to the governor of California about two somewhat obscure pieces of legislation you’ve probably never heard of, together known as the Climate Accountability Package. Oh, and you need to do it today. I know there’s a lot going on, but this is big, and we need your help.

Governor Gavin Newsom is a national political figure, with national ambitions. California has the 5th largest economy in the world, meaning that any law passed here has not only national but also global ramifications. And these two laws—SB 253 (Wiener) and SB 261 (Stern)—are so important because they will force big companies that do business in California to stop greenwashing and report publicly on their climate emissions and climate-related financial risks.

In fact, if he signs them, it would turbocharge our campaign to stop the
banks from funding fossil fuel expansion. In particular, SB 253 would force big companies to fully disclose all of their emissions, including the “Scope 3 emissions” from their supply chains.

In fact, if he signs them, it would turbocharge our campaign to stop the
banks from funding fossil fuel expansion. In particular, SB 253 would force big companies to fully disclose all of their emissions, including the “Scope 3 emissions” from their supply chains.

This means that Apple, say, would have to disclose all the emissions that come from its bank service providers—i.e. the emissions that stem from leaving its money on deposit in banks that lend it out for dirty pipelines, fracking, and oil drilling. The best estimate from The Carbon Bankroll report is that disclosing the emissions associated with their cash in banks ups their total carbon footprint by…64%. Anyway, companies like Apple—which has pledged to go net zero by 2030—would then go to work pressing Citi and Chase and the rest to do the right thing. Otherwise Apple has to report all this pollution that stems from its banks’ funding of dirty fossil fuel projects.

Governor Newsom is heading to “Climate Week” in New York and has said that he will make a big public announcement about climate this Sunday. Please sign the petition today—and add your personal comment—and our partner California Climate Action will deliver our thousands and thousands of signatures to Governor Newsom before he leaves the state so that he knows the whole country is watching him. We want to make sure that the Governor includes in his Sunday announcement that he will sign these two game-changing climate bills.

When you add your personal comment on the petition, perhaps tell Governor Newsom that you admire his past work on climate issues, but that this may be the largest step of all. And tell him you know that the American Petroleum Institute and the Chamber of Commerce are pressuring him to do the wrong thing, but that he shouldn’t fear because the rest of us have his back.

Thanks for your speed—this is a huge opportunity! The three Third Act California Working Groups have been doing a bang-up job that helped these bills pass the legislature, but they need our support from around the country.

Thank you!

Bill McKibben for Third Act

Photo by Dasja Dolan

Organization, which promotes awareness of global warming science, launches a fund drive to hire an executive director to boost its strength

By Alan Journet Ashland.News September 14th 2023

Eleven years ago, among the wide array of local nonprofits in Southern Oregon, something was missing. SOCAN was the first organization to step in to fill the void in the grassroots climate action arena.

For over a decade, SOCAN (Southern Oregon Climate Action Now) volunteers have dedicated themselves to accomplishing its mission of promoting awareness and understanding of the science of global warming and its climate change consequences and, within the framework of promoting social justice, to motivate individual and collective action to address it.

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