Online Meeting: Legislating a Price on Pollution to Pay for a Justice-based Transition to a Sustainable Economy

 

New York Business Roundtable on Carbon Tax

With President Trump withdrawing the US from the Paris climate accord, it becomes that much more critical for the states to lead.  We invite you to join us on Tuesday, June 6th at 4pm to learn about the national movement for carbon tax legislation, discuss a new legislative proposal for New York by NY Renews, and offer your business perspective on this important issue.

You can join us by phone, by computer, or in person at hosted gatherings.  Currently we have a confirmed gathering at the CommonSpot in Ithaca, NY and a location in Binghamton pending sufficient registrants.

The online portion of the meeting will be hosted via Zoom, and you will have the option of joining by video or audio. All registrants will receive an email in advance of the meeting with instructions on how to join.

This is a FREE event.  Registration is required - Click below.

REGISTER NOW

Agenda
The main portion of this meeting will last 1.5 hours with the option to continue for those interested.

• Introductions & Goals
• Speaker Presentations
  • Richard Eidlin, American Sustainable Business Council
  • Chris Burger, New York State Sustainable Business Council
  • Stephan Edel, NY Renews
• Q&A
• Questions for participants, discussion
  ----------------------------------------------------------------
• Survey feedback on policy proposal
• Continued networking at in-person gatherings

Goals for this gathering

1. Gather input from independent New York State business leaders on the NY Renews policy proposal
2. Engage around the idea of legislating a price on pollution to help pay for a just transition to a sustainable economy in New York
3. Connect with like-minded businesses both locally and across the State

We hope you can join us.

U.S. Pullout of Paris Climate Accord Ignores Risks to Nation, People and Planet

Editorial: Rejection of Paris accord takes U.S. in the wrong direction

By Editorial Board | The Buffalo News | Fri, Jun 2, 2017 |

With an ill-considered stroke of the pen, President Trump has turned the country’s back on its own people, its business leaders, its scientists and most of the rest of the world. His rejection of the Paris climate accord also carries the real risk of allowing China to supplant the United States in world leadership.

His decision could defeat the world’s best hope of preventing catastrophic climate change or at least buying time so that coastal areas, including New York City, have an opportunity to adapt.

That’s bad for America and it’s bad for Buffalo, home to what will be the hemisphere’s largest solar panel manufacturing plant. There may be opportunities to mitigate the damage Trump is inviting, but the risks are undeniably higher today than they were on Wednesday.

Few doubt at this point that the climate is warming; the argument is over the causes, and whether the warming can be stemmed. But, in the worst case, what is the downside to better gas mileage, cleaner air and a chance to avoid the calamities that could await? After all, there really is a fast-growing crack in the Antarctic ice shelf. Something really is happening to the planet that deserves the attention of the world, including the United States.

Consider the breadth of American interests that favored remaining in the pact. Start with Trump’s own secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, who, as chief executive officer of Exxon, supported the Paris agreement. So does his successor, Darren Woods. So does Elon Musk, whose company owns SolarCity, which will produce solar panels in Buffalo.

So do the leaders of ConocoPhillips and British Petroleum. So do General Electric, Dow Chemical, 3M, Disney, Coca-Cola, JPMorgan Chase and many other influential businesses whose leaders understand that America’s interests lie in an interconnected world in which science is not kicked to the curb as a political inconvenience.

In a Rose Garden speech replete with misstatements, Trump stiff-armed American interests and joined Syria and Nicaragua, the only two countries that didn’t sign the accord – and Nicaragua only because it didn’t go far enough.

The decision also puts the United States at odds with the other 194 nations that signed the agreement, including our closest allies. With that, Trump is tilting those countries away from the United States and eroding our influence in the world. The void is liable to benefit China, which is eager to expand its influence.

Fortunately for Americans, this matter is not solely up to Trump or even Congress. The governors of New York, California and Washington state have formed the U.S. Climate Alliance and announced that their large and influential states will continue to abide by the agreement. Other governors are also expressing interest.

New York and California, alone, comprise nearly 20 percent of the country’s population. This alliance means research and investment in clean energy will continue to exert a useful influence on commerce and the environment.

Voters may also have a chance to weigh in. The process of backing out of the agreement could take as much as four years, making Trump’s decision an issue in the 2020 presidential election, and perhaps a key one.

It’s hard to escape the sense that Trump’s decision was based in some significant part on his thirst to project the image of the “winner” that he promised during last year’s campaign. He has been largely stymied on anything requiring legislation – repealing the Affordable Care Act, enacting tax reform – and even thwarted thus far on his executive effort to ban Muslims from traveling here.

Trump has left the door open a crack, saying he will try to negotiate “a deal that’s fair.” It’s a puzzling comment, since the existing agreement is voluntary and already allows each country to set its own commitments.

Still, Americans, 70 percent of whom supported staying in the agreement, should let the president, governors and their legislative representatives know that they are interested in the condition of the country and the planet they leave to their children and grandchildren.

~     ~      ~  

The Isolationist. Adam Zyglis / The Buffalo News

[Click image to enlarge]

 

A Diverse NY Coalition Seeks to Pass Landmark Climate Policies Centered on Justice and Equity for Workers and Communities

NY Renews is a coalition of 109 labor, community, environmental, and social justice organizations across the state of New York from Buffalo to Brooklyn. The coalition seeks a transition from dirty fossil fuels to 100% clean renewable energy with good jobs, healthy communities, and climate justice for all New Yorkers.

NY Renews is fighting to pass the Climate and Community Protection Act (CCPA), which sets in law that:

• NYS must eliminate all climate pollution by 2050
• 40% of state energy funding must go to disadvantaged and environmental justice communities
• Fair labor standards must be attached to renewable energy jobs

In 2016, the CPPA passed the Assembly and got majority co-sponsorship in the Senate before being blocked by Senate Republican leadership.

NY Renews is also developing a new bill to fund a just transition to renewable energy by levying a penalty on polluters. This bill should be completed by August. If passed, it would be the first policy of its kind in the country.

Ultimately, NY Renews wants to build a stronger, more diverse climate movement in New York. The coalition wants to use that power to pass landmark climate policies that center justice and equity for workers and communities.

The state climate leadership is going to be critical under Trump.  If New York were a country, we’d have the 12th largest economy in the world. We have a huge opportunity to lead the rest of the country, and the world, toward equitable climate policy, and defy Trump’s insane climate denial.

Recently, Senators Jeff Merkley and Bernie Sanders introduced a federal bill, the ‘100 by '50 Act,’  which would provide job training for low-income Americans and Americans of color, as well as those in coal communities, to work in the renewable energy sector.

Similar campaigns are popping up in other states, from Washington to New Jersey.

NY Renews plans to complete the just transition bill this summer, and to launch it together with the CCPA as a package in September. NY Renews will push to pass as much of it as possible in the final state budget scheduled to be released April 1, 2018.

Learn how you can get involved with NY Renews. Sign up for actions and updates by visiting the NY Renews website.

Buffalo-area members of the NY Renews Coalition include:

Buffalo Coalition for Economic Justice
Climate Justice Coalition of WNY
Grassroots Gardens WNY
Interfaith Climate Justice Community of WNY
Massachusetts Avenue Project
OPEN Buffalo
Partnership for the Public Good
PUSH Buffalo
Sierra Club
UAW Region 9
Ujima Company
Urban Chamber of Commerce 
WASH Project
WNY Council on Occupational Safety & Health

New York State is Betting Big that by Switching to Cleaner Power it will become a Jobs Magnet

How New York Is Building the Renewable Energy Grid of the Future

This is a story of ripping up old incentives that encouraged selling as much electricity as possible, then unleashing the entrepreneurs.

By Leslie Kaufman, InsideClimate News   
May 25, 2017

New York State is making a $5 billion bet that by making its power cleaner, it can become a magnet for the clean energy jobs of the future.

Its efforts stand out among the many states racing to integrate more renewables into their power grids—such as Massachusetts, Hawaii and California—not necessarily for the technology but because of what's happening behind the scenes: New York has launched a Herculean effort to turn around an antiquated system that has deterred innovation for generations by rewarding utilities for selling more electricity.

To get utilities to embrace a changing electricity system, the state is establishing ways for the companies to be reimbursed for some of the savings from energy efficiency programs that are reducing demand for their services. It also is allowing them to reap more return on their investments in equipment needed to bring more renewable energy into the grid. And it is investing in entrepreneurs who are inventing the technology to make it all work.

The state is so gung-ho that its rules require utilities to come up with demonstration projects that test out a new business model, in partnership with at least one private sector company.

The result, say the state's regulators, is that New York is already attracting hundreds of innovative companies of all stripes. The plum opportunities are not only in installing wind turbines and solar panels, which are generating new employment opportunities across the country, they are also in emerging technologies related to smart grid management and storage. These jobs are largely invisible to the public and, in some cases, didn't even exist a few years ago.

While the state hasn't yet projected overall how many jobs are in the new energy economy, they have released enticing tidbits. In January, the New York State Energy and Research Development Authority (NYSERDA) released a report projecting that by 2030, New York's energy storage industry could realize annual revenues between $5.6 billion and $8.7 billion, with total job growth between 17,300 and 26,800 employees. Jobs in the energy storage industry already grew by 30 percent between 2012 and 2015 to 3,600.

"We are now the leading market for energy storage companies," boasts John Rhodes, president and CEO of NYSERDA, pointing to companies like NOHMs Technologies in Rochester and BessTech in Troy. "And probably microgrid technology as well."

One of the companies that has been drawn to New York's new markets is Opus One Solutions. New York's vision relies on distributed, independent power operations that ramp up and down with the intermittent sunshine and wind, as well as with the fits and starts of demand for power. Opus One has software that can understand how those waves of power from distributed resources interact with traditional power flows. Just as important, its software can make real-time price estimates for the value of those local power sources.

"Why New York?" asks Alison Smith, the start-up's director of markets, gazing out at the Manhattan skyline from a conference room at the Urban Future Lab, a state-sponsored incubator for start-ups.
"It is the most forward-thinking state in North America in considering how we build the critical elements of a distributed grid," she answers.

Incubating Clean Energy Innovation

Three years ago, New York announced that it would spend $5.3 billion toward meeting its goal of having 50 percent of its electricity come from renewable sources by 2030. (The state only had 24 percent renewable generation in state this year.) Mandates related to these standards have resulted in significant additions of wind and solar to the grid—but that is just the most readily visible part of the changes New York is undergoing.

According to Richard Kauffman, the state's chairman of energy and finance, it didn't take long to figure out that "New York cannot cost effectively make this transition just by bolting wind and solar onto the grid of Westinghouse and Tesla," referring to two of the original creators of the grid, George Westinghouse and Nicola Tesla. Instead, New York wants a new "hybrid grid" that integrates intermittent and distributed resources like wind or solar or microgrids.

 At the core of the problem to getting that grid was a stodgy, legacy financial model for utilities that didn't support innovation. Utilities have historically been rewarded with 9 percent rate increases when they add capital expenditure for transmission and distribution to new central power stations, which in New York are historically gas and coal with some nuclear and hydro. The result is that New York has added so much base load capacity to meet peak demand (largely in these traditional forms of energy generation) that on an average day the state uses just 54 percent of generation capacity.
"Technology is not what is holding us back," said Kauffman. "Could I tomorrow install smart meters in every home and save energy? Absolutely. But until now, there has been absolutely no financial incentive to do this."

Eco-Friendly Electric Buses for Buffalo?

Sierra Club Niagara Group is advocating for the NFTA to purchase ELECTRIC BUSES, which have zero emissions and so are more eco-friendly than the existing buses.

The group is hosting a consultant to make a presentation about assisting transit agencies with the transition to electric buses on Thursday, June 8th, 6:00pm at the Crane Branch Library in Buffalo.

An electric bus will be on display at the Allentown Art Festival and the Elmwood Farmers' Market on Saturday, June 10th.  

Learn more about electric buses, and how you can get a ride on one, at the event described below.

2017 Annual Meeting Awards Luncheon -- League of Women Voters Buffalo/Niagara

BUFFALO - NIAGARA

Honoring 

Roger Cook

Recipient of the 

Making Democracy Work Award

Saturday, June 3, 2017

Hyatt Place Restaurant, 5020 Main Street, Amherst 

Lunch served at Noon - Reserve by May 30 (see below)

Special Awards:

• Joan K. Bozer Leadership Award: Kathleen McCarthy

• LEE Award: Joanne Hameister for Long Term Commitment to the League with Energy, and Excellence

• Making Democracy Work Award: Roger Cook  
•  

Luncheon: $25 League members and students; $30 guests
Write checks payable to LWVBN and send your check and name(s) of attendees to LWVBN, 1272 Delaware Ave., Buffalo, NY 14209 for receipt on or before May 30.

Award Ceremony Only: Contact the league office at lwvbn@lwvbn.org by May 30 and plan to arrive at 1:30 p.m.
 

Solarize Amherst Workshops: A New Town Program to make it Easier and More Affordable to Purchase Rooftop Solar Panels

New program makes it cheaper for Amherst residents to 
'go solar'

By Joseph Popiolkowski | Buffalo News Online
May 4, 2017

Installing solar panels on roofs in Amherst is about to get easier and more affordable with the launch of a new town program.

Participants in the "Solarize Amherst" campaign can expect to save 10 percent through discounted group rates the town negotiated with three installers: Solar by CIR, Solar Liberty and Frey Electric.

"The town is acting as a liaison between the installers and residents and commercial property owners to work together to set up their own contracts if they want to install solar," said Mike Delamere, the town's energy manager.

A kickoff event is scheduled for 4 p.m. Tuesday in Council Chambers at Town Hall, 5583 Main St., Williamsville, where residents may schedule a free solar evaluation, which includes a roof evaluation, preliminary site design, energy usage profile and financial analysis.

Workshops also will be held from 5 to 7 p.m. May 17 at the Harlem Road Community Center, 4255 Harlem Road, and from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. May 20 in the Clearfield Community Center, 730 Hopkins Road.

To encourage participation, the town is also waiving its $200 electrical permit fee for property owners who sign a contract with one of the three installers by June 5.  The program runs between May 9 and July 31.

A 4 to 5 kilowatt system is sufficient for most small residences and costs between $10,000 and $12,000, but that cost is cut by half after various rebates, Delamere said. Most homeowners can expect to recoup their upfront cost in four to five years, he said.

"Then after that it's all free electricity," he said. "The return on investment is about 4 to 5 years."

The roof-mounted photovoltaic panels degrade to about 80 percent efficiency after 20 years, Delamere said. An inverter in the basement to convert direct current to alternating current lasts between 10 to 15 years.

Installing a system can result in considerable savings for homeowners over the long term, he said.

"Any excess power that you produce actually reverses the electric meter," he said. "If you're producing more power than you're using, like on a sunny day in the summertime, you'll be reversing your electric meter so you get a credit for later on in the evening or different times in the year."

The solarize campaign is one of at least four initiatives the town's Clean Energy Communities Committee is completing for Amherst to become a Clean Energy Community, a program of New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, and become eligible for a $250,000 grant.

The Town Board on Monday will consider purchasing an electric vehicle for the town fleet. The town has also trained building inspectors to be qualified to review solar plans and do inspections of solar installations and is adopting a unified solar permit, which are standards from NYSERDA that municipalities should follow.

"The weather patterns are really changing so everybody's getting more interested in doing what they can to save the planet," Delamere said.

~     ~     ~

Buffalo Activists Traveled to Washington D.C. to March for Climate, Jobs and Justice

By David Kowalski

100 People Traveled from Buffalo to D.C. in Buses Chartered by the Sierra Club 

Photos below show a few of the groups of people after departing the bus at the RFK Stadium in D.C.. [Click images to enlarge] 

 Buffalo Youth for Climate Justice

 Students from the University at Buffalo

Burmese Family from Buffalo

Buffalo Women for the Planet and a System Change

~   ~   ~

We traveled via the Metro Rail to the Capitol area where groups were assembling in preparation for the march.

Below is the front line of the Sierra Club group. 

Chapters from States around the U.S. were represented.

Leading the Sierra contingent is Aaron Mair, 

National President of the Sierra Club 

Earlier that morning, Aaron Mair was interviewed near the Capitol about the march. He said: 

“We're rising up to save our planet, but more importantly to offer solutions. This is not just a rise up for the sake of rising up. But it's a rise up to save our democracy. Because at the end of day, there's no planet B and there's no second leader. Our country was the world leader when it came to climate change, and the world leader with climate solutions.”

A video of that interview can be viewed here.

David and his son, Jason Kowalski, U.S. Policy Director 

at 350.org in D.C., met up at the march

Just days before the historic Peoples Climate mobilization, Senators Jeff Merkley and Bernie Sanders introduced the ‘100 by ‘50 Act’, a piece of legislation that calls for 100% clean energy by 2050. While recognizing the legislation likely won’t move under the Trump administration, the Senators and their supporters view this as a ‘roadmap for America.’
 
Days after the march, Jason Kowalski commented at 350.org: “If this type of visionary legislation can be introduced at the federal level under the Trump administration, there’s no excuse left for officials at the city and state level. At the Peoples Climate March, we put forward this vision nationally. Now we’ll hold every elected official accountable — no one is off the hook.”

By working at the local and regional level, communities will organize for powerful and lasting change, forcing elected officials to choose a side: that of Trump and his fossil fuel billionaire cabinet, or that of the people fighting for a stable climate and an economy that works for everyone.

Over 200,000 Participated in the People's Climate March in Washington D.C.

 Images of the Massive Climate March in Washington D.C. on April 29, 2017

Tens of Thousands Marched in 370 Cities across the U.S.

By David Kowalski

Over 200,000 people marched in Washington calling on the president to curb global warming that's contributing to polar ice melting, sea-level rise, and extreme weather, including extended droughts and unprecedented floods.

In line with established climate science and the Paris Climate Accords, an informed public as well as smart business leaders around the world seek a managed and justice-based power shift from dirty fossil fuels, which are polluting and heating the planet, to clean renewable energy sources, like wind, water and the sun.

An emerging clean energy economy that maximizes energy efficiency and minimizes waste and pollution will create well-paying jobs in every state for displaced fossil fuel workers and for people of all skill levels and educational backgrounds.

Two photos below show portions of the Climate March in the 

streets of Washington near the Capitol and the White House.

[Click image to enlarge]

[Click image to enlarge]

Below are photos of a closer views of 
isolated parts of the crowd in the street.  

 [Click any image to enlarge]

The photo below was taken at the Chicago Climate March.

To see photos taken at Climate Marches in other cities across the U.S., 
visit HuffingtonPost

The photos shown here are from albums posted at
Peoples Climate Movement