I joined CCAN’s staff three weeks ago today and since day one I’ve been inspired by the “it ain’t over ‘til it’s over” spirit the community members we have the honor of working with bring to their work. That spirit is nowhere more visible to me than in the work of the Calvert Citizens for a Healthy Community, the citizen group that formed in opposition to Dominion Virginia Resources proposed liquefied natural gas export facility at Cove Point.
CCAN’s Southern Maryland Organizer, Jon Kenney, and I spent Monday in Calvert County, meeting with some of the leaders of CCHC. Inspired by last Sunday’s rally and undeterred by the construction work that has already started on Cove Point Road, CCHC’s leaders are ramping up their call on Governor O’Malley to step in where federal regulators have failed to and order a Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA). A QRA is a basic and customary type of safety assessment that would determine the extent to which an accidental explosion or other catastrophe at the plant could put CCHC’s members and their neighbors in danger.
The reality of what’s at stake if the Governor ignores the citizens of Calvert County really hit home for me Monday. Jon and I went for a drive through Cove Point Park – a beautiful park that shares a fence with Dominion’s plant. Jon told me that this park – with its two playgrounds, baseball diamonds and crowded water park – is the place where kids in Calvert County go to play. And it shares a fence with the plant. Imagine the horrific scene if there were an explosion like the one that occurred at an LNG facility this spring in Plymouth, Washington.
And I met Leslie Garcia, one of the creative minds behind CCHC. With her husband, Leslie has been putting blood, sweat and tears into renovating their home – a home I had a hard time leaving after an hour, let alone 20 years. They feel like they’ll have no choice but to leave if Dominion wins. They’re in Dominion’s backyard: their home is less than a 5 minute walk from the overlook facing Dominion’s current import platform and a short drive from the plant. Imagine locking the door and walking away from the home you’d hoped to live the rest of your life in because you know that staying is too dangerous.
Before leaving, we walked along the pier at Solomon’s Island, looking out over the scenic Patuxent River towards the Thomas Johnson Bridge – Dominion plans to build a temporary pier next to the bridge for the loading and unloading of construction materials. And right next to it, one of the largest, most productive, and most beautiful farms in Calvert County – Dominion plans to use the field abutting this farm for the loading and unloading of construction materials coming off of the pier. Imagine the scene.
As we drove through neighborhoods on our way home, we noticed that a bunch of the old Cove Point lawn signs (“Cove Point: We need answers!”) had started to disappear. The construction work on Cove Point Road has gotten some folks started thinking this fight is over; Dominion has already won.
But the members of CCHC will tell you that it isn’t, that too much is at stake to stop fighting now. Just a few days after our visit, CCHC members traveled to Annapolis to join 52 organizations and residents for a press conference urging the Governor to protect the safety of Calvert County residents and order a QRA. As the fight against Cove Point continues, CCAN will be supporting CCHC at every step – whether that’s on the streets, in the media or in the courts – and what an honor it is for us to do so.
Dominion Virginia Power won’t build offshore wind farm on tract it leased unless cost drops
By Robert McCartney
Dominion Virginia Power drew a lot of favorable publicity this month by leasing a patch of the Atlantic Ocean off Virginia Beach to construct an offshore wind farm hailed as a clean-energy milestone for the state.
Too bad there’s good reason to believe Dominion will never build it.
Even as Dominion executives publicly stressed wind power’s potential, their statements and company documents showed they have no intention of building anything larger than a small, two-turbine offshore test project unless the costs come down.
Another step toward Virginia offshore wind energy, but concerns over Dominion feet-dragging linger
Beth Kemler, Virginia State Director for the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, released the following statement in response to today’s announcement from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) that it is moving forward with an offshore wind energy auction off the coast of Virginia on September 4th.
“Every time we move a little closer to seeing powerful wind turbines generating energy off our coast, it’s cause for celebration. At the same time, we have lingering concerns that auctioning the area as one big block will reduce competition and enable the winning company to drag its feet. Dominion Power, which has an abysmal record of bringing new clean energy online in Virginia, was the main proponent of auctioning the lease area to just one developer, and a number of environmental groups warned BOEM against that proposal.
“We’re troubled by the possibility of Dominion winning the auction for the entire wind energy area, given the lackadaisical timetable for offshore wind development that company officials have expressed in the past. We don’t want the company to buy up the whole lease block and then sit on it for years and years.
“Climate change is here now. It’s flooding the streets of Norfolk through sea-level rise and it’s raising the death toll of summer heat. We need companies to develop large-scale clean energy projects as quickly as possible.”
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Dominion's New Solar Program – Explained
Today, Dominion Power starts accepting applications for its pilot “Solar Purchase Program.” Under the program, homeowners and businesses with solar panels on their properties can sell both the power they generate and the associated renewable energy certificates (RECs) for a premium.
CCAN, along with other environmental organizations, was represented by the Southern Environmental Law Center in the case about the program before the Virginia State Corporation Comission. Environmental advocates saw some big flaws with Dominion’s design of the program. It has moved forward nonetheless, so here’s our guide to the program.
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Shareholder Vote a Loud Signal to Va. Utility on Climate Concerns
By Maria Gallucci
A Dominion shareholder movement sparked by one woman provoked a record vote on one of its resolutions. ‘This seems like a climate wake-up call.’
In 2008, Virginia resident Ruth McElroy Amundsen took her first stab at using shareholder activism to spur action on climate change—she introduced a resolution that challenged Dominion Resources Inc., Virginia’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, to get more of its electricity from renewables.
VA is for lovers of Climate Action: Photobombing Riverrock RVA
At the start of each summer, outdoor sports enthusiasts and athletes gather in RVA to fight for the championship title in everything from Slackline to Speed Bouldering, Endurance Paddleboarding, Mountainbiking, and more. This weekend festival, sponsored by Dominion, is a mecca for lovers of nature and everything outdoors. Kind of ironic that Dominion, Virginia’s top climate polluter, sponsors an event celebrating the outdoors while they’re simultaneously destryong the planet, don’t you think?
We thought so too. So this weekend at Riverrock, a group of climate activists took to the streets of Riverrock to get that message our to athletes, spectators, and Dominion itself. Our strategy? Photobombing Dominion’s Instagram contest.
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Climate Activists Invade Dominion Riverrock
What does global warming have in store for outdoor sports enthusiasts?
WHEEZING RUNNERS (from more intense allergy seasons)
DRIED UP RIVERS (from more intense droughts)
CODE RED AIR QUALITY (from more intense heat waves)
And who’s the top contributor of climate pollution in Virginia? Dominion Power.
Sponsoring events like Dominion Riverrock, Richmond’s annual outdoor sports festival, can’t erase the company’s huge contribution to the global climate crisis. If Dominion wants good PR, the company should not only sponsor community events, like Riverrock, but also make a real commitment to clean energy, like wind and solar power, instead of building more and more massive fossil fuel plants.
That’s the message we’re bringing to Dominion Riverrock on this weekend in Richmond. Sports enthusiasts who are also fans of a stable climate are wearing t-shirts bearing the message while participating in events.
They’re even adding to the fun by entering photos with folks who agree with our message into the event’s Instagram contest! How fun is that? Check out the photos:
For an idea of how increased extreme weather, like droughts and floods, are already in the picture from climate change, check out this Huffington Post piece.
Climate studies have warned us to expect more frequent and intense extreme events, such as heavy rain and snow storms, along with heat waves. While weather variability is nothing new, the wild swings in weather — termed “weather whiplash” and that have recently occurred across the Midwest and South Central states during the past few years, from record flood to record drought and back to record flood — may be an example of what’s in store as global warming continues to alter the atmosphere.
To learn more about how climate change affects air quality, check out the recent report on the topic from the Union of Concerned scientists, which projected that Virginia would be one of the top 10 most affected states.
Ground-level ozone, the primary component of smog, is generated by chemical reactions between nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) triggered by heat and sunlight. Warmer average temperatures from a changing climate may elevate ozone concentrations in many parts of the country, especially in and around urban areas.
Warmer temperatures also are associated with stagnant air conditions that can cause ozone pollution to settle over an area and remain for extended periods of time.
The UCS analysis, which used the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Environmental Benefits Mapping model, calculated national impacts and ranked the 10 states most likely to experience the worst health impacts and highest costs in 2020.
In terms of costs, it found that California would be hit hardest, followed by Texas, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, North Carolina, New Jersey and Virginia. These states are most vulnerable because they have a combination of the largest number of residents living in urban areas, large numbers of children and seniors, and high levels of nitrogen oxides and VOC emissions from vehicles and power plants.
And finally, for more information about allergies and climate change, check out this early spring Huffington Post piece.
The planet is getting warmer, and human behavior is responsible. The changing climate has brought early spring, late-ending fall, and large amounts of rain and snow. All of that, combined with historically high levels of carbon dioxide in the air, nourishes the trees and plants that make pollen, and encourages more fungal growth, such as mold, and the release of spores.
We will be paying a wretched price in the coming months for the behavior fueling the explosion of pollen, which are the tiny reproductive cells found in trees, weeds, plants and grasses. By all accounts, there will be more pollen this year than ever before.
Most trees release their pollen in the early spring, while grasses do so in late spring and early summer. Ragweed makes its pollen in the late summer and early fall.
And pollen production is only part of the impact that global warming is going to have on allergies and asthma — and our health overall.
In areas of the country experiencing prolonged heat and drought, dust will worsen air pollution, exacerbating asthma and other respiratory diseases. In other regions, climate change will affect the insect population — their stings and bites can provoke fatal allergic reactions in sensitive individuals — as well as the proliferation of such vines as poison ivy. Poison ivy thrives with increased carbon dioxide, and as a result, now makes a far more potent urushiol — the oil that causes poison-ivy-triggered rashes — than in the past.
Climate Wake-Up Call Reaches Dominion Shareholders!
Today I attended my third Dominion Resources annual shareholder meeting, the company’s 104th. And woah! What a day! The company, which provides 2/3 of Virginia’s electricity, announced the results of voting on a resolution addressing the financial risks of climate change, which I worked with a shareholder to introduce. It received an unprecedented 22% of the shareholder vote! While that may not sound like much, in the shareholder activism world, anything over 10% is extraordinary. Resolutions are typically introduced not with passage as the goal but with the intention to educate board members and shareholders.
Outside of the meeting, which was held at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, about 20 activists volunteering with CCAN, Sierra Club and Appalachian Voices held their own “exhibit” of altered artwork to represent the unrecognizable future of rising seas, extreme weather disasters and destroyed mountains that Dominion is leading Virginia toward. The “masterpieces” included a Starry Night marred by mountaintop removal mining, The Birth of Venus submerged by rising seas — a reality all too close to home for residents of Hampton Roads — and Napoleon, with CEO Tom Farrell moonlighting as the emperor of climate pollution.
Dominion is Virginia’s biggest climate polluter and a major purchaser of coal from mountaintop removal mining. On the other hand, the company has yet to bring a single kilowatt of utility-scale wind or solar power online for Virginia customers.
Activists got a pleasant surprise when Delegate Peter Farrell, son of Dominion CEO Tom Farrell, wandered by. The Virginia General Assembly member stopped to check out the action, and listened as one of his constituents explained we were there to call attention to Dominion’s climate pollution and the impacts of the company’s fossil fuel-fired energy. Then he asked to take a picture of our artwork featuring his CEO father!
Back inside the meeting, I presented the resolution (item 8 on the 2013 proxy) calling on leadership to report on risks posed to shareholders by climate change, especially extreme weather. The proposal noted that the three most costly extreme weather events in Dominion’s 104-year history– Hurricane Isabel, Hurricane Irene, and last year’s derecho– have all come within the last decade. In presenting the resolution to the shareholders at the meeting, I talked about residents of coastal Norfolk whose houses have flooded repeatedly due to sea-level rise and increasing storm activity. I pointed out that these folks who live in ground zero of the climate crisis are examining the risks posed by climate change and deciding what to do. Some are literally raising their houses up on platforms to avoid the water, some are moving inland and some are buying solar panels to lower their contribution to the crisis. Clearly 22% of Dominion shareholders agree with me that the company needs to take a cue from Norfolk residents and examine what’s coming and decide where to go.
Other proposals received solid support. A proposal to link executive compensation to sustainability metrics received 7%, one related to mountaintop removal coal mining received 6% and one related to nuclear power safety received 4%. In recent memory, the highest vote percentage received by a shareholder resolution that the Dominion board urged shareholders to reject — in other words, all of the environmentally focused resolutions — was 16%. That was received by a 2011 proposal related to the community impacts of power plant retirements.
VA students and parents deliver Earth Day message to Dominion: Take meaningful climate action for our future!
Today, Virginia students and parents sent an Earth Day message to Dominion Power: It’s time to move beyond token green efforts and start taking meaningful climate action for the sake of our future. They delivered nearly a thousand petition signatures collected this month, photos and artwork created by children to Dominion’s Richmond office and called on the company to invest in energy efficiency, wind and solar power instead of a huge new natural gas-fired power plant.
Dominion to go carbon neutral by planting trees!…April Fools
Dominion Power made a startling announcement this morning. In honor of Earth Month 2013, the company will plant enough trees to go carbon neutral through its program, “Project Plant It!” This is a major breakthrough for climate action in Virginia. Until today, the utility had no plans to change course. To have the commonwealth’s top emitter of climate-disrupting pollution plant 4 billion trees is simply astounding.