This week’s climate insider will give you the scoop on CCAN’s 2014 legislative priorities in Maryland and Virginia. Both states’ legislative sessions kicked off on Wednesday, January 8th, and CCAN will be busy pushing climate solutions to the forefront of our legislators’ agendas.
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When signs aren’t allowed, demonstrations need permits, and your legislators aren’t hearing what you have to say, sometimes the only thing you can do is dance. And that’s what dozens of students did in Richmond today, as they stormed the State Capitol with a flash mob.
Victory! While we didn’t get everything we wanted this session on fracking, we did pass HB1123: The Presumptive Impact Areas bill.
The Virginia General Assembly session just wrapped up and your legislators have headed back to their districts. Here’s a run down on what happened in the last 46 days:
The Good
These bills had our full support and passed this session:
HB 2191 and SB 975 Patroned by Delegate Adam Ebbin and Senator Mary Margaret Whipple:
You have heard from us frequently throughout session about this legislation, which establishes a voluntary solar resource development fund. Through this fund, Virginia homeowners can apply for low-interest loans to put solar PV or solar thermal on their rooftops. This fund will help homeowners with the upfront costs associated with these installations while creating jobs in the clean energy sector in the Commonwealth. Anyone can contribute to this fund once the Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy creates it later this year.
HB 1686 Patroned by Delegate David Toscano:
This legislation will promote distributed solar generation by setting up a pilot program for utility-owned facilities. It also allows utilities to create a tariff to encourage citizens to own distributed solar generation.
HB 2389 Patroned by Delegate Albert Pollard:
The Virginia Resource Authority (VRA) provides cost-effective financing to Virginia municipalities for various projects. HB 2389 allows the VRA to add more renewable energy projects to its list of projects it can already finance for municipalities. Continue reading
Thanks to the constant updates via my Twitter feed, this week I discovered NASA’s Earth Observatory website. This website shows satellite images of the Earth — many tragic (arctic sea ice), some providing glimpses of hope (burn recovery in Yellowstone) and some simply bizarre (the growth of Dubai.) Perusing the images and attempting to interpret the changes from image to image was intriguing until the time lapse of mountaintop removal stopped me completely. I no longer marveled at the ability to capture such images, I was sickened at what we are doing to our mountains in Appalachia. I’ve seen mountaintop removal sites in person, but these images clearly show the scale and the permanence of the destruction.
According to the website:
“Below the densely forested slopes of southern West Virginia’s Appalachian Mountains is a layer cake of thin coal seams. To uncover this coal profitably, mining companies engineer large
Last Thursday, I joined hundreds of Virginians in support of SB 564, the Stream Saver Bill. The bill was introduced by state Senator Patsy Ticer and would ban dumping waste from surface mining into streams. 1,900 miles of streams in Appalachia have been buried or degraded by this practice, impacting clean water supplies for residents of southwest Virginia.
Snowbound students at George Mason University collected over 80 photo petitions in support of the bill and on the same day, 800 people rallied at the Kentucky General Assembly for “I Love Mountains Day” in support of a similar bill, according to the Kentucky Herald-Ledger.
A planned rally was cut short in order to allow supporters to get in line for the special hearing held by the Agriculture, Conservation and Natural Resources committee. Due to turnout, I sat in an overflow room. Hundreds had come to speak for and against the measure. Matt Wasson with Appalachian Voices presented on the environmental and economic destruction that mountain top removal leaves in its wake. During the 45 minutes each side had for public comments, residents of southwest Virginia spoke passionately about their concern for their family and friends’ health and for the mountains.
Many opponents to the bill spoke about their concern for job loss in the already struggling area. A legitimate concern yet coal mining employment in the United States has plummeted over the past century. Currently there are only about 4,797 coal mining jobs in the Commonwealth, 1,433 of them surface mining jobs. Coal is an important part of the economy in southwest Virginia but it’s also keeping diversified economic opportunities from investing in the area, such as tourism.
“The mountains that have been lost can never be brought back,” stated Wasson. “The streams will be polluted for a long time.”
As you saw if you tuned in to Lauren’s detailed twitter feed last night, the Virginia House of Delegates killed the Governor’s amendment to SB 1248 which would have re-instated a voluntary target for reducing Virginia’s energy use 19% by 2025 through energy efficiency measures. The vote was close: 47 in favor, 50 against. The amendment squeaked by in the Senate by a vote of 22-18.
In the other energy efficiency bill that landed on the Governor’s desk, Delegate Pollard’s bill HB2506, the General Assembly passed the Governor’s amendments which removed a bad portion of the bill giving authority to the Attorney General’s office to study energy efficiency programs implemented by the utilities and added a positive addition to require the SCC to consider energy efficiency and environmental protection when reviewing applications from small-scale industrial facilities for opting out of energy efficiency programs. The original language only looked at economic development as the sole point for opt out consideration. This bill passed the Senate 23-17 and the House 47-44.
Just to put things in perspective: Virginia currently ranks 45th in the country in percentage of utility revenues spent on efficiency – a total of just $84,000 statewide in 2006. In comparison, utilities in Alabama and Mississippi spent more than $400,000, and North Carolina energy providers spent $3.8 million.The bills passed this session do help move efficiency measures closer to being on a level playing field with new generation like coal-fired power plants. But the completely fail to set even a voluntary target, which is necessary to counter subsidies in Virginia for coal power.
It’s very unfortunate that the target was defeated but at least we now have some form of energy efficiency on the books. This gives us a foundation to work from next year to push even harder for stronger language. And the votes were close, which just goes to show that a statewide mobilization of grassroots efforts can be effective here in Virginia.
Press release here.
More detailed analysis coming soon.
Efficiency was a hot issue this past General Assembly session. The bills that passed were short of our goals, but in a midnight amendment, Governor Kaine added efficiency targets, which gives us tangible goals to work towards and sets precedent for passing a mandatory standard next session.
The General Assembly reconvenes today to vote on all the amendments put forth by the governor. Stay tuned here to get the up-to-the-tweet updates from Richmond.
People talking about the Virginia Efficiency bill on Twitter
As Virginia heads into a new General Assembly session, Virginians are readying to make their voices heard when it comes to our energy future.