Opportunities for Environmental Action

From Pennsylvania Interfaith Power and Light (http://www.paipl.org):

In this note you will find highlights from the March 2017 PA IPL climate policy briefing call, beginning with opportunities for action and witness.  These monthly calls are intended to build our knowledge base so that we can more quickly understand emerging issues and questions.  The next call will be held on April 27th 12:30-1:30.  New people may sign up by contacting Cricket Hunter.

In this update:
– take action
– federal policy updates
– Pennsylvania policy updates
– upcoming events
– closing meditation

TAKE ACTION

Federal action opportunities

• The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) reviews and issues permits for energy pipeline and export terminal projects that cross state lines.  In 30 years, the FERC commissioners have rejected only one project.
• Right now, FERC has only 2 of 5 commissioners, below the required minimum of 3.  Until a new FERC commissioner is approved by the Senate, the agency cannot issue the certificates needed to approve gas pipelines, compressors, or LNG export terminals.
• Join the Delaware Riverkeeper in asking our Senators and the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to hold hearings to review FERC’s priorities before reviewing another candidate. Designated call in days are April 5th and 6th, but calls are good even if you miss those dates.

Note: PA Public Utility Commissioner Powelson is currently the chair of National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, and is one candidate for FERC nomination.

State action opportunities

• Urge your elected officials (and their staff members) to attend a Lunch and Learn: Creating a Sustainable Energy Future in Pennsylvania sponsored by a number of faith partners.  Get a call script.
• Sign up to be part of the statewide PA Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) hearings on environmental justice taking part around the state in April and May.  Attend hearings.  Help people with stories get to the hearings.  Invite journalists and lawmakers to the hearings.   These hearings are the result of official letters following the revelation that Range Resources avoids big houses to avoid lawsuits and regulatory hassles.

FEDERAL UPDATE SUMMARY

Some bright spots:

• James Mattis, Secretary of Defense is unequivocal about climate change as a threat multiplier.
• The President’s America First Energy Plan ends with two paragraphs about responsible stewardship, and protecting our air, our water, and our health, providing common ground for important conversations about climate action.
• Seventeen Republican members of the House (including Congressmen Costello, Meehan, and Fitzpatrick from PA) have already signed on to cosponsor H.Res.195, recognizing climate change as real and calling for “conservative environmental stewardship” and “meaningful and responsible action now.”  More here.
• The inventory of US Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks 1990-2015 was published in February 2017, comments closed in March 2017.  Results show climate pollution as falling, but recognizes vast uncertainties in the amount of methane (gas that traps many times more heat than carbon dioxide) leaking from oil and gas wells. Climate Central notes that scientists who reviewed the report “said no political influence was immediately apparent in the report.”
• The White House’s “skinny budget” proposal includes drastic cuts that would likely affect programs at the EPA, the Department of Energy, the Department of State and US AID, the Department of the Interior, and the Department of Agriculture that would limit climate pollution.  The EPA would be cut by 31%, and Green Climate Fund contributions eliminated, falling 2/3 short of the United States’ commitment.  The proposed budget is getting push back from all sides.
• The President directed the EPA to not conduct a midterm review of tailpipe emission standards for cars and light trucks.   Currently, the EPA, the federal Department of Transportation, and the State of California all make relevant rules, and the current set of rules are the result of work done together and agreed upon by all three of these, plus vehicle manufacturers.  They are important because the transportation sector is responsible for 1/3 of climate-changing emissions.  Really helpful article here.   Standard-eroding changes will not take effect quickly.
• An Executive Order that instructs the directors of agencies to reorganize the Executive Branch, including by eliminating agencies deemed redundant also instructs the directors of those agencies to invite suggestions by the public, and consider those suggestions when developing their proposed plans.

STATE UPDATE SUMMARY

• The deadline for comment on proposed oil and gas permitting regulations has been extended (regulations would limit methane emissions from new or modified fracking operations). Proposed regulations GP-5 and GP-5A.  See a call for comments in the Oil & Gas Journal (written before the date extension).  Submit a comment based on your experience and moral and faith grounding.
• Energy efficiency measures in Act 129, the act that included deregulation of our PA electricity markets were designed to reduce and even the load on the electricity grid.  A bill that would have allowed large commercial electricity users to opt out of certain provisions was introduced in 2016, but was not taken up.  We anticipate hearings held by Senator Tomlinson of the Consumer Protection Committee this spring.  Fact sheet on the benefits of Act 129 by the Keystone Energy Efficiency Association.
• The Pennsylvania Utility Commission (PUC) approved a motion to initiate a study regarding affordable home energy burdens for low-income Pennsylvanians.  It will serve as a starting point for evaluation of the effectiveness of CAP and other Universial Service programs by the Commission.  These programs are intended to help low-income consumers maintain essential energy services.  Predictability is another important component of the load on low-income households.  Energy efficiency opportunities and electricity not tied to volatile fossil fuel markets could help even costs over time and should be included in any redesign of the programs.
• Representative Greg Rothman has introduced HB911, a bill modeled on the (federal) Congressional Review Act of 1996, currently being used in Washington to roll back climate action progress such as the Interior Department’s Stream Protection Rule which prevented waste from coal mining from ending up in local waterways.
• There is a growing conversation around aging nuclear power plants in PA, and what would happen if they retired on schedule.  Exelon owns 2 of the 3 plants, and is looking for subsidies based on projected “economic distress” and has hired lobbying firms.
• We continue to monitor the commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy bill.  If it passes, as anticipated, we will urge any municipalities or counties that take it up to include only truly clean “Tier I” technologies, and not the “Tier II” cocktail which includes some high-emitting technologies like waste coal, and some that would likely lead to increased fossil fuel infrastructure.  (PA IPL board resolution calling for no new fossil fuel infrastructure.)

UPCOMING EVENTS

• April 17-23 Faith Climate Action Week.  Resources available.
• April 18 and 19 Symposium: The Just Transition Conference: Communicating Power in an Age of Climactic Change  at Villanova University includes events that are free and open to the public.
• April 29 People’s Climate Movement march in Washington, DC and sister events around the state.  There is a faith contingent with its own organizing pages.  More here.

CLOSING MEDITATION

In honor Naw Ruz, the Baha’i New Year

I wish this blessing to appear and become manifest in the faces and characteristics of the believers, so that they, too, may become a new people, and having found new life an been baptized with fire and spirit may make the world a new world, to the end that the old earth may disappear and the new earth appear; old ideas depart and new thoughts come; old garments be cast aside and new garments put on; ancient politics whose foundation is war be discarded and modern politics founded on peace raise the standard of victory; the new star shine and gleam and the new sun illumine and radiate; new flowers bloom, the new spring become known; the new breeze blow; the new bounty descend; the new tree give forth new fruit; the new voice become raised and this new sound reach the ears, that the new will follow the new, and all the old furnishings and adornments be cast aside and new decorations put in their places.

—Abdu’l-Baha, Tablets of Abdu’l-Baha v1, p. 38

And in honor of the vernal equinox

Mother and father of all growing things
Unto my being your golden love bring
Bless this seed to fulfill its design
Of leaf and fruit, of blossom and vine.

—Spring Fertility Chant, by Jennifer Reif