Tag Archives: fossil fuels

Sierra Club opposes new natural gas electric generating units: good news against Sabal Trail

The excuse for Spectra’s Sabal Trail pipeline is new natural gas electric generating units in Florida. FPL calls this “modernizing“, which is an odd word for using 20th century fossil fuels when 21st century solar power, conservation, and efficiency is ready right now for the Sunshine State. Adding to their opposition to LNG export, the Sierra Club Board of Directors has adopted this new policy:

“Natural Gas: The Sierra Club opposes new electric generating units powered by natural gas, including peaking and combined cycle units. Consistent with the Board’s goal of eliminating all fossil fuels from the electric sector no later than 2030, it is critical that the US avoid further high-capital investments in new natural gas plants and related infrastructure.”

This is in Sierra Club’s Continue reading Sierra Club opposes new natural gas electric generating units: good news against Sabal Trail

Three-week fast in front of FERC by BXE 9-25 September 2015

Many its members have already gotten flattened by the FERC rubberstamp process. They’ve been protesting outside and inside FERC meetings. They’ve gotten arrested and a judge acquitted one of them because FERC violated the First Amendment. Now Beyond Extreme Energy is escalating to a water-only fast outside FERC until Pope Francis arrives.

The pope who in his June encylical Laudato Si wrote that Continue reading Three-week fast in front of FERC by BXE 9-25 September 2015

Stop permitting fossil fuels; move to solar and wind –health professionals to FERC

No new pipelines, fracking, or LNG export. Solar, wind, and water power now, say health professionals from all over the U.S.

JLStewCT, BXE, 1 September 2015, More Than 80 Health Professionals Demand Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Stop Unethical Experiment

Washington, DC — In an open letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), more than eighty health professionals urge the FERC to stop permitting oil and gas infrastructure and to move to clean sustainable sources of energy to protect the health of people and the planet. The construction of oil and gas projects such as unconventional fracking, pipelines, compressor stations and export terminals which pollute with cancer and disease-causing chemicals is akin to an uncontrolled health experiment that is destroying communities and risking lives of residents. These projects also harm the workers who build and maintain them. For the health of all who are involved, health professionals demand that this unethical ‘experiment’ stop.

All that and pipelines risk the Floridan Aquifer which is the source of our drinking water in Florida and south Georgia.

The FERC is Continue reading Stop permitting fossil fuels; move to solar and wind –health professionals to FERC

Who funds FERC?

If you guessed the taxpayers, as I did, nope. On FERC’s own About FERC web page:

The Commission is funded through costs recovered by the fees and annual charges from the industries it regulates.

To make it even richer, the sentence before that reads:

There is no review of FERC decisions by the President or Congress, maintaining FERC’s independence as a regulatory agency, and providing for fair and unbiased decisions.

But FERC’s web page says nothing about FERC’s independence from the industries it regulates.

Here’s Investopedia’s definition of regulatory capture:

Regulatory capture happens when a regulatory agency, formed to act in the public’s interest, eventually acts in ways that benefit the industry it is supposed to be regulating, rather than the public.

Maybe that’s why Continue reading Who funds FERC?