Serious climate issues are often shrouded in complicated and arcane scientific and political language.  This makes it easy for corporate polluters to disguise their agenda and intentions when talking about climate and energy policy.  Below is a letter polluters sent to decision-makers this week urging them to increase the number of international offsets in climate legislation.  I’ve taken the liberty of translating it for you.  Read on to see what they’re really saying.

Also note the list of companies signing the letter.  Among them are many huge polluters such as Duke Energy, Dominion, Exelon and American Electric Power – the company that was a focus in the recent Greenpeace Carbon Scam report.

But also on the list is Intel, a company that strives to associate its brand with innovation and the future.  Why are they associating themselves with some of the biggest, most backwards polluters in the country?  Good question.  You can read more about how Intel stacks up against other tech companies on our Cool IT Challenge campaign site.

Anyway, read on…

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Re: The Importance of International Offsets for U.S. Climate Change Mitigation Efforts

Dear Senator Kerry, Senator Graham, and Senator Lieberman:

We, the undersigned, are companies that employ hundreds of thousands of American workers, and serve hundreds of millions of American consumers. We expect that our companies would be affected significantly by any greenhouse gas regulatory program. We write today to communicate our firm belief that in order for any such program to be both environmentally effective and economically sound it should be market-based and incorporate both domestic and international offsets. To this end, we are concerned about the further restrictions on use of international offset credits in S. 1733, reported last week by the Environment and Public Works Committee.

TRANSLATION: We are some of the biggest, richest polluters in the world and we have a lot invested in dirty business.  If you pass climate legislation without huge loopholes for us, we’re going to be very upset.  One of the most important loopholes we want are carbon offsets – cheap vouchers that allow us to side-step cutting our pollution with the rationale that someone else, somewhere else, will cut pollution instead.  Sure, the legislation in Congress already has massive subsidies for us and billions of tons of offsets in it, but we are still not happy.  We always want more.

The cost containment provided by international offsets is dramatic and critical. Every major study of greenhouse gas regulation has reached this conclusion. The Environmental Protection Agency’s analysis of the Waxman-Markey bill found that the costs of the cap-and-trade program would increase by 89% without international offsets. By cutting the costs of a cap-and-trade program almost in half, international offsets preserve U.S. jobs and U.S. competitiveness.

TRANSLATION: Outsourcing jobs saves us a lot of money.  Likewise, we want to outsource investments in green jobs and cleaner skies we would otherwise have to make to cut our own pollution.  It’s just so much cheaper for us to do it overseas.  If we have to do it here in the U.S., it will cut into our giant profits too much.  For example, the last American Electric Power quarterly profits rose 18% over last year to $443 million due to “higher rates charged its utility customers” despite lower demand for electricity.  We don’t need investments in green jobs and cleaner skies eating into that.  We want to keep our pockets well lined, thank you very much.

Until low-carbon technologies are widely available, U.S. companies need to have the ability to pay for low-cost, readily-available reductions wherever they may be found, which includes other countries. Put another way, allowing U.S. companies to invest in at least some reductions abroad, makes it possible to continue production here, allowing for a gradual transition of the U.S. economy to a low-carbon future. At the same time, international offsets give U.S. companies new export markets for low-carbon technologies made in this country.

TRANSLATION: We already have the technologies needed to dramatically reduce climate pollution, but we don’t want to pay for them.  We’d rather pretend that some miracle technology like “carbon capture and sequestration” will magically become effective and affordable in the future…and that we can’t take real action to clean up our acts until then.  Allowing U.S. polluters to buy their way out with cheap international offsets will allow us to slash investments in green jobs in the U.S. and continue to pollute American skies.  We want to avoid climate action as long as possible, so we can pass the buck to future generations of Americans.

International offset policies also offer an opportunity to address the serious problem of tropical deforestation, which causes 20 percent of carbon dioxide emissions annually and threatens the survival of more than half of the world’s plant, insect, and animal species. International offsets therefore offer a win-win situation; they make it possible for the U.S. to address critical global environmental issues, while saving jobs here.

TRANSLATION: By taking credit for “avoided deforestation” projects, we can really side-step American green job/clean tech investments.  That’s because avoided deforestation offsets would be among the cheapest and most abundant in the world.  Why build windmills and invest green jobs in the American Heartland if we could – for much less – pay to keep trees standing in, say, Bolivia?  It’s super cheap, we get to keep polluting, and we’ll have money left over to run TV commercials showing pretty rainforest animals we’ll claim to be saving.  This is the ultimate greenwash, and if you’re lucky Senators, we’ll let you in on it.

It is important that any international offsets are as environmentally rigorous as domestic offsets, which means that offsets from other countries should be subject to review by the relevant agencies. International offset credits subject to such review should not be subject to any arbitrary discounts or other barriers, which can only diminish their cost containment potential.

TRANSLATION: For years, evidence has mounted showing offsets often don’t deliver what they’re supposed to.  So, we have to pretend to be really concerned about the quality of offsets.  But, what we really want is universal green stamp of approval that will make people believe our offsets are 100% reliable so we can trade them in carbon markets and make buckets of money.  Don’t set up standards that are too tough -- just tough (and confusing) enough for people to believe in them.  Carbon markets could be worth trillions of dollars in coming years!  We want our carbon cake and want to trade it too!

Finally, we believe that well-designed international offset policies can play a vital role in encouraging other countries to adopt appropriate limits on their emissions, which will further limit the competitiveness impacts of climate legislation on the U.S. economy. International offsets are a necessary component of our diplomatic efforts.

TRANSLATION: Polluters in developing countries don’t want to change their ways either.  By counting offsets as a replacement for real U.S. pollution cuts AND counting them as cuts in developing countries, we really game the system.  It’s called “double-counting.”  Nothing like a little creative accounting to confuse the situation and make it look like we’re doing more than we are to address global warming.  And, if anyone asks you, just tell them you’re doing this to “protect American competitiveness.”  That always works.

For these reasons, we strongly urge you, as you consider cap-and-trade legislation, to ensure that the program protects the vital cost-containment role of international offsets, and avoids any arbitrary barriers to the use of such credits.

TRANSLATION: We’re watching you.  And the 2010 elections are right around the corner.  We’re making our campaign contribution list right now.  Don’t mess this one up for us, or there will be hell to pay!

Sincerely,

Alpha Natural Resources, American Electric Power, DTE Energy, Dominion, The Dow Chemical Company, Duke Energy, DuPont, El Paso Corporation, Exelon, Southern Company, FPL Group, Intel, International Paper Company, NRG Energy, National Grid, PG&E Corporation, PNM Resources, Rio Tinto

One year ago President Obama was elected and my hopes for a clean energy future soared.  However, just two weeks ago, that hope began to be blown away in West Virginia when Massey Energy began dynamiting Coal River Mountain—the site of a proposed 328-megawatt wind farm—to prepare for a massive mountaintop removal coal mining operation.

 

But today, organizations from across the country are coming together to demand that President Obama’s Administration be a leader for both clean energy and communities and stop the blasting on Coal River Mountain. In fact, it’s the biggest online action to stop mountain top removal coal mining in history.

Can you take a moment right now to tell the Obama Administration to not blast away our clean energy future?

Here’s what’s at stake:

-The homes, healthy air, streams and ecosystems of the local residents of Coal River Mountain.

-A Coal River Mountain wind farm that would provide 85,000 households with electricity, 700 long-term green jobs, give back $1.7 million in annual county taxes and stand as a model for clean energy across the region.

-The health of the climate as when burning the coal pumps tons upon tons of carbon into the atmosphere of an already dangerously warming planet.

The EPA has the power to either protect the climate and the communities of Coal River Mountain, or it can allow the creation of a 6,000-acre dirty energy wasteland.

You can make a difference today by taking one minute right now to tell the Obama Administration to support clean energy and save Coal River Mountain.

With your help, we can make the clean energy revolution a reality. As my colleague from Rainforest Action Network, Scott Parkin, says

“Coal River Mountain must become our line in the sand. We can no longer allow fossil fuel interests to build more pipelines, belch out more pollution, and destroy more mountains that could become clean energy wind farms. If we can stop the blasting on Coal River Mountain we can stop talking about a clean energy future and start living in a clean energy present.”

 

This week, Planet Green's Focus Earth program airs an episode on greenwash. In the episode Bob Woodruff interviews environmental and corporate watchdog expert Kenny Bruno, author of Greenwash and Corporate Environmentalism, and myself from Greenpeace, to answer the question: are corporate green efforts for show only, or can they actually make amends for decades of un-sustainable, even downright harmful, business choices? Woodfuff also gets up close with leaders from Royal Dutch Shell, Ford Motor Company and Duke Energy to examine their environmental statements and actions. 

Watch clips from the show and find airtimes here.

Mr Peabody Coal and Mr. Massey Ferguson were walking down a winding country road in the Mountains of Appalachia. The kind of road John Denver sang about in "Country Road, Take Me Home." They were talking about which of the surrounding mountaintops they would remove next, when one of them kicked at what looked like a can in the tall lush grass of the roadside. It was heavier than he thought it would be and hurt his toe a little bit and scuffed his Gucci boot.

They both bent over and discovered it was an antique lantern with a spout. Mr. Peabody rubbed at the surface to see if there was a logo or anything to identify it when a genie appeared out of it in a puff of smoke. They were astonished to see such a thing in the middle of a forest in the middle of the day, but before they could recover enough to accuse the genie of trespass on their land, which was everything as far as the eye could see and a bird can fly, the genie offered to grant them three wishes.

They could hardly believe their luck. First they asked for CCS technology, the here-to-for holy grail of the industry. The genie promised that all the CO2 from now on would disappear underground. Rubbing their hands with glee, the coaligarchs carefully considered their second wish, after some minutes in animated conference they turned to the genie and asked that the trillions of acres of toxic fly ash accumulating around their coal power plants could disappear removing the threat of devastating flooding from thousands of miles of watersheds.

The genie nodded his head with some gravity and assented to their wish that this threat to water and land vanish immediately and poof, the ponds were gone. The two megabillionaires thumped each other on the back and lit big cigars in celebration. They thought long and hard and threw out ideas about they could ask for next, maybe get the means to turn coal into gasoline, or to burn in streetlights or right in the engines of automobiles, but then they both focused on what was most on their minds, what they had spent so many millions to advertise and together they turned to the genie and asked them with one voice,  "make coal clean."

The genie looked at them intently for many minutes with a look that shook the exuberance off their bravado and slowly he shook his head. As he did so they were effortlessly transported into the future they had planned for this very part of the lush eastern forest. Their eyes stung in the heat and the dust as giant excavators devastated the dense old growth forest and ripped into the ancient stone of the million year old landscape. Around them the cries of millions of creatures obliterated in the waste of the mountainsides and spoil of the mining operation filling the lush dark valley below. After the quick glimpse of the change from life sustaining forest to toxic desert the genie said "alas, you have wasted your last wish, for not even magic can produce such a thing as "clean coal."

Coal is dirty. There is no getting around it. The hype in recent years around "clean coal" amounts to little more than a greenwash campaign from an industry responsible for climate change, mercury poisoning, asthma and a number of other health and environmental effects.

This month, I am embarking on a trek to document the damage caused by this dirty energy source. I will be taking you along on my journey so that you can see for yourself how coal is harming people and the planet.

My trip will take me to Australia, China, Indonesia and Thailand. The cost of coal in these countries was revealed last year with the release of Greenpeace's report, True Cost of Coal. My visits are intended as a follow up to that report as I will be visiting the very same areas to see how the struggle against coal continues.

So stay tuned! You'll hear more from me in a minute.

The American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), a draft bill released by Henry Waxman and Ed Markey that is currently being debated in the House Energy and Environment Subcommittee (full text here as PDF), is not perfect. But as a comprehensive piece of climate and energy legislation, it is a cause for some hope. The bill would set science-based emissions reduction targets, ramp up renewable energy standards, and provide money to stop international deforestation, to name a few of its highlights.

However, the bill's shortcomings include some two billion tons of pollution offsets, enough that we wouldn’t have to reduce our consumption of fossil fuels whatsoever in order to meet the emissions reductions the bill calls for. And there are billions of dollars included for the coal industry, purveyors of the dirtiest fossil fuel around, whose only “green” cred is so-called Carbon Capture and Sequestration — a totally unproven technology that is really just a false hope and a dangerous distraction.

Read our full analysis of the bill here.

Of course, the fossil fuels industries are fighting tooth and nail to get even more handouts and to weaken emissions targets as much as possible so that they can coninue business as usual. Not surprisingly, they’ve got some members of Congress nervous. President Obama has made global warming a signature cause, and is reportedly headed down to Congress tomorrow to try and move things along:

President Obama puts his political chips on the line tomorrow when he meets with House Democrats wrestling with legislation to overhaul U.S. energy and global warming policy.

The bill is stuck in subcommittee because of concerns from about a dozen Democrats with strong ties to the coal and gas-and-oil industries, and many predict a push from the popular new president may shove the measure along in the legislative process.

This entire NYT piece, "Risks, rewards abound as Obama enters House climate debate," is well worth the read, as it examines the many political considerations at play in this debate.

Obama’s involvement is a good sign, but it doesn’t necessarily mean a stronger ACES is a sure thing. The only thing that will guarantee Congress does the right thing for the planet rather than for their large donors in the fossil fuels industries is you and me. We have to hold our elected representatives accountable. If you want to help, tell your Rep right now why you’re part of the movement to stop global warming.

We’ve gotten a lot of inspiring stories submitted so far. Who knows, maybe your story could be the one that inspires a member of the House Energy and Environment Subcommittee to do the right thing and support a really strong bill that will kickstart the energy revolution and stop global warming.

Over 300 activists assembled today to participate in an act of civil disobedience in Charlotte, North Carolina to protest the massive new coal-burning power plant Duke Energy is building at Cliffside. It was the latest and biggest in a string of actions that have been carried out since the Capitol Climate Action in March, which unleashed a wave of grassroots activity aimed at stopping new coal plants from being built and ushering in a new era of clean energy in America.

After the estimated 300-400 activists rallied in front of Duke's Charlotte headquarters, 44 were eventually arrested, including Jim Warren of NC Warn; Bo Webb and Mike Roselle from Coal River Mountain in Appalachia; Larry Gibson and Mike McCoy-from Kentuckians for the Commonwealth; and several Rutherford County residents who live near the site where construction of the Cliffside plant is already underway. They are likely to be charged with second-degree trespass.

Duke Energy made an especially good target because the company’s CEO, Jim Rogers, likes to tout his company’s commitment to addressing global warming even while the company is building a coal-fired plant that will keep North Carolina hooked on coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel around, for the next 50 years.

But climate change-causing greenhouse gas emissions aren’t even the only reason why we need to transition off of dirty fossil fuels like coal and onto clean energy sources like wind and solar. The coal mining practice known as mountaintop removal, for instance, is incredibly destructive, capable of completely destroying whole eco-systems; mining in general is dangerous for miners and their families; and the burning of coal has several serious impacts on public health.

And of course let’s not forget the little problem of storing all the highly-toxic coal ash that is left over.

There’s also the fact that investing in renewables instead of coal would create more jobs and help revitalize our ailing economy. Read more about today’s action and the environmental, health, and economic costs of coal here.

The demonstration in Charlotte, NC was organized by a coalition of over a dozen environmental, faith-based, and social justice groups, all of whom are calling on Duke Energy and the state of North Carolina to cancel construction of the Cliffside coal power plant. The plant is predicted to cost $2.4 billion and emit an estimated six million tons of carbon dioxide every year for the next 50 years. Similar protests have happened at coal plants in West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, and other states. Several more are planned for this summer. You can view more pictures here.

The Capitol Climate Action was the catalyst for this new wave of climate activism. We can’t sit around and wait for solutions, we have to go out and make them a reality. And we simply can’t stand for decisionmakers like Jim Rogers delaying action while greenwashing their own activities.

Greenpeace’s field organizer in North Carolina, John Deans, put it best: “It’s absolutely hypocritical for Rogers to talk about sustainability and responsibility when Cliffside locks in dangerous climate pollution for another 50 years. If they really want to protect the planet and create jobs, they’d invest in wind and solar power instead of more polluting energy.”

Dr. James Hansen is an internationally-recognized climate scientist, one of the world's preeminent experts on global warming. In the video below, Dr. Hansen calls for Americans to take part in the Capitol Climate Action on March 2nd at the Capitol Power Plant in Washington DC. This plant is providing dirty energy to Congress, which is why it's the target of what's expected to be the largest display of civil disobedience against global warming in US history.

Dr. Hansen warns that unless we stop burning coal, the country's largest source of global warming pollution, young people will inherit a dramatically different world than the one we know and love today. For more info on the action, visit www.CapitolClimateAction.org. For more info on dirty coal, go here.

Investigations Brief

The America's Power campaign, funded by the coal and electricity industry, promotes coal as our country's solution to energy independence. They do this through the lens of clean coal, when in reality they are simply a front group for an industry lobby aimed to keep dirty coal plants in existence.

The Campaign

Background

American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) is a not-for-profit organization (NGO) founded as a result of the merge between Americans for Balanced Energy Choices and Center for Energy and Economic Development (CEED) [1]. Its stated mission is "to advance the development and deployment of advanced clean coal technologies that will produce electricity with near-zero emissions." [2]

Campaign Details

ACCCE's mission is to convey to consumers and elected officials that coal should play a central role in meeting future American energy needs. As it notes on its website, "America can continue to make great progress in improving environmental quality while at the same time enjoying the benefits of using domestic energy resources like coal to meet our growing demand for affordable, reliable and clean energy. In a word...we believe in technology." [3] As part of this effort, ACCCE has sought to re-brand coal as a "clean" energy source. Its messaging reminds viewers that "half of our electricity comes from coal" and that "coal is our most abundant fuel." [4]

Ad Bluster

To do this, ACCCE is spending at least $35 million in 2008 to mount a major public relations campaign designed to promote public awareness of clean coal in the context of the Presidential race. They are doing this by flooding the election season with national and local ad campaigns.

ACCCE's campaign is built around an "American Energy" theme, arguing that "clean" coal-fired power plants are the only viable path to American energy independence. They have run print ads in key primary states to remind prospective voters of their state's reliance on coal and tout the benefits of clean coal in terms of both jobs and affordable power. To date, the local ads have run in Iowa, Nevada, South Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania [5]. In addition to a traditional media campaign, ACCCE utilizes a ground force of 150,000 supporters, who they call the "civilian army" and their "Power Van" as a guerilla force to bird-dog political rallies and events across the country festooned with clean coal slogans and a blue sky backdrop [6].

Along with their print ad campaign, ACCCE paid CNN $5 million to be one of the main co-sponsors of six presidential debates, providing saturation advertising both on television and online. Some blogs have noted the irony that during these debates, no questions have been asked about climate and specifically about coal.

Outcome

In 2007 alone, 59 proposed coal plants were cancelled or put on hold and in January DOE pulled the plug on the FutureGen project planned for Illinois that would be the first "near-zero emissions" facility utilizing cap and storage technology because the project was resulting in higher than expected costs. And to top things off, in October 2007, Kansas became the first state to reject issuing a permit for a new coal-fired plan solely because of its potential to contribute to global warming. But the coal industry isn't giving up, in fact ACCCE has increased its budget from approximately $8 million to $35 million for 2008 [7]. Other industry partners such as the National Mining Association have also increased their lobbying significantly in 2008 [8]. The intention is clear, the coal industry is determined to maintain America's over reliance on coal as a domestic energy source in spite of the need to diversify energy production to address global warming and minimize any impacts to the coal industry within the energy debate.

Greenwash Revealed

ACCCE is a wholly owned (albeit non-profit) subsidiary of the U.S. coal industry. Its list of 43 supporters reads like a who's who of the coal, rail, and electricity industries: ALCOA, American Electric Power, CSX, Detroit Edison, Duke Energy, Peabody Energy, Southern Company and Union Pacific Railroad. Its real purpose, contrary to its claims, is not to promote coal as a source for clean or green energy, but merely to ensure that the United States continues to be highly dependent on coal for its energy needs.

It's the Law, Stupid

Not surprisingly, ACCCE's promotion of clean coal plays with the facts. Although ACCCE claims that its "coal-based generating fleet is 70 percent cleaner than before," these numbers refer only to reductions in sulfur oxide (SOX) and nitrogen oxide (NOX) emissions [9]. The coal industry has yet to implement technology to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, the main cause of global warming. ACCCE also fails to state anywhere in its campaign or on its website that coal plants are cleaner today not because of the industry's voluntary efforts, but rather as a result of legislative mandates or court decisions [10].

Perhaps the most misleading component of ACCCE's campaign is its implication that new and better CCS technologies capable of creating "near-zero emissions" are right around the corner. In reality, some scientists feel that the earliest CCS technology could be implemented is 2030 and would cost billions [11]. This is illustrated by the DOE's decision to pull out of FutureGen when the project began to exceed projected costs.

Political Spin

While the public mission of the group is to promote clean coal, a closer look at the group reveals otherwise. Newly formed in 2008, ACCCE is the latest version of the long lineage of coal front groups. If you look at the federal tax records for ACCCE's parent organization, Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (ABEC), you will find the true nature of their work. In their 2006 tax records, ABEC claims that they promote "an increased awareness of improvements in U.S. air quality and the coal-based electricity sector's role in America's ongoing environmental progress as well as the mobilization of a citizen army on issues involving various state regulatory and legislative actions including decisions on implementation of EPA's Clean Air Mercury rule and actions to regulate utility greenhouse gas emissions." [12]

At the same time that ACCCE was telling the public that it was dedicated to clean technology, it was spending over $2.6 million lobbying Congress. According to lobbying records, it "opposed the national renewal portfolio" in the Comprehensive Energy Bill (HR 6) and contested the America's Climate Security Act (better known as the Lieberman-Warner bill) when it came before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee [13].

Dirty Business

While, ACCCE promotes the benefits of coal to local communities, they neglect to speak to the reality of the environmental damage caused by its extraction and use. They fail to mention the impacts of air pollutants and mercury contamination produced in the burning of coal, which are known to cause cancer, impair reproduction, inhibit child development, damage the nervous and immune systems, and worsen respiratory ailments like asthma. They never mention the environmental impact of coal mining, which includes erosion, groundwater contamination, habitat destruction, and toxic waste. Environmental and economic costs incurred in waste disposal and land reclamation and transportation are also omitted from the dialog [14].

Perhaps most relevant to its current campaign, ACCCE proudly admits that 50 percent of our electricity comes from coal, yet they neglect to admit its contribution to climate change. The EPA documented that in 2006 electricity generation "is the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, representing 33 percent of total US emissions [15]. In reality, there is nothing "clean" about the coal electicity it promotes.

[1] America's Power
[2] America's Power
[3] America's Power
[4] America's Power
[5] America's Power
[6] America's Power
[7] 2006 IRS form 990, Americans For Balanced Energy Choices Greenpeace Investigations
[8] The Washington Post
[9] America's Power
[10] Keating, Martha. Cradle to Grave: The Environmental Impacts from Coal. June 2001 Clean Air Task Force
[11] New Scientist, "Can coal live up to its clean promise?" March 27, 2008
[12] 2006 IRS form 990, Americans for Balanced Energy Choices Greenpeace Investigations
[13] Lobbying Report, Americans for Balanced Energy Choices, 2007, Greenpeace Investigations website
[14] Keating, passim.
[15] U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, "Inventory of U.S Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990-2006" EPA