2008 Canary Coalition Annual Report

Delivered by Avram Friedman, Executive Director

June 30, 2008

Good evening and thank you all for coming to the Canary Coalition's ninth annual membership meeting.  I'd like to thank the Firestorm Café for hosting our meeting tonight and all those who put effort into bringing our organization to this moment, including all present and past members of our Board of Directors, staff members and the hundreds of volunteers who have worked with us over the years.

The year that spanned between tonight's meeting and last June's annual membership meeting has been eventful and historic.  It can be characterized as both good or not so good from different perspectives.  Strictly from an organizational point of view, this has been a very good year for the Canary Coalition.  Our membership has increased from 1450 members at this time last year, to a remarkable 2175, as of today, making us one the largest, membership grassroots environmental organizations in the state.  Much credit for this goes to the relentless work of Mike Cherin, our canvasser, and to his wife Maggie who has compiled the membership data.  Most of you have seen Mike tabling on the streets of Asheville .  But, he also goes door to door in cities and towns across North Carolina and sometimes in other states.

Our membership has increased, also, because our message is resonating with the public and we are viewed as an effective organization in keeping air quality issues in the public eye. People are gaining confidence in our ability to challenge legislators, regulators, the news media and the industry to confront climate change, air quality, energy and transportation issues and to move toward the consideration and development of real solutions.  I believe the high profile efforts of the Canary Coalition have inspired many more people to get involved, in the regulatory process, the legislative process, in the electoral process in the thought process.

As our membership has increased, so has our financial status improved as an organization.  In the past two years we have transformed from a shoestring budget in which our lone staff member, the Executive Director, was paid part-time for full-time work.  2008 will be the first year in which I will receive a full monthly paycheck every month, and I am grateful for that. In addition, we are paying Mike Cherin for his work as well as several part-time office workers.  Our income from donations in 2007 topped $100,000 for the first time.  In fiscal year 2008 we will probably well exceed that number. Our organization is supported 100 percent by small and large individual donations. We receive no government or business-related grant money.  There are no conflicts of interest.  We are independent, becoming resilient and we scare the hell out of those who would love to co-opt us, buy us off or modify us to dilute our effort and de-rail our cause. We are a grassroots movement in the true sense, following in the footsteps of the civil rights movement, the Woman's rights movement, the Labor movement, Martin Luther King, Jr., Cesaer Chavez and Susan B. Anthony. We all have the right to breathe clean air and we are determined to assert that right.

While it has been a good year in terms of organization and movement building, it has not been a good year in North Carolina for air quality, the reversal of climate change or shifting of public energy policy and taking responsibility toward future generations.  Perhaps the most dangerous thing that can happen is for us to deceive ourselves into believing that progress has been made when no progress has actually taken place.  We can't allow ourselves to be deluded into thinking that false solutions are leading in the right direction when the opposite is in fact happening.  When Senate Bill 3 passed the NC General Assembly in August of last year, under the guise of being a significant Renewable Portfolio Standard, such a deception took place. Not only is a 12.5% RPS by the year 2021 sadly unambitious and inadequate, but this one is not veritable, nor even enforceable.  Most of the technologies included within this RPS are questionable as renewables, such as methane from hog waste lagoons, direct combustion of chicken carcasses and manure and incineration of waste wood from corporate lumber companies that use unsustainable forestry practices.  Only two-tenths of one percent of energy production is set aside for combined solar thermal and electricity by 2018. 

If left up to Senate Bill 3 there will be only a 6.5% reduction in the growth rate of energy demand by the year 2021, due to energy efficiency measures. Note this is not a 6.5% reduction in energy consumption from today's level.  It represents only a slight reduction in the rate of growth of energy consumption.  So, Senate Bill 3 does nothing to confront the real problem, which is over-consumption of energy at today's level. It is at today's level and at level's lower than today's level that created the climate and air pollution crisis.  More energy consumption, regardless of how much we slow the increase, will only accelerate the climate and pollution crisis. We have to begin reducing energy consumption substantially from today's level.  There can be no more increases.

Even deploying solar panels and windmills alone is not the answer to climate change or air pollution.  All technologies have environmental impact from manufacturing processes to road construction to siting and footprints of the projects.  True renewable energy projects are only beneficial if they replace existing sources that are much more detrimental to our health and the environment and only if they are accompanied by policies that will ultimately result in an over-all reduction in energy consumption, allowing the dismantling of existing polluting sources. Without these elements in place, building more generating capacity, even if it's renewable only adds to the existing problem.

The truth about the RPS in Senate Bill 3 is that it is a cover for the energy industry's real purpose in passing the bill. The bill was used to reverse a 25-year ban in North Carolina on the practice of charging ratepayers for construction-work-in-progress on new coal and nuclear power plants, thereby removing the risk from corporate shareholders.  This paved the way for the industry to build, risk-free, a new generation of polluting power plants, so they could sell more energy and make higher profits.

In 2007, with S3 in hand, Duke Energy proceeded with its plan to expand its coal-burning power plant at Cliffside, in Rutherford County , as they made application to build a nuclear facility near Gaffney , South Carolina .  Progress Energy made application to expand its Shearon Harris nuclear plant near Raleigh .

The North Carolina Division of Air Quality, shamefully, refused to hold more than one public hearing on the Cliffside power plant Title V permit application, despite the request for multiple hearings around the state by many organizations and individuals, including the Canary Coalition. The only hearing was held on a workday night in remote Forest City , where local officials are bought-off by Duke Energy and where there is a void of major news media coverage.  In response, the Canary Coalition organized citizen's hearings in Asheville and Raleigh , as the Carolinas Clean Air Coalition organized a citizen's hearing in Charlotte . These hearings generated public awareness and response, but not enough to impact the disproportionately industry-influenced regulatory process.  On January 31 of this year, the DAQ issued the Title V permit for Duke Energy to begin construction on Cliffside, despite the fact that the application did not meet federal standards on mercury emission controls.  In June, the DAQ would finally acknowledge this and announced it would re-open the process to public comment, but did not order Duke Energy to stop construction.

On the federal level we suffered another setback earlier this year.  A much more substantial Renewable Portfolio Standard was introduced in Congress, without some of the industry-tainted aspects of the North Carolina legislation. But, both Duke Energy and Progress Energy lobbyists played a key role in killing this measure. Likewise, the energy industry would not allow the McCain-Lieberman bill, a carbon-dioxide cap and trade proposal to pass, even as weak and inadequate as it was.

Our lack of success in overcoming the influence of the utility industry on these and other issues is due to the fact that organization of public opposition is still in its early stage.  The pubic is apparently with us in opposition to new power plants.  But that opposition hasn't been organized yet into the cohesive political force necessary to influence decision makers on the state and federal levels.  NC WARN, an ally of the Canary Coalition in Raleigh , commissioned a professional independent survey company earlier this year to conduct a scientific state-wide poll and according to the results seventy percent of the population in North Carolina are opposed to the construction of any new coal-burning power plants.

We have really transcended the public educational phase of creating public awareness on climate change and air pollution.  Now we are entering the phase of political organizing.  The question is: How can we get more people involved in the political and social activities necessary to reverse public energy policy?  We need to create a vehicle onto which members of the public can board and contribute effort.

Borrowing an old idea used by Gandhi, King, Chavez and others, the Canary Coalition, NIRS (Nuclear Information and Resource Service) and Mountain Voices Alliance, on January 20th 2008, kicked off the Sunday Boycott to stop construction on all new coal and nuclear power plants. People everywhere can take the first step toward involvement, from the safety of their own homes, by simply turning off their house lights for 15 minutes, at 9 pm, every Sunday night in solidarity with thousands of others in a growing, weekly demonstration of determination, while signaling to the utility industry that, although they may have forgotten, ultimately the rate-payers have the power to buy or not to buy their product.  Just as African Americans sacrificed by boycotting city buses, and choosing to walk miles to work and to school, in Birmingham, Alabama in the 1960's to oppose Jim Crow laws,  those opposed to Cliffside and Shearon Harris can sacrifice as well, if we choose, to fight the irresponsibility of the utility industry and its allies in government.  The Sunday Boycott began with only three organizations based in western North Carolina promoting it in January.  There are now 19 organizations promoting the boycott statewide, and it is growing.

Proponents of new coal and nuclear plants raise the question of how we will meet future energy demand if we don't build more power plants.  This is a legitimate question and there are viable answers.  The Canary Coalition has been a major proponent for the development of large-scale wind energy in North Carolina , conducting tours for public officials and community leaders to TVA's Buffalo Mountain pilot project wind farm in Tennessee . We promote solar energy, micro-hydro power, tidal and wave energy, geothermal energy, co-generation projects and a simplification of the net-metering rules to allow for the conversion to a more distributed, de-centralized power grid.  But, by far the largest and least expensive part of the answer to meeting future energy demand is to reduce future energy consumption through efficiency and conservation measures.  The best way to ensure reductions in energy demand is to provide meaningful economic incentives to electrical consumers to invest in efficiency and conservation.  In March, as the Executive Director of The Canary Coalition I intervened in the Utility Commission's process of evaluating options for utility rate-restructuring, submitting a report on existing inverted rate structures in other states, while proposing a mandatory inverted rate structure for North Carolina .  An inverted rate structure raises the price per kilowatt/hour as more energy is used on a monthly basis by electric rate-payers, thereby rewarding conservation and penalizing wastefulness.  We hope to find a sponsor in the 2009 legislative session who will introduce an appropriate rate-restructuring bill. This bill will provide another vehicle for public involvement in a meaningful direction.

The Canary Coalition will be providing another opportunity for public participation on August 23 when we will perform the fifth annual Relay for Clean Air, a 100-mile civil rights march for clean air, from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park , along the Blue Ridge Parkway , to Asheville .  There are separate segments designed for bicycle riders, runners and walkers, so people of all ages and abilities can participate. In past years, the Relay for Clean Air has received national news coverage, focusing attention on the air quality crisis in this region and in National Parks throughout the country.

In summation, in the past year, the Canary Coalition has made great strides in growing into a powerful and influential vehicle to create a social movement; but that movement has a long way to go if we intend to overcome the power and influence of the utility industry to change the direction of state and federal energy policy.  It can be done.  It has to be done if we are to fulfill our responsibility toward future generations. But, in order to succeed we have to envision ourselves as part of a vast movement on the scale of the civil rights movement of the sixties, the women's suffrage movement of the early part of the twentieth century, the labor movement at the dawn of the industrial revolution.  We can do this.  It's a matter of determination and organization.  The coming twelve months could define the year in which future generations will look back and say, "That was the turning point that saved our world."