We’re very honored to announce on 3/18/17 All Our Energy’s Director, George Povall, will be awarded “Environmentalist of the Year” by Long Island Sierra Club at their Member Appreciation Luncheon, in great company sharing the title with Beth Fiteni of Green Inside And Out Consulting.
Sierra Club LI group have been huge supporters of our work at All Our Energy and we hope you will attend to support George, Beth, and Sierra Club members and their great work.
And of course, how can we thank you for all you’ve done, if you’re not there!
Saturday March 18, 2017 1-4pm
Seatuck Scully Estate
550 South Bay Avenue
Islip, New York, 11751
Suggested donation: $20.00
Mail check to:
Sierra Club Long Island Group
PO Box 172,
West Sayville, NY 11796-0172
1. Join as we organize events for the final stretch before the Long Beach bag law takes effect, and assure it succeeds!
It’s not over – there is a danger if we do not complete our work and connect with every community, break down barriers to acceptance, and provide SOLUTIONS for those who need them, that it may fail. We will not allow that to happen.
2. We will also organize and guide everyone how to generate high-impact comments to the public service commission due by March 6, and help reach out to others to get many more, so LIPA, through PSEG-LI, enact policies on the 8 points of their “Utility 2.0” plan to move to a utility model that moves to renewables and works for all LI’ers.
there will be a commemorative kick off from the City of Long Beach with events to coincide, to help the public come together and make this positive change.
In today’s state of the state address at Farmingdale State University, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced some fantastic news for off shore wind power.
New York will commit to *up to* 2400 megawatts of off shore wind power by 2030, including 800 in the area off Long Beach and the Rockaway Peninsula – enough for 1.25 million homes, and LIPA will go forward with the 90 megawatt project off Montauk.
We thank Governor Cuomo for this and our work towards the largest realistic rapid deployment of climate protecting and environment-saving off shore wind will continue.
We believe it’s a solid beginning and will continue to advocate it not be too little, too late, on such a long time line that anything could derail it.
Activists have been pushing for a large-scale, megawatt-specific commitment, and they got that part. They had been pushing for development of 5,000 of the 35,000 potential megawatts off our shore by 2025, with further commitments made to achieve the amount needed for the Governor’s plan for New York to be powered by 50% renewable energy by 2030.
Seen in context of this, though a solid beginning, there’s just no way the math will work to reach this goal in those 13 long years with this smaller amount of offshore wind.
The math:
2400 MW of rated wind power capacity would equal
960 MW (40% capacity) which would produce
8,409,000 MW hours of electricity a year: New York State currently uses
137,122,000 per year. That would make off shore wind, eventually,
Can enough solar come to the rescue of that? We would have to have a 1200% increase in solar electricity production. That’s doubling what we have built so far in just the next year and continuing at that pace until 2030. It could be a compounded 30% increase every year- hard to imagine with incentives slashed, financing gone, and the easiest, most profitable sites already done.
The governor did also announce plans to fund the long sought after study on making New York State run on 100% renewable energy.
Governor Cuomo directs the Department of Environmental Conservation and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority to undertake a comprehensive study to determine the most rapid, cost-effective, and responsible pathway to reach 100 percent renewable energy statewide.
Happy for the commitment and thanks to the Governor for putting us on the path. We will take it, and it doesn’t mean we’re satisfied. We know together we can and must do more!
Right now, we are on the verge of a sea change in our energy system – for the first time, the United States is moving toward utility-scale offshore wind power. New York State is poised to be at the forefront of that change, with offshore wind lease areas in motion along both the east end and the south shore of Long Island. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is the agency that is spurring and facilitating this movement, and we are honored to have BOEM Director Abigail Hopper come and participate in a presentation and a lively discussion about what the transition to offshore wind power means for our energy future. Director Hopper will be joined by representatives of business, labor, environmental advocacy and resiliency groups, and we will discuss how offshore wind power will impact each of these areas. We hope you will join us, get your questions answered, and be a part of energy history in the making!
Thursday September 22, 2016 7pm
With Citizens’ Climate Lobby Of Queens and Nassau
Long Beach Public Library
111 West Park Ave, Long Beach, NY 11561 RSVP Here
Come for a free screening of MERCHANTS OF DOUBT: a comedic, yet illuminating ride into the heart of conjuring American spin. Filmmaker Robert Kenner exposes a secretive group of highly charismatic, silver- tongued pundits-for-hire who present themselves in the media as scientific authorities – yet have the contrary aim of spreading maximum confusion about well-studied public threats ranging from toxic chemicals to pharmaceuticals to climate change.
Join All Our Energy, Surfrider Foundation- Central Long Island Chapter, City of Long Beach, Long Beach Chamber Of Commerce, Ocean Conservancy, SunPower by EmPower Solar, and unsOund surf. Please come help us pick up and log all the marine debris we can starting at 10am then after the pick-up, please stick around to watch some amazing surfing.
Any questions about volunteering, please email volunteercoordinator@centralli.surfrider.orgD
On June 21, 2016 at Hofstra University, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management held their off shore wind presentation and open house about the New York Off Shore Wind Energy Area.
In addition to our advocacy for top environmental standards and local Jobs i gave verbal testimony :
“Much can happen between now and potentially 2023, 2024-5 before the first turbines are possible to be installed under this EA.
With our time to avert climate change running out, time is of the essence.
We need to make sure there is a federal process that fully investigates potential use while facilitating the best possible project in the shortest possible time.
If each project will have these tremendous time periods, off shore wind on the east coast would be on track to only partially be developed by 2030 and beyond. This is not fast enough.
Because of this long lead time, it could potentially be three presidencies before groundbreaking. This process needs to protect itself from regime change where a new administration could undermine the entire process.
When we look at the alternative of “No action”, from now on, it must include the difference in climate change causing, noxious, and poisonous discharges avoided by the wind farm as not providing that benefit. It’s not wind versus nothing!
We need to make sure there’s a state purchasing pipeline so there is certainty that new fossil fuels and nuclear are not needed and especially, are unwanted.
We also strongly implore this body to maintain open communication with access, accountability and concern for all. We cannot afford an argument against the process, to become an argument against off shore wind. Eg: 3pm BOEM webinar was announced at 1:40 pm. This was seen as excluding those who have concerns and couldn’t attend on 80 minutes notice.
The idea of a webinar for public engagement is fantastic. Giving people such short notice easily invites charges of unfair play and exclusion. Let’s let the issues stand or fall on their merits, and not on miscommunication and disrespect or feelings of unequal access or inequity in this process.
This is just too important.”
You can leave your comments to BOEM before July 6 when comments will be closed.
Comments may be submitted before July 6 by one of two methods:
Electronically at http://www.regulations.gov. In the entry entitled, “Enter Keyword or ID,” enter BOEM-2016-0038, then click “search.” Follow the instructions to submit public comments.
or..
Mail or deliver in an envelope labeled “Comments on New York PSN” to:
BOEM Office of Renewable Energy Programs
45600 Woodland Road, VAM-OREP
Sterling, Virginia, 20166
Additionally, there was a New York City open house and meeting on June 29, 2016. A big rally was held before it in Bryant Park…
The BYOBagLB campaign will organize many events in the month of July 2016 to raise awareness of the dangers and damage plastic pollution causes, and issue the Plastic Free July challenge to you!
Take the challenge:
Attempt to refuse single-use plastic during July. “Single-use” includes plastic shopping bags, plastic cups, straws, plastic packaging… anything that’s intended only to be used once and then discarded. Too daunting? this time, try the TOP 4 challenge (plastic bags, bottles, takeaway coffee cups, & straws).
The rules:
Remember, it’s not going to be easy! It is a challenge, not a competition so don’t worry about being perfect.
Collect any unavoidable single-use plastic you buy. Keep in a dilemma bag and share it with us at the end of the challenge.
It’s up to you how long you participate. You might decide to go plastic-free for a day, a week, a month or longer! However long you choose will still make a contribution.
Why you should participate?
Apart from the small amount of plastic which has been incinerated, EVERY piece of plastic ever produced still exists on earth somewhere. In the first 10 years of this century MORE plastic was produced than the entire last century!
Why use something for a few seconds that is going to spend the rest of your lifetime trying to break down in landfill? We must change our habits.
Let’s start here, let’s do it together!
State senators voted to leave no other way but tax all taxpayers for the costs of the plastic pollution created by some.
Yesterday the New York State Senate took extreme measures to undo current state laws on home rule. Smultaneously they expanded the power of individuals and corporations to pollute with plastic bags at will, and socialize the cost of that by taxing the general public and future generations to deal with that issue.
The legislation officially overturns the upheld right of municipalities to form their own laws, known as “home rule”
They did all that and in one fell swoop, codified into the tax code to now require public taxes be used for whatever is necessary to clean up any plastic bag pollution issues.
This precedent also has far reaching effects for other forms of pollution.
The SENATORS posited the completely avoidable charge to receive a bag was a tax so voted to stop it. In reality they actually VOTED TO OFFICIALLY CODIFY TO SOCIALIZE THE COSTS OF PLASTIC BAGS AND TAX EVERYONE for the plastic pollution (and maybe other kinds) of some.
Senators have also been saying there’s a public health issue: this is a complete fabrication, as hygienic uses of bags, such as for meat, are already exempt from the law.
And in the most shameful terms, many of these Senators have falsely hidden behind seniors and low income communities to undo New York City’s hard compromised bag law, as people with low-enough income to receive food stamps are already exempt from the law.
What these Senators really are saying is low income families and seniors are simply incapable and too irresponsible to bring their own bag to a supermarket.
We completely disagree and believe everyone could take pride in not destroying their neighborhood, much less the planet for a few minutes convenience. In fact most low income people suffer much more greatly from “food deserts” where no supermarket exists in their neighborhood. They pay premium convenience store prices for everything they buy.
Senators, if they really cared, could have helped these low income people exponentially more by dealing with that issue, that costs them dimes more for every grocery item, plus to pay for a “free” plastic bag in the costs of those items. Instead they voted to “spare” them the nickel they probably wouldn’t have otherwise had to pay.
The last thing New York needs is regressive senators undermining state and municipal law.
These Senators think all New Yorkers are entitled not only to a free checkout bag, but that the unconfined consequences of that bag should be socialized to all; it’s ok to tax everyone to cover those costs, from towns’, cities’, and the State’s tax rolls, but also the actual cost of the bags are still being included in the price of every item currently purchased anyway.
Those taxes are just fine by them.
In today’s state of the state address at Farmingdale State University, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced some fantastic news for off shore wind power.
Saturday September 17, 2016 10am
On June 21, 2016 at Hofstra University, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management held their off shore wind presentation and open house about the New York Off Shore Wind Energy Area.
