By Denise Fort,
Chapter Energy chair
President Donald Trump’s budget represents an unprecedented attack on the agencies that protect our environment, and, perhaps more ominously, on science. We need to communicate to everyone — the media, elected officials, civic groups, friends in other states — the reasons a strong EPA is important to our health and the planet.
The facts: the proposed budget would slash spending at EPA by more than 30%. It would also slash spending at science-based organizations that provide critically important information about health risks, the effects of climate change, etc.
There are two great new groups founded by former EPA staff. Check out saveepa.wordpress.com for up-to-date information on what the cuts could mean. One example:
The Trump ...
By Camilla Feibelman,
Chapter director
Common-sense, climate-protecting methane rules have been targeted as the next victim of an obscure tool that President Trump and congressional Republicans have used to revoke stream protections and other air and water safeguards.
But the Sierra Club and our allies are building bipartisan opposition to this effort to appease the oil and gas industry at tragic cost.
You may already know that methane is a colorless, odorless substance that is also the main component of natural gas. It is also a potent global-warming gas that oil and gas drilling sites accidentally leak and intentionally vent and flare. The Obama administration proposed a comprehensive set of good-neighbor, job-creating, royalty-increasing rules, some of which have already taken ...
By Mona Blaber,
Chapter communications coordinator
A seismic shift for energy and the climate has hit the Southwest, and New Mexico in particular.
On March 16, Public Service Company of New Mexico announced that it would likely benefit customer bills to retire New Mexico’s San Juan Generating Station in 2022, when coal and ownership contracts expire. PNM said it had not made a final decision on the plant’s future.
That announcement came less than a month after owners of Arizona’s Navajo Generating Station, the largest coal plant in the West, announced the plant will cease operations in 2019, 25 years ahead of schedule.
The coal plants join others around the country on the ropes as natural gas and renewable energy ...
By Bob Bresnahan,
Kit Carson board, Renewable Taos
Taos-based Kit Carson Electric Cooperative and Guzman Renewable Energy Partners will build 30 one-megawatt solar arrays around Kit Carson’s service area over the next six years.
Kit Carson CEO Luis Reyes and Guzman CEO Chris Riley say that on a sunny day all electricity provided by Kit Carson will come from the sun by the fall of 2022.
Reaching the 100% day-time milestone is an impressive goal, especially since Kit Carson and Guzman’s plan is to accomplish it exclusively with locally produced energy.
Guzman has been Kit Carson’s wholesale electricity provider since July 2016. When solar proposals began rolling in to Kit Carson headquarters for under 5 cents a kilowatt-hour last fall, ...
By Mona Blaber
Xcel Energy, the parent company of New Mexico utility Southwestern Public Service, announced on March 21 that it plans to spend $1.6 billion on 1.23 gigawatts of wind energy in New Mexico and West Texas.
The Sagamore Wind Project, to be built in Roosevelt County, about 20 miles south of Portales, would be by far the largest wind facility in the state at 522 megawatts. Xcel also plans a 478-MW plant near Lubbock, Texas.
The company said the New Mexico facility would create about 300 jobs. It will lease land from private ranches and other landowners.
“The Sagamore Wind Project will be the largest wind farm in the state, resulting in hundreds of clean-energy jobs in rural ...
For immediate release: Thursday, March 16, 2017
Contact: Camilla Feibelman, Sierra Club Rio Grande Chapter director, 505-715-8388, camilla.feibelman@sierraclub.org
On Thursday, Public Service Company of New Mexico announced that an analysis of San Juan Generating Station in Waterflow, N.M., found that the coal-fired power plant will no longer be economically viable after 2022, when the plant’s coal contract and ownership agreements expire.
This result will almost certainly expedite PNM’s transition from the plant to other sources of power. This latest development comes just a few years after PNM, the state of New Mexico, and other parties agreed on a plan to close two of the plant’s four coal units by December 2017.
It is critical for the owners of San ...
