By Maurice Carter, Sustainable Newton President

On June 1, 2021, President Joe Biden issued an executive order temporarily suspending oil and gas drilling leases for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska.  The controversial leasing program was finalized in August 2020 during President Donald Trump's final year in office.

President Biden's order cited "legal deficiencies" with the current program and "inadequacy" of the previous review process.  As a result, the US Department of the Interior is initiating a "comprehensive environmental analysis to review the potential impacts of the Program and to address legal deficiencies in the current leasing program’s environmental review."  That review will include public comments and testimony, starting with six sessions this week.

On September 14, at the invitation of Environment America and representing Sustainable Newton, I delivered virtual testimony before the Federal Bureau of Land Management Alaska Field Office.  You can read the text of my verbal testimony here.  You can also view the presentation from the bureau and listen to all of yesterday's testimony in the Facebook Live video below.  (My testimony begins at the 28:04 mark.)

Scientists tell us everyday:  there have never been times such as these:

• Raging wildfires in California, Siberia, and Turkey.
• Unprecedented flooding claiming lives across Europe.
• Reservoirs drained by drought to historic lows.
• Hypoxic "Dead Zones" in super-heated oceans around the world.
• Signs of collapsing currents, including the Gulf Stream, that could bring dramatic changes to weather patterns and threaten marine life.

The dots aren't hard to connect.  But, a new report out today from the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) puts these extreme weather events into sharper focus and an even more disturbing context.  The message is clear:  "A code red for humanity," said UN Secretary General Antonio Gutteres.

In regularly scheduled meetings Monday night, the city councils of Covington and Oxford each voted to approve solar power purchase contracts (SPPCs) with the Municipal Electric Association of Georgia (MEAG).  Covington will purchase up to 15 megawatts (MW) of solar capacity through MEAG's 80 MW solar initiative scheduled to come online in 2023.  Oxford will commit to 4 MW.

This initiative marks the first time MEAG has included a utility-scale solar offering in its power portfolio.  The association -- which serves 49 municipal electric companies in Georgia -- will contract with a third party vendor to construct and operate an 80 MW solar farm in south Georgia.  MEAG will resell the solar-sourced electricity (and associated renewable energy credits) to cities participating in the project.

The actual capacity Covington and Oxford receive will depend on the total purchase commitments received from all eligible municipal electric companies.  If requests exceed the 80 MW capacity of the project, then each interested city will receive a reduced allocation based on  their percentage of the total requested.

In presenting the MEAG proposal to City Council Monday night, Covington Electric Director Joel Smith positioned the solar opportunity as an important step for achieving the city's goal of 90% emissions-free electricity by 2045.  According to Smith, Covington plans sell the new solar capacity exclusively to large industrial customers via a Renewable Energy Customer Agreement (RECA), giving those large customers the opportunity to meet sustainability objectives and comply with corporate mandates.  One existing Covington customer has already expressed interest in purchasing 50% of Covington's solar capacity under the agreement.

Oxford plans to add the additional electricity to their grid, serving all customers.

Sustainable Newton supporters may recall our MEAG cities (Covington, Oxford, and Mansfield) posed special challenges during our 2019-20 Solarize Newton-Morgan campaign -- due to the standby capacity fee MEAG encouraged those cities to adopt as a hedge against revenue loss from rooftop solar.  The Oxford City Council ultimately voted to rescind their standby fee, and Covington voted to reduce (but not eliminate) theirs. 

In 2019, MEAG had no publicly announced plans for a solar, and you could not even find the word "solar" anywhere on their website.  These solar power purchase contracts with MEAG are a very big step forward in just two short years.

Sustainable Newton remains committed to working with local officials in each of our cities to remove barriers to rooftop solar and to even provide incentives (such as net metering, time of use rate plans, etc.).  But, rooftop solar alone will not reduce greenhouse gas emission sufficiently to address the climate crisis.  We've aligned our climate action plans with Drawdown Georgia, and utility-scale solar is a big part of that plan.

For the Electricity solution sector, Drawdown Georgia has set the following statewide targets for 2030:

• For Rooftop Solar:  295,000 new 5 kW solar roofs.
• For Large-Scale Solar:  10 additional 100 MW utility-scale solar installations and 36 additional 5 MW community solar installations.

Putting last night's votes into perspective, the MEAG solar offering is 80% of one of those utility-scale installations.  And the combined 19 MW purchase by Covington and Oxford represents 2% of the additional utility-scale capacity assumed by Drawdown Georgia in their solution scenarios.

During our solarize campaign, consultants estimated the 85 kW of rooftop solar installed through the campaign would mean 159,460 pounds less carbon being emitted into the atmosphere each year.  Extrapolating that formula, 19 MW of utility-scale solar will result in roughly 35.6 million pounds (or 16,202 metric tons) less carbon emissions annually from electricity generation for our two cities.  This stuff adds up!

We are grateful to MEAG for taking this important initiative and proud of our elected officials and city staffs in Covington and Oxford for stepping up in a big way!  May this only be the beginning of even bigger things to come!!

In March 2019, my husband Billy and I installed 12 solar panels on our roof as part of the Solarize Newton Morgan campaign.  We were super excited to to reduce our carbon footprint, become a little more energy independent, and save money.  Not only did the solarize campaign allow us to get better pricing on installation and materials, but it also did the leg work of choosing a reputable solar installer.  We worked with folks who had already gone solar and others like us who were adding solar for the first time.   It was a great experience. 

Fast forward to today and we can look at the numbers to see how much electricity we're using and how much money we have saved over the last 2+ years. 

Who Doesn’t Love a Creek?
 
Thanks to the City of Oxford’s Sustainability Committee, I had a chance to play in the creek again with the Stream Team of GA and folks from UGA’s Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources.  Since retiring, I really miss that part of teaching of Environmental Science at Oxford College, so it was a real treat for me to get my feet wet and my hands slimy.

On Saturday, we sampled a stretch of Dried Indian Creek behind the Oxford College Organic Farm to see how many different kinds of fish we could find.  Using an electro-shocker, the team collected fish from horny head chub to yellow fin shiners -- even a few salamanders.  No worries though, it was all catch and release with 0% fish mortality.  What a beautiful array of fish, many in their brilliant breeding colors.

By Sustainable Newton

By Mike McQuaide, Sustainable Newton Board Member

We celebrate Arbor Day in Georgia in February (on the 3rd Friday), when weather conditions are best for planting trees.  This year, many communities are scaling back or canceling celebrations dues to COVID-19.  So, we asked board member Mike McQuaide to reflect on his love of trees.

One year into the COVID-19 pandemic, many people have had occasion to focus more clearly on the features of life they value the most.  The adage “you don’t miss your water until your well runs dry” is certainly applicable at this moment in American history.  Being with friends and family indoors, going into restaurants and stores, freely traveling to distant places, and the many dimensions of life are suspended to some extent right now.  Many of us find it insightful to step back and consider more deeply the features of life that we have taken for granted --but now seem out of reach-- at least for the time being.
 
Broadening our appreciation of the world we take for granted can bring a renewed appreciation and desire to protect the natural world.  The natural environment is complex and diverse; one visible aspect of the natural world are the trees around us.  Arbor Day provides an opportunity to step back and consider the many benefits of trees in our shared communities.  The most visibly obvious benefits being the aesthetic advantages of trees.  On a subconscious level, trees can evoke our sense of beauty.  Office workers with a view of trees are more productive than those  in windowless workplaces.  Seeing trees can reduce our blood pressure and help our muscles to relax.

By Maurice Carter, Sustainable Newton President

Extreme weather and widespread power outages in Texas are headline news everywhere this week.  As of today, nearly three million customers remain without power, after record-breaking low temperatures and heavy snowfall struck the state.  It's a dangerous situation, and many of us  have friends and/or family directly impacted.

Emotions are frayed and lives remain at risk.  As with any crisis, priority one is restoring power and tending to those in need.  Lessons learned can wait until safety is restored.

But it's a sad reality we must also contend with disinformation about root causes and contributing factors to the energy portion of this crisis.  Specifically, some clean energy naysayers see an opportunity to push a false narrative that these power outages were primarily caused by a wind power failure.  This simply is not true.

By Maurice Carter, Sustainable Newton President

Wednesday in Washington brought a flurry of environmental executive orders and policy statements from President Biden that delighted environmentalists and climate activists -- while also drawing fire from Republicans seeking to use climate as a wedge issue.  Among the most significant actions the President announced, he:

• Ordered all federal agencies to migrate their fleets to all electric vehicles and to shift to clean energy sources for electricity.
• Established the Civilian Conservation Corps.
• Pledged to conserve at least 30% of national lands and oceans by 2030.
• Committed to researching how farmers might be paid to enhance the carbon-sequestering capabilities of their land.

As I've stated before, it will take much more than Presidential executive action -- namely, bipartisan collaboration and legislation -- to adequately address the Climate Crisis.  But, the actions from the White House this week are significant and urgently needed.  Which is why it's disappointing to see some visible Republicans spread disinformation and false narratives to gain political leverage.

For our 2021 virtual kickoff Friday morning, we visited with Ray C. Anderson Foundation Executive Director John A. Lanier to discuss the Drawdown Georgia initiative.  John gave us a hope-filled, inspiring look at the country's only state-centered climate action program.  If you missed it, please take time to view the replay.

Sustainable Newton is committed to doing all we can to promote the Drawdown Georgia effort and bring its 20 carbon-reduction solutions to households, businesses, and local governments in Newton County. 

Starting a new year is the perfect time to assess what personal changes I can make towards "bringing climate solutions home," as they say at Drawdown Georgia.  Across the five key solution sectors (Electricity, Buildings and Materials, Food and Agriculture, Land Sinks, and Transportation), there are feasible actions we can each take to contribute to the overall 46 megaton carbon-reduction goal for the program.  (Each megaton is one million tons.)

I remember vividly the last time I saw my fellow Sustainable Newton Board members in person, on the evening of March 9, gathered around a table in our usual meeting room at First Presbyterian Church of Covington.

Three days earlier, 21 cases of COVID-19 had been confirmed on a cruise ship off the California coast, and the disease had reached a nursing home in Washington state.  But the World Health Organization had yet to declare a pandemic. 

Still, I recall the awkward silence when a colleague sneezed several times.  "Bless you," we said out loud, but our body language was a little more complicated.  We adjourned at the end of the meeting without saying so, but I suspected we might not see each other again for a month or two.

And, then, all Hell broke loose.

It wasn't always human nature.  But, for those of us born since the middle of the 20th Century, technology is our go-to answer to every problem.  When you think you can invent your way out of any mess, you kick the can down the road.  We tell ourselves we'll deal with it later.

Then, when we finally decide a situation like Climate Change must be addressed, it’s natural we gravitate to technical innovation to save us.  There’s something sexy about gleaming solar panels, sleek wind turbines, smart buildings, and shiny, new Tesla automobiles. 

In our 24 Hours of Reality:  Countdown to the Future presentation on October 10, we asked and answered three key questions about humanity's response to the current climate crisis:

1. Must we change?
2. Can we change?
3. Will we change?

Our resounding "Yes!" to all three questions begs a fourth:  "How will we change?" 

That's where Drawdown Georgia comes in.  With their official launch on October 17, they identified 20 top climate solutions researchers have tagged as critical for Georgia to achieve a 35% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030.

Using Paul Hawken's 2018 book Drawdown as a starting point, scientists from Georgia Tech, the University of Georgia, Emory, and Georgia State University studied the 100 solutions originally identified by Hawken and his colleagues to determine the highest potential actions for our state.  The resulting blueprint for action features 20 solutions across five sectors (Buildings & Materials, Electricity, Transportation, Land Sinks, and Food & Agriculture) that collectively can cut carbon emissions in Georgia from 125 megaton to 79 megatons by 2030.

Even as a climate activist and leader of a sustainability organization, I'm still conflicted over President-Elect Joe Biden's commitment to sign an executive order on his first day in office to rejoin the US in the Paris Climate Agreement.  I'm convinced we have years -- not decades -- to reverse climate change or face dire consequences, and I accept the urgent need for coordinated global action.  The crisis is real.  But, as a political pragmatist, I also know this back-and-forth reliance on executive action without congressional approval is ultimately getting us nowhere.

For anyone paying even the slightest attention to climate news, these are difficult days not to run screaming from the building.  Then again, this summer, outside is no place to be.

From unprecedented dual hurricanes Laura and Marco striking the US gulf coast last month to the scorching heat and raging wildfires now impacting California and Oregon,  we're inundated with news about extreme weather caused by Climate Change.

Throw in Siberian temperatures topping 100 degrees Fahrenheit and collapsing arctic ice shelves in Canada, and it's a little hard to remain hopeful.

OK, nearly impossible.  But, still, hope is not lost.