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Executive Director of Green Energy Consumers Alliance
If you’re motivated to learn more about what you can do about the climate crisis as a consumer and a citizen, and what lots of smart, committed activists are doing – then join us at our Fall Meeting, November 19th. This year, we're thrilled to welcome Kelsey Wirth, co-founder of Mothers Out Front, as our featured speaker.
We take great pride in the fact that we, along with a company called Good Energy, took the model of municipal aggregation (a.k.a. community choice energy) and made it truly green. We did so with our pioneer partners, the City of Melrose and the town of Dedham. In 2016, those communities used the buying power of their residents to secure an affordable electricity rate that includes more local renewable energy than required by state law. Since then, over a dozen communities have joined the movement and added more renewable energy to residents' electricity supply - most recently Medford, Bedford, and Rockland. Green Energy Consumers is proud to be providing that additional incremental amount of renewable energy.
This week, I’m headed to a conference in the Big Apple to talk about how we need to electrify transportation and heating. I looked at my options for getting there. Flying was the quickest, but emitted the most. And inspired in large part by 16-year old climate activist, Greta Thunberg, I couldn’t choose a plane. I thought about taking my wind powered Chevy Bolt, but I didn’t want to drive through the city and Brooklyn doesn’t need another car. So I will be on Amtrak. Maybe I’ll get some work done while riding. There’s a good chance I will nap.
About twenty years ago, our non-profit organization stepped into the voluntary green power market, hoping to speed up the pace of wind & solar development. A lot has changed for the better since then, but we’ve still got a long way to go.
Massachusetts and Rhode Island have both announced plans on how they intend to spend funds coming from the national Volkswagen “dieselgate” settlement. We’re seeing some solid ideas on how the states can use the VW settlement money to reduce air pollution from diesel fuel. This development is akin to turning swords into plowshares. While it’s horrible that VW deceived governments throughout the world about emissions from its diesel engines, there will be two lasting benefits from the settlement. Firstly, car-makers appear to be reducing their commitment to new diesels, as VW’s experience highlights the impossibility of making low-emission diesel vehicles. Secondly, the VW settlement money will help greatly to accelerate the transition to electric vehicles.
The tax man cometh. But if you participate in our Green Powered program, you can take a break. It’s a small one, but well deserved.
Edited by Anna Vanderspek
In October, I wrote a few words about Tesla. I think my comments were very fair, but some asked why I was “picking on Tesla”. So I promised to write another blogpost to dig into what other companies are doing with electric vehicles (EVs).
This is an update from previous blogs on the subjects covered here.
Have you recently received salespeople at your door or offers in the mail from competitive electricity suppliers? They lay the pitch on thick with too-good-to be true rates and feel-good energy mixes. It may seem hard to poke holes in the pitch, but under the smiling surface, many of these suppliers use smoke and mirror marketing to get their foot in the door and your signature on a contract.
Given the work that we do on green energy, people frequently ask us what we think about Tesla and Elon Musk. Because there’s so much to Tesla and its main man, we have several separate but related points to make.
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