http://truth-out.org/news/item/23313-revealed-alecs-2014-attacks-on-the-environment
[Every so often, someone complains to me about all the 'political'
postings I make related to renewable and alternative energy. They seem
to feel that implementing biofuels, solar, wind, small hydro and other
renewable energy sources is solely a technical issue, not political or
economic (and economics today is just a subset of Capital P political).
Well, the folks that run big oil, big coal and big nuclear disagree -
they know all energy and environmental issues today are political.
That's why we fight wars over access to oil and natural gas today.
Watch for more fights related to pipelines, tankers, rail and trucks
moving petro products as the resource curse drives a wedge between
alleged allies and trading partners globally.
Multiple links in the on-line article.]
Revealed: ALEC's 2014 Attacks on the Environment
Friday, 25 April 2014 11:42 By Nick Surgey, PR Watch | Report
An internal tracking document-- obtained from the American Legislative
Exchange Council (ALEC) by the Center for Media and Democracy/the
Progressive Inc. under Texas public records law -- reveals the scope of
ALEC's anti-environmental efforts in 2014.
The spreadsheet (dated from late March 2014 and made public by CMD/The
Progressive today) reveals ALEC tracking a total of 131 bills that,
amongst other things, roll back state renewable energy standards,
increase costs for American households with solar, hype the Keystone XL
pipeline, push back on proposed EPA coal regulations that protect human
health, and create industry-friendly fracking rules despite growing
national and international concerns about fracking.
ALEC's colorful spreadsheet provides insight into the lobbying agenda it
pushed in the 2014 legislative sessions in states across the country.
For example, an entire section is devoted to the thirty-one items of
legislation concerning state standards for renewable energy generation.
Here are the key pieces of legislation ALEC has been pushing to become
binding law in states:
Attacking "Freerider" Homeowners With Solar
Eleven of the bills attempt to amend "net metering" laws, which allow
homeowners with solar panels on their property to sell excess
electricity back to the grid, typically at a price that creates an
incentive for homeowners to invest in solar for their homes. This makes
the cost of installing solar cost-effective for ordinary homeowners over
a period of years and net metering is part of the reason the U.S. has
seen a 60% increase in domestic solar installations in just the past year.
Speaking to Suzanne Goldenberg and Ed Pilkington of the Guardian in
December, ALEC’s Energy, Environment and Agriculture task force Director
John Eick described these small-time solar generators as "freeriders on
the system." ALEC corporate lobbyists and legislators on its energy task
force then voted behind closed doors on a model resolution in December,
which calls on states to "require that everyone who uses the grid helps
pay to maintain it and to keep it operating reliably at all times."
The boom in solar generation is increasingly becoming a threat to the
high polluting industries, like the coal companies and oil processors
that underwrite ALEC. Longtime ALEC funders includes behemoths like
Peabody Energy, Koch Industries (controlled by the infamous Koch
Brothers), ExxonMobil, BP, and other global multi-billion dollar
corporations.
As reported by Evan Halper in the Los Angeles Times on April 19, the
David Koch-controlled "Americans for Prosperity" has been running ads
attacking solar in Arizona. "Solar, once almost universally regarded as
a virtuous, if perhaps over-hyped, energy alternative, has now grown big
enough to have enemies," wrote the LA Times.
Repealing Renewable Energy Standards
Thirty-one of the bills relate to state requirements for renewable
energy production. Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia have
"Renewable Portfolio Standards" or "RPS," which are minimum requirements
for utilities to produce a certain amount of the energy they generate
from renewable sources such as wind.
Americans for Prosperity has targeted these laws for repeal, with
support from rightwing leader Grover Norquist in Kansas and other groups
across the country. The Beacon Hill Institute, based out of Suffolk
University in Massachusetts, which is an associate member of the
Koch-backed State Policy Network (SPN) -- as CMD and ProgressNow have
documented -- has written a series of reports that have been released in
states by other SPN member think thanks including the John Locke
Foundation in North Carolina, the Maine Heritage Policy Center, the
Washington Policy Center and the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute.
Following internal SPN documents released by the Guardian in December
2013, these reports have been largely discredited, with its host
university refusing to stand by the studies. See the Guardian article:
free-market research group's climate proposal denounced by host university.
ALEC has been working to repeal or water down these laws since corporate
lobbyists and legislators on its energy task force secretly voted for a
Heartland Institute drafted "model" bill called the "Electricity Freedom
Act" as its official policy in 2012. Despite calling the bill a priority
for 2013, ALEC failed that year to score a significant victory, and it
adopted two further anti-RPS bills at its August 2013 Annual Meeting in
Chicago, called the "Renewable Energy Credit Act" and the "Market Power
Renewables Act."
Attacking Proposed EPA Regulations of Coal
Seventeen of the bills concern Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act,
which following proposed rules issued last September on emission
standards at new power stations, requires the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) to develop regulations on carbon pollution standards for
existing power plants. The expected rules, which are likely to be
released in draft form in June, would set emission standards that may
ultimately force the closure of some of the most polluting coal burning
power plants in the country.
The coal industry and its allies, including many Fox News commentators
and leading members of the Republican Party, have branded this attempt
to limit carbon emissions through regulation a "war on coal."
The coal industry has been fighting back.
A bill to block the EPA regulations -- Preventing Government Waste &
Protecting Coal Mining Jobs in America Act (H.R. 2824) -- passed the
Republican controlled House in March, mostly on party lines 229-183.
Peabody Energy, the world's largest private sector coal company, has
launched a flashy PR campaign called "Advanced Energy for Life." The
campaign website claims that "half the world's population lacks adequate
energy access," before asking users to submit comments to the EPA
opposing rules affecting coal plants.
Peabody Energy is also a leader within ALEC, with the corporation's top
lobbyist Kelly Mader sitting on the ALEC corporate board.
At the December 2013 ALEC conference in Washington DC, corporate
lobbyists and legislators on ALEC’s task force voted behind closed doors
for two resolutions aimed at limiting the regulation of carbon emissions
for coal power plants, with legislators reportedly urged to engage in
"guerrilla warfare" to block the EPA.
It is not known who brought the resolutions to ALEC, since ALEC keeps
those details a highly guarded secret. Peabody Energy, Edison Electric
Institute, Chevron, Shell, the Charles Koch Institute and the American
Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity were all among the sponsors of the
December ALEC conference at which the bills were discussed and approved.
Hyping the Keystone XL Pipeline
Four of the bills are resolutions that call for the approval by the
Federal government of the Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline. ALEC corporate
lobbyists and legislators voted behind closed doors for a resolution
titled simply "Resolution in Support of the Keystone XL Pipeline" in
December 2011. In the 2013 session, ten states introduced similar
resolutions supporting KXL, as reported by CMD.
TransCanada, the proposed pipeline operator, is a funder of ALEC and has
sponsored ALEC organized all-expense paid "Academy" trips to Alberta in
2012 and 2013 to "educate" legislators about the tar sands. As reported
by CMD, following the trip in 2012, ALEC wrote to participating
legislators reminding them of what each oil-industry lobbyist on the
trip had paid for and suggested the lawmakers send "thank you notes" to
the lobbyists. One legislator -- Ohio Representative John Adams --
subsequently introduced a pro-KXL resolution sent to him by a
TransCanada lobbyist, according to documents obtained by CMD using the
Ohio public records law.
Promoting Trojan Horse-Like Fracking Regulations
Thirteen of the bills concern hydraulic fracturing, also known as
"fracking."
ALEC has three items of "model" legislation in its library concerning
fracking: two pro-fracking resolutions and a bill -- illogically titled
"The Disclosure of Hydraulic Fracturing Fluid Composition Act" -- that
allows operators to keep secret the details of chemicals injected into a
well by making a near impossible to challenge claim of "trade secrets."
As reported by the New York Times in April 2012, ExxonMobil brought the
fracking bill to ALEC in December 2011 following its adoption as law in
Texas. In the 2013 session, five states introduced legislation similar
to the ALEC model, as detailed in the CMD report "ALEC at 40: Turning
Back the Clock on Prosperity and Progress."
One of the bills ALEC is tracking is a proposed moratorium on fracking
in Massachusetts. This does not relate directly to any of the ALEC
"model" bills, but both fracking bans and federal oversight have been a
focus at recent ALEC conferences.
For example, at the August 2013 ALEC conference in Chicago, the American
Petroleum Institute presented to legislators on "Local Bans on Hydraulic
Fracturing: Coming Soon to Your District." And during the most recent
December 2013 ALEC conference in Washington DC, the Energy, Environment
and Agriculture members received a presentation on the EPA "adversarial
oversight" of fracking.
Wait, So ALEC Tracks Legislation?
As CMD has reported, ALEC has recently been claiming that it doesn’t
track legislation. As the official ALEC Twitter account tweeted to the
Brookings Institute in December 2013: "we don't track our model policies."
In light of the tracking document obtained by CMD, this is obviously not
accurate, but this particular document is just one example of many which
demonstrate ALEC following where its "model" legislation is introduced.
CMD has on file additional ALEC tracking documents from 2010, 2011 and
2012, and has copies of ALEC "legislative scorecards" from various years
between 1996 and 2010, which note with varying levels of detail the
number of bills introduced and passed in each state that year. ALEC even
boasts to potential funders in numerous publications published in 1985,
2000, 2008, 2009, 2011 and 2013 -- all on file with CMD -- that one of
the services it engages in is "legislative bill tracking."
Significantly, as revealed in materials obtained and released by Common
Cause as part of its 2012 ALEC IRS submission, ALEC sends email "issue
alerts" to its members in support of its own model bills when those
bills are up for a vote.
Following complaints to the IRS concerning ALEC from Common Cause, the
Voters Legislative Transparency Project, and Clergy Voice, supplemented
by evidence provided by the Center for Media and Democracy, ALEC
launched a new organization called the Jeffersonian Project in 2013,
which was formally created earlier in 2012. The new organization is a
501(c)(4) social welfare group, so unlike ALEC it is free to engage in
unrestricted lobbying to advance its goals. Lax IRS rules mean the new
organization has not yet had to file any financial returns.
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