Press Releases

Clean air experts sounded the alarm today as the New York Times reported that former coal lobbyist and EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler plans to abandon peer-reviewed science in order to sell the Trump Administration’s Dirty Power Plan, its attempt to roll back the Clean Power Plan.
Today, Sierra Club, Fresh Energy, Union of Concerned Scientists, Center for Energy and Environment, Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, Clean Grid Alliance, LIUNA (Laborers’ International Union of North America) Minnesota and North Dakota, and Xcel Energy filed an agreement with the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (MNPUC) that proposes retirement dates for Xcel’s remaining coal units and includes historic investments in solar energy and energy efficiency.
Today, over 125 people on land and 50 people on water gathered at the “No Methanol Land and Water Action Community Camp-Out” opposing the proposed fracked-gas-to-methanol refinery in Kalama, WA. Speakers called on the Washington Department of Ecology to deny the project, and thanked Governor Inslee for his recent opposition to the project.
Oakland, CA-- Today, after hearing arguments from declarentes from the Sierra Club, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Southern Border Communities Coalition (SBCC)’s over their preliminary injunction motion on their challenge of Trump’s emergency declaration lawsuit, a federal judge declined to make a decision on the injunction. The preliminary injunction is a part of the group’s challenge of the president’s national emergency and blocks the administration’s initial transfer of over a billion dollars from the Pentagon for border wall construction.
Columbia, S.C. – Last night, after previously unanimously passing both the South Carolina House of Representatives and the state Senate, Gov. Henry McMaster signed into law the Energy Freedom Act, House Bill 3659, also known as “the solar bill.”
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Today, the Environmental Protection Agency Office of the Inspector General (EPA OIG) released its audit of former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt’s travel expenses. The report found that Pruitt spent $124,000 on first class tickets, excessive travel expenditures, and his unprecedented security detail. The audit recommends the EPA recover the funds from Scott Pruitt. Now lead by coal lobbyist and Scott Pruitt’s handpicked deputy, in a statement Andrew Wheeler’s EPA defended the disgraced Administrator’s travel expenses and made it clear it would not follow the IG’s recommendation to recover the wasted taxpayer money.
Ahead of BP’s annual shareholders meeting, activists plan to rally outside the oil company’s American headquarters in Denver on Monday, May 20 at 12pm to call on BP to pledge not to drill in the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Oceans, and Wildlife today held a hearing on the Tribal Heritage and Grizzly Bear Protection Act. Introduced by Rep. Grijalva, the bill would protect grizzly bears at a time when hostile state management and federal proposals, climate change and shifting food sources threaten their continued recovery. Grizzly bears are sacred to many Tribal Nations and as a top predator, play a vital role in balancing natural systems.
Tribal leaders today testified before the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Oceans, and Wildlife in support of the Tribal Heritage and Grizzly Bear Protection Act. As noted by Lynnette Grey Bull, Senior Vice President of Global Indigenous Council and spokesperson for the Northern Arapaho Elders Society of the Wind River Indian Reservation, the Act is based on The Grizzly: A treaty of Cooperation, Cultural Revitalization and Restoration. It is the most signed treaty in history.
A group of people from the Tampa Bay area traveled 1800 miles to Halifax, Nova Scotia to demand Tampa Electric Company (TECO), abandon their plans to burn fracked gas and more coal at their Big Bend plant.