Today the Santa Fe County Commission will vote on a resolution in support of the Local Choice Energy Act (SB165). The Local Choice Energy Act will empower our communities to generate affordable, renewable electricity, while creating local jobs, lowering utility bills, investing in local economies, and providing more revenue for local governments for community needs. The renewable energy will be produced locally, and the investor owned utility companies will distribute that power over their poles and wires, and will be paid for doing so.
Imagine having the option to choose between a 100% renewable generation utility that reinvests its profits into your city vs dutifully paying your coal and gas fueled PNM bill and exporting those profits to the 1% on Wall St.? With Local Choice Energy New Mexican communities and individuals will have that option! We know that PNM will be there with scaremongering talking points to try to prevent any competition from interfering with their precious monopoly control. We hope that you will be there to tell the Commissioners what the public wants! Local Choice Energy (frequently called Community Choice Aggregation or CCA) is the law of the land in 10 states, and millions of Americans in more than 1300 communities are served by these community-owned providers. All of the electricity providers in the United States that have gone 100% renewable are community-owned, and many of them are local choice energy providers (frequently called CCAs or community choice aggregators). Local Choice Energy is so exciting, because it's a significant way to have an impact in the face of climate change, and it also offers so many other important and tangible benefits to our communities and residents.
Action 1: Contact the Santa Fe County Commissioners in support of Local Choice Energy and make a plan to speak in support of it either online or in person (102 Grant Avenue, Santa Fe New Mexico, 87501) TODAY Tuesday 1/31 at 2 PM. Please sign up for public comment virtually or in person via this form before the meeting, and indicate that you want to comment on item 3. A. on the agenda. Agenda and instructions to get online here.
Action 2: Reach out by phone or email to the Santa Fe County Commissioners to ask them to support the resolution.
Commission Chair Anna Hansen - ahansen@santafecountynm.gov - (505) 986-6263
Commissioner Hank Hughes - hhughes@santafecountynm.gov - (505) 986-6210
Commissioner Anna Hamilton - athamilton@santafecountynm.gov - (505) 986-6200
Commissioner Camilla Bustamante - cbustamante@santafecountynm.gov - (505)-986-6333
Commissioner Justin Greene -jsgreene@santafecountynm.gov - (505)-986-2760
Action 3: Local Choice Energy is going to be scheduled soon at the Senate Conservation Committee and is headed to the Senate Judiciary Committee after that. Please take one minute to send a letter to the Senators in those committees through this online form: https://www.publicpowernm.org/take-action
TALKING POINTS TO PREPARE YOUR COMMENTS AND EMAILS
MORE LEGISLATIVE AND PRC UPDATES
MORE THAN 50 ORGANIZATIONS CALL ON THE GOVERNOR AND LEGISLATURE TO FOLLOW THE SCIENCE
On Thursday New Energy Economy joined the Center for Biological Diversity, the No False Solutions Coalition and more than 50 supporting organizations in calling on Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, State Administrators and the legislature to promote science based climate legislation and policy in order to effectively meet the urgency of the moment and address the climate, public health and environmental damages caused by oil and gas production and pollution in New Mexico. New Mexico law must align with climate science, avoid false climate solutions that delay and distract from necessary investments in effective mitigation strategies and stringently enforce protections. Read the letter here, and consider sending it to your Representatives with a request that they pay attention to the facts!
AND ON THE EVOLVING PRC SAGA...
Under increasing scrutiny, the yet to be confirmed PRC Commissioner O'Connell announced that he would recuse himself from the expected PNM/Avangrid re-hearing. Milan Simonich wrote a righteous and dare we say, scathing, article in the Santa Fe New Mexican detailing the shoddy and unethical process by which the PRC has been selected. Remember years ago when we predicted that this wouldn't deliver as promised, but we had no idea that it would be this bad.
UNDERGROUND INJECTION FUND ACT PASSES IN HOUSE ENERGY
On Saturday, after a resounding show of support at the House Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing for HB142, the Generating Facility and Mine Remediation Act to clean up the San Juan plant and mine site, we stayed to speak out against HB174, the Underground Injection Fund Act. Sponsored by Rep. Nathan Small and Rep. Meredith Dixon, HB 174 will smooth the way for state regulators to issue permits for Class VI wells that are used for Carbon Capture and Storage operations, primarily in connection with fossil fuel and hydrogen production facilities. Currently permits for these injection wells are under the jurisdiction of the EPA and industry and the MLG administration are unhappy about the wait times. The bill passed the Committee on vote of 6-4, with Small and Dixon voting with all the Republicans and all other Democrats voting no.
After describing Class VI wells as a necessity for decarbonization and public health, Representative Dixon admitted "Certainly coal and hydrogen will be a component globally of carbon capture. I mean I’d be lying to say otherwise." Yes. We know. In fact globally "roughly 60 percent of Carbon Capture projects are either backed by fossil fuel companies or aim to capture emissions from fossil fuel power plants, petrochemical facilities, and fossil fuel-adjacent industries like industrial fertilizer and hydrogen production that are major gas consumers. And 30 of the facilities already use or plan to use the captured carbon for a process called enhanced oil recovery, in which fossil fuel companies shoot the CO2 into the ground to push up hard-to-reach oil." (The Verge, October 2022) In other words, carbon capture is being used to produce more fossil fuels! We are not buying the "Decarbonization and Public Health" snake oil.
An alarming report published in the NY Times on the same day exposed how injection wells to dispose of waste from oil and gas has led to increasing earthquakes in the Permian, including two greater than 5.0 magnitude. In 2022, the state recorded more than 220 earthquakes of 3.0 magnitude or higher, up from 26 recorded in 2017, when the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas began monitoring. This Forbes article reiterates the danger, on top of the scarcity of water for fracking!
The re-injection of the vast amounts of toxic wastewater from oil and gas production into the ground has led to the increase in earthquakes (in Oklahoma, Texas and NM) so "regulators" offered above ground storage as an alternative containment method, but the toxic flowback is so flammable that there have been two recent fires. Perhaps fracking wells are destabilizing the very earth we count on for survival and we should find another way? Hmm, how about let's look to the sun and wind for the answer.
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