Last week, President Obama stood firm against Republican pressure and big oil’s demands and denied TransCanada’s push for construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline. This is very good news for clean energy and environmental communities, however, TransCanada intends to swiftly propose a re-route of the massive pipeline through less “environmentally sensitive areas”, which include attempting to avoid Nebraska’s Ogallala Aquifer, an aquifer critical to Nebraska’s natural habitat, livelihood and farming community, never mind its fresh drinking water supply.  This point of entry has been the main challenge for the company.  It will be interesting to see where President Obama stands on the predicted newly proposed route, which is anticipated to arrive at his desk within two weeks.

The proposed $7 Billion Keystone XL pipeline would carry crude tar sands… [view entry]

The clean energy revolution has never been more critical.  In a report released December 8th, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) made a direct link between the con­tro­ver­sial drilling prac­tice known as hydraulic frac­tur­ing and ground­wa­ter contamination.  For years, hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking” a method to extract oil and gas from under­ground deposits that uses a mix­ture of sand, water and chem­i­cals to frac­ture shale rock and release the gas, has been taking place across the country, mainly unabated and unquestioned by politicians and industry professionals.

Now however, it’s official: fracking has been correlated to tainted groundwater that is often entirely undrinkable by area residents and wildlife alike.  The EPA report specifically notes high con­cen­tra­tions of ben­zene, xylene, gaso­line and diesel fuel in groundwa­ter sup­plies linked to waste­water pits and deeper fresh water wells. … [view entry]

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick’s stance on biomass has recently changed its tune from one of skepticism to one of acceptance as a state-wide “clean” energy policy. Why the sudden switch? State environmental groups, the same groups who helped lobby to get him into office, are wondering the same thing and are now turning against Patrick’s newfound position at large.

According to a recent article in the Boston Phoenix, the Patrick administration will release a document in the next few weeks that will contain the final regulations for the state’s biomass subsidies.  According to environmental groups, the Administration is planning to reverse its original position as a nod towards a handful of developers who stand to make money off of biomass production.

These regulations will come at the expense of ordinary… [view entry]

Image by Tara Holmes

On June 1st, three tornadoes touched down in western Massachusetts during a surprise series of storms, leaving a wake of destruction and confusion. Massachusetts, not known for tornadoes, is now beginning to rethink state policies surrounding severe weather preparation and emergency response.

ReBuild Western Massachusetts, a program developed by the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources (DOER) and administered in partnership with the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC), was announced on August 4th and will distribute more than $8 million to help building owners affected by the tornadoes rebuild using energy efficiency practices and renewable energy technologies. Eligible participants include those who can document damage caused by the June 1 storms, and who own buildings in communities in Hampden and Worcester Counties, including: Agawam, Westfield,… [view entry]

by Peter Crawley, EBI Consulting

Cross-posted from the Sustainable Business Leader Program blog. See the original post here.

New England property owners are beginning to understand the benefits of a “green” building: higher occupancy rates, higher rental rates and lower utility costs, to name a few. But working with just the “sticks and bricks” of a building can make it only “light green.”

To go deeper, a building manager must engage the community that occupies the building: the tenants. A building and its tenants are two interconnected systems that must work in-tandem to produce eco-efficiency. Even if a building is built to green standards, it will not perform in a deep green manner if the occupants are not actively participating in green practices. Ultimately, it is the tenants who recycle,… [view entry]

Mt. Tom Station in Holyoke, MA has been a thorn in the sides of local environmentalists for many years.  Sitting on one of the most pristine mountain ranges in western Massachusetts, the coal burning power plant has, according to the Conservation Law Foundation, violated clean air standards thousands of times from 2005 to 2010, despite $55 million worth of pollution-control equipment that was installed from 2007 to 2009.

Now, however, the plant plans to comply with more stringent air-quality standards, install air-monitoring equipment, and hire an outside consultant to correct air pollution problems under a settlement announced by the state Attorney General’s Office. In addition, FirstLight Power Resources, the station’s owners, and GDF Suez North America have agreed to pay a $25,000 penalty to the state of Massachusetts and $70,000 for… [view entry]

On June 5th, roughly 600 activists and marchers began a five day 50 mile hike from Marmet, West Virginia to Blair Mountain in protest of mountain top removal (MTR), a destructive and highly contested form of strip mining. Blair Mountain, one of the last, originally standing mountains in that region of Appalachia to avoid MTR, is also an historical site with battle fields and artifacts dating back to the Civil War and before.  It’s also, like many of the pristine mountains in that region, loaded with coal reserves.  Unfortunately, for the residents of states such as West Virginia, Kentucky and Virginia, MTR is an all too common reality.  Current data show that as of 2010, an area the size of Delaware has been mined using MTR techniques and there is,… [view entry]

This is a busy week for the Earth.  One year ago today, the BP Deepwater Horizon spill took place, killing 11 rig workers while leaving a massive wake of environmental and social devastation, impacts of which are still being felt today.  What have we learned one year after such a monumental tragedy?  Friday, April 22nd, marks the 41st anniversary of Earth Day and I’m honestly not certain how much we’ve learned.  BP’s profits are strong and plans to resume deepwater drilling in the Gulf continue while many in Congress adamantly deny climate change even exists.  In fact, just last week, the US Senate and House of Representatives stood at a near stand-still over budget cuts to public programs, like the EPA.

Still, all hope might not be lost for the… [view entry]

Over the past week in Washington, DC, Republican legislators in Congress have been debating steep budget cuts to many publicly-funded programs such as PBS, Planned Parenthood and the EPA. In today’s Boston Globe, Senator Brown’s wavering stance on environmental issues, specifically the regulation of greenhouse gases by the EPA, is dissected in a scathing editorial review.  In the article, it’s noted that Brown’s turnaround on greenhouse gas regulation is “…especially disappointing to any Massachusetts voters who thought they saw in Brown a conservative on fiscal issues who was also a conservationist when it comes to protecting the environment.”  The editorial piece further points out that Brown’s vote prohibits any improvement in auto fuel-efficiency standards after 2016 and continues to deny that green house gases directly contribute to climate change.  Ironically,… [view entry]

Photo by flickr.com/photos/arimoore/

On February 26th, The New York Times released a front page exposé on the new “gold rush” of natural gas exploration in the United States: Hydrofracking.  Natural gas is a relatively plentiful domestic energy resource and some environmentalists and policy-makers alike have heralded the recent jump in natural gas exploration as a means to curb carbon emissions (natural gas, supposedly, releases less carbon into the atmosphere than fossil fuels like oil and coal).

Nevertheless, the NYTimes article presents a disturbing case against such massive, and oftentimes unregulated, exploration. Hydrofracking, or the injection of water and chemicals under high pressure into rock formations to extract natural gas, can directly impact the quality of groundwater, and inevitably, our drinking water.  Drilling supporters have responded that no contamination of groundwater… [view entry]