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170+ Organizations Sign Letter Opposing Subsidies to Delay Closure of Diablo Canyon Power Plant

By staff - Nuclear Information and Resource Service, June 21, 2022

Over 170 organizations, including Beyond Nuclear, North American Water Office, Food & Water Watch, Institute for Policy Studies Climate Policy Program, Nuclear Energy Information Service (NEIS), Center for Biological Diversity, International Marine Mammal Project of Earth Island Institute, Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) and more sent a letter to Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm opposing the misuse of the Department of Energy’s Civil Nuclear Credit program (CNC) to dismantle the fossil-free phaseout and just transition plan for the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant. 

The CNC was created by the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) to mitigate potential greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) increases due to the closure of unprofitable nuclear reactors that operate in competitive electricity markets. The letter explains how applying the CNC program to Diablo Canyon would violate the letter and intent of the law. The nuclear power plant is not eligible for funds under the CNC program because it does not meet the basic requirements of the IIJA, nor those of the CNC program guidance DOE published to implement the program. 

The letter highlights climate, economic, environmental justice, and power supply concerns with abandonment of the just transition agreement dictating the planned closure of Diablo Canyon’s nuclear reactors in 2024 and 2025. 

Over 50 organizations from the State of California signed onto the letter, including San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace, Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles, SoCal 350 Climate Action, Tri-Valley CAREs, Physicians for Social Responsibility/Sacramento, San Francisco Bay Physicians for Social Responsibility, Oceanic Preservation Society, Electric Vehicle Association of CA Central Coast, Californians for Energy Choice, Parents Against Santa Susana Field Lab and more. 

Tim Judson, NIRS executive director said, “Diablo Canyon’s planned phaseout and just transition accelerates California’s climate and renewable energy goals, supports Diablo workers and local communities, and promotes economic and environmental justice. Misusing the CNC program to unravel that progress would betray President Biden’s commitments to climate and environmental justice.” He added, “The Diablo Canyon phaseout plan which California is implementing is a just transition model DOE should promote instead of seeking to preempt it. The basis for the plan shows how phasing out nuclear power plants along with fossil fuel generation can help accelerate emissions reductions, the growth of the renewable energy economy, and a just and equitable transition for workers and communities. Is DOE afraid to let that happen while it is spending billions of dollars to promote the idea that we need to invest in overly expensive, failure-prone nuclear power plants?”

Union-Made Offshore Wind: AFL-CIO 2022 Convention

Decarbonizing energy intensive industries: what are the risks and opportunities for jobs?

(TUED Working Paper #14) Beyond Disruption: How Reclaimed Utilities Can Help Cities Meet Their Climate Goals - Video Discussion

By Sean Sweeney, et. al. - Labor Network for Sustainability, May 31, 2022

Web Editor's Note: this webinar discussion focuses on TUED Working Paper #14. Some of the arguments made by the presenters seem to frame advocates of locally controlled, decentralized distributed energy as "unwittingly plaing into the hands of neoliberalism", which is a debatable position (and one that some of the other attendeees push back on). 

As Illinois Coal Jobs Disappear, Some Are Looking to the Sun

By Kari Lydersen - In These Times, May 26, 2022

While Illinois phases out coal, clean energy jobs hold promise—both for displaced coal workers, and those harmed by the fossil fuel economy.

Matt Reuscher was laid off a decade ago from Peabody Energy’s Gateway coal mine in Southern Illinois, in the midst of a drought that made the water needed to wash the coal too scarce and caused production to drop, as he remembers it.

Reuscher’s grandfather and two uncles had been miners, and his father — a machinist — did much work with the mines. Like many young men in Southern Illinois, it was a natural career choice for Reuscher. Still in his early 20s when he was laid off, Reuscher ​“spent that summer doing odds and ends, not really finding much of anything I enjoyed doing as much as being underground.”

By fall of 2012, he started working installing solar panels for StraightUp Solar, one of very few solar companies operating in the heart of Illinois coal country. He heard about the job through a family friend and figured he’d give it a try since he had a construction background. He immediately loved the work, and he’s become an evangelist for the clean energy shift happening nationwide, if more slowly in Southern Illinois. With colleagues, he fundraised to install solar panels in tiny villages on the Miskito Coast of Nicaragua, and he became a solar electrician and worked on StraightUp Solar installations powering the wastewater treatment center and civic center in Carbondale, Illinois — a town named for coal. 

Solar installation pays considerably less than coal mining, Reuscher acknowledges, but he feels it’s a safer and healthier way to support his family — including two young sons who love the outdoors as much as he does. 

“You work with people who are really conscious about the environment. That rubs off on me and then rubs off on them,” Reuscher notes, referring to his sons.

Illinois has more than a dozen coal mines and more than a dozen coal-fired power plants that are required to close or reach zero carbon emissions by 2030 (for privately-owned plants) or 2045 (for the state’s two publicly-owned plants), though most will close much sooner due to market forces. Reaching zero carbon emissions would entail complete carbon capture and sequestration, which has not been achieved at commercial scale anywhere in the United States. 

Coal mines also frequently lay off workers, as the industry is in financial duress, though Illinois coal is bolstered by a healthy export market. A ​“just transition” — which refers to providing jobs and opportunities for workers and communities impacted by the decline of fossil fuels — has been an increasing priority of environmental movements nation-wide, and was a major focus of Illinois’ 2021 Climate and Equitable Jobs Act (CEJA). The idea is that people long burdened by fossil fuel pollution and dependent on fossil fuel economies should benefit from the growth of clean energy. Reuscher’s story is a perfect example. 

But in Illinois, as nationally, his transition is a rarity. Solar and other clean energy jobs have more often proven not to be an attractive or accessible option for former coal workers. And advocates and civic leaders have prioritized a broader and also difficult goal: striving to provide clean energy opportunities for not only displaced fossil fuel workers, but for those who have been harmed by fossil fuels or left out of the economic opportunities fossil fuels provided.

Nothing about us without us!

By staff - IndustriALL, May 18, 2022

Today, manufacturing, mining and energy trade unions, under the umbrella of industriAll European Trade Union, are launching their Just Transition Manifesto.

As Europe gets ready to implement the Green Deal and the measures agreed in the Fit for 55 package, 25 million industrial workers in Europe potentially face restructuring and job losses due to the green transformation of our industries - exacerbated by the COVID-19 crisis, digitalisation, trade and market developments and a volatile geopolitical situation.

The manifesto is industrial workers’ call to policymakers across Europe to ensure a transition to a green economy that is fair to ALL workers, and that does not destroy but preserves and creates good quality jobs. They want a transition that is anticipated, managed and negotiated with workers for every aspect that concerns them.

To achieve this, we need a comprehensive Just Transition framework that provides guarantees for adequate resources, is based on effective policy planning, promoting and strengthening workers’ rights, and involves trade unions through intense social dialogue.

Our manifesto therefore calls for:

  1. An industrial policy fit for ambitious climate goals and good quality jobs.
  2. Adequate resources to fund the transition.
  3. Stronger collective bargaining and social dialogue to negotiate the transitions.
  4. A toolbox of workers’ rights and companies’ duties to anticipate and shape the change.
  5. Tackling new skills needs and a right to quality training and life-long learning for every worker to support the Just Transition.

Germany going fossil-free – and Protecting Fossil Fuel Workers

By Staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, May 2022

Germany, which imports around two-thirds of its gas from Russia and other former Soviet Union states and which aims for net-zero carbon emissions by 2045, is planning to require nearly 100% renewable electricity by 2035. Robert Habeck, German’s economic affairs and climate minister, said Germany needs to triple its rate of emissions reductions.

In response to the Russian attack on Ukraine, Germany has denied a license to the recently constructed Nord Stream 2 pipeline that was to be a major conduit for gas from Russia to Germany. It is also scheduled to close its three nuclear plants by the end of this year.

Germany adopted a plan two years ago to close all coal-fired power plants by 2038. It includes compensation for coal regions, coal companies, and their workers. The total government investment to diversify the regions’ economies and create new jobs over the coming two decades as coal is phased out is $47.3 billion.

For the new German policy: Germany’s New Government Had Big Plans on Climate, Then Russia Invaded Ukraine. What Happens Now? – Inside Climate News

For more on Germany’s just transition program for coal regions and workers: What should coal communities do when power plants shut down? Ask Germany. – Vox

Switching off: Shock, denial, stress, anger. Workers are struggling to comprehend the early closure of Australia’s largest coal-fired power station and the plan for what comes next

By Mayeta Clark - ABC (Australia), April 2, 2022

On a mild March day in a brown bike shed at Eraring, the biggest coal-fired power station in Australia, 19 men in high-vis work gear crouch on a low bench around the shed walls. It’s lunch time. The men are contractors and they are looking up at their union leader, Cory Wright, for certainty.

Employed by labour hire companies, they are among the most vulnerable workers caught up in the Lake Macquarie power station’s impending closure. Many have worked at Eraring for years, some decades. But they are only entitled to a fraction of the redundancy payout that their colleagues directly hired by the station’s owner, Origin Energy, will get.

When Cory asks the workers if they want to share some thoughts, some say they don’t believe Eraring Power Station will really shut down. A bald man at the back is first to speak. “I can’t actually see them closing as yet,” he says. “That’s my thoughts personally.” Another man sitting two seats along agrees. “I don’t know. I just can’t — we can’t see it closing, not by ’25 anyway,” he says referring to the new closure date of 2025 — seven years earlier than expected.

Union officials say this denial is a form of shock that they’ve heard often since the recent announcement of Eraring’s closure. Each time they hear it, they remind the workers to take the closure date seriously.

Newcastle organiser Tim Jackson jumps in. “If we just go on the face value that it may not occur, we’re just walking down a grey path of an unknown,” he says. “So if it’s 2025, it is what it is.”

Can a Just Energy Transition Occur Under Capitalism?

Working-class environmentalism and just transition struggles in the Americas

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