Hundreds of Groups Sign Letter to U.S. Senate

Solar Nation recently joined with some 260 businesses, organizations and individuals as a signatory to a letter delivered to all U.S. senators, urging them to support emissions caps and develop aggressive energy efficiency and renewable energy standards.

The letter, originated by the Sustainable Energy Network*, also called on senators to reject nuclear power development, undiminished fossil fuel use, and rollbacks of environmental policies and actions.

Specifically, the letter recommended:

• The United States should establish a mandatory cap on allowable greenhouse gas emissions as well as both a near-term and a longer-term schedule for reducing overall emissions to levels consistent with the best science now available (e.g., 30% or more by 2020).
• The cornerstone of near-term U.S. climate policy should be quickly reducing energy waste and fossil fuel consumption. Rapidly curbing energy consumption by 30% or more is well within reach.
• The goal of 25% renewable energy by 2025 – or an even stronger one – should be formally incorporated in Senate climate or energy legislation.
• U.S. climate policy should include the aggressive phase-out of coal-fired plants and oil use in the transportation sector. Federal subsidies for the fossil fuel industries should be ramped down considerably, if not completely eliminated.
• There should be no financial or regulatory incentives for new nuclear construction or relicensing of existing plants.
• Existing environmental or human-health safeguards should not be rolled-back; in particular, the authority of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to regulate CO2 emissions should be left intact.

Senate Reaction

We spoke to the energy staffers for two senators known to be supportive of clean energy issues about the nuclear restrictions urged by the letter. Speaking off the record, they suggested that their senators’ support for the president’s recent announcement of loan guarantees for two new nuclear plants in Georgia may have been tactical in nature.  In other words, the senators (and perhaps the president) may have realized that the question of whether this new generation of nuclear plant really is, as the industry claims, safer and cheaper than its predecessors can only be answered if, for the first time in thirty years, a new plant is actually built.  If it follows the example of nearly every other plant in the history of nuclear construction, it will exceed its cost estimates several times over and its operation will be attended by safety concerns.  This will allow senators to come out strongly against a large-scale nuclear building program, based on demonstrable and current concerns.

Besides Solar Nation, signatories to the letter included Science in the Public Interest, Clean Water Action, the Center for Biological Diversity, Green America, Physicians for Social Responsibility and Vote Solar.

You can read the original letter, and review the list of signatories, here.

*The Sustainable Energy Network is an unincorporated network founded in 2006, comprised of 625+ organizations, businesses, and individuals advocating aggressive development of sustainable energy technologies to curb energy imports, slash greenhouse gas emissions, and phase out nuclear power.