Jerry Elmer, senior attorney for the Conservation Law Foundation, the environmental group that led the fight against the project, alongside the Town of Burrillville, also waited at the courthouse, arriving at the Rhode Island Supreme Court clerk’s office an hour before closing time. “The case is over. Invenergy lost. The climate won,” he said.
Just as families in Newport County prepared for a brutal winter night in late January, National Grid cut gas service to more than 7,000 customers, leaving homes and businesses in the cold. They called it a precaution and couldn’t say how it would last. Ultimately, the outage lasted a full week.
“As we said in June, this is a huge victory for Rhode Island and for the health of our communities,” said CLF Senior Attorney Jerry Elmer. “In the face of climate emergency, opening a fossil fuel plant that will spew carbon pollution for decades is simply reckless. After years of lies and misinformation, Invenergy’s efforts to pave over a forest to build this dirty plant have been dealt a substantial loss. This is proof that communities can stand up to big gas and win.”
We’re updating our electric grid for the 21st century.
“Customers should absolutely not be straddled with higher bills because of the mistakes of utilities,” said Amy Moses, Vice President and Director of CLF Rhode Island. “But the report’s suggestion of reducing demand for gas simply doesn’t go far enough. We need to get off dirty fracked gas and focus on clean renewables, not expand infrastructure that only harms our air and destroys our climate.”
(This article originally appeared in Commonwealth Magazine.)
We do not need another study to tell us that the impacts of climate change are here. Storms are growing more intense each year, and we continue to break heat records every summer. We must reach net-zero emissions in the coming decades to ensure these conditions do not get worse, and the 2050 Roadmap Bill provides the plan to get us there.
Last year, you took action to oppose a proposed bill that would have threatened public access to Boston’s waterfront and set a dangerous precedent for waterfront areas statewide. That bill died in the legislature last session but has since been revived and is up for debate by a key legislative committee next week. So now… Continue reading Revived Bill Threatens Waterfront Public Access in Massachusetts
Biomass developers are pushing for state policy changes that would allow their plants to emit more air pollution, underreport their climate impacts, and take families’ and businesses’ money while harming the health of our communities. CLF is joining Springfield residents and other local groups in fighting back.
Shell Oil is putting Providence and the iconic Narragansett Bay at risk.
