Founded | 2007 [1] |
---|---|
Type | Nonprofit |
20-5355252 | |
Legal status | 501(c)(4) |
Location | |
Fields | Environmentalism |
Key people | Wendy Wendlandt, President Doug Phelps, Chairman |
Revenue (2019-2020) | $22,858,363 [2] |
Expenses (2019-2020) | $11,825,834 [2] |
Website | environmentamerica |
Environment America is a federation of state-based environmental advocacy organizations in the United States. [3] [4] The organization researches and advocates for environmental policies through lobbying, litigation, [5] and the mobilization of public support. [6] Environment America advocates new laws and policies to address climate change, [7] air pollution [8] and water pollution, [9] and is a proponent of clean energy, [10] while opposing offshore drilling. [11]
On November 5, 2007, Environment America separated from the state Public Interest Research Groups (PIRG), bringing with it the organization's national environmental advocacy program. The federation combined several small, state-based advocacy groups that had already separated from the PIRGs. [12] As a result of the separation of the organizations, the PIRGs' scope of work was defined as consumer, [13] health, [14] and safety issues [15] while Environment America became responsible for the group's previous environmental work. Doug Phelps, who helped build the state PIRG network, became the group's new chair. [16]
Environment America works to publicize and gain support for solving environmental problems in the United States. Its areas of interest include the use of renewable energy sources, [17] climate change, air pollution, fossil fuel dependency, [18] environmental conservation, [19] and offshore drilling. The organization releases reports on topics such as wind energy policy, [20] solar energy, [21] global warming, [22] mercury pollution, [23] companies’ compliance with the Clean Water Act, [24] energy efficient buildings, [25] extreme weather in the U.S., [26] fuel efficient cars, [27] and levels of carcinogens in waterways. [28]
Environment America has worked on various environmental policies, including supporting the American Clean Energy and Security Act [29] and the Clean Power Plan [30] to reduce climate pollution; the Clean Water Rule to include streams and wetlands in Clean Water Act protections; [31] and the EPA's proposal for a revised fuel economy label. [32]
The organization has sought to influence environmental policy through politics. Environment America publishes an annual scorecard of members of the U.S. Congress based on how they voted on environmental issues in that year's session. Members of the Democratic Party typically score higher than members of the Republican Party on the scorecard. [33] The organization has endorsed both Republican and Democratic candidates during national elections. [34] [35] In 2008 and 2012, it joined the Sierra Club, League of Conservation Voters and Clean Water Action in endorsing Barack Obama’s reelection to office. [36]
In 2012, Environment America contributed $550,000 to Fair Share Action, an independent expenditure committee also funded by Tim Gill. The group conducted get-out-the-vote efforts in support of President Barack Obama during his 2012 reelection campaign. [37]
In its December 1, 2019, evaluation of Environment America, Charity Navigator gave the organization two of four stars, with two stars for "financial" and three stars for "accountability and transparency". With respect to the latter, several concerns were indicated by Charity Navigator: the FY 2018 Form 990 audited financials did not appear to be prepared by an independent accountant, and the organization's website lacked an easily accessible donor privacy policy and audited financials. [38]
Environment America has 29 state affiliates, [39] including Environment California and Environment Oregon.
Environment California has supported environmental campaigns within California including statewide bans on plastic bags, [40] the reduction of energy inefficient appliances, [41] and the expansion of the state's solar metering program [42] and solar energy production. [43] The advocacy group has also worked to reform California’s renewable energy policies. [17] [44] Environment California supported a law that Governor Jerry Brown signed in 2011 which mandated that 33% of the state's energy must come from renewable sources by 2020, an increase from the previous requirement of 20%. [45]
Environment California released reports on the energy consumption of public schools, [46] solar projects on school campuses, [47] Californian cities' solar power production, [48] [49] "green job" training programs within the state, [50] and the costs of fossil fuels. [18]
In 2009, Environment Texas and the Sierra Club filed similar lawsuits against Chevron Phillips for alleged violations of pollution limits [51] and Shell for alleged illegal air pollution emissions. [52] Shell agreed to pay a $5.8 million settlement, reduce emissions from its Deer Park refinery by 80%, upgrade chemical units, and reduce gas flaring. [53] The following year, the environmental groups sued the largest oil refinery in the United States, ExxonMobil, accusing it of violating the Clean Air Act through the release of emissions from refineries and chemical plants in the Texas Gulf coast. [54]
PennEnvironment has released several reports that analyze environmental concerns in Pennsylvania including counties' recycling fees, [55] the dumping of toxic chemicals by industrial facilities into the state’s waterways, [56] and the building of roads and logging in the Allegheny National Forest. [19] Another report released by the state affiliate found that power plants fueled by coal in the state release large amounts of pollution that contribute to unhealthy smog and put susceptible populations at risk. In 2011, PennEnvironment condemned the government's decision to reject stricter air pollution regulations that would diminish ground-level ozone, the main component of harmful smog. [57]
In 2012, PennEnvironment, along with the Sierra Club, sued PPG Industries for the contamination of lagoons and a solid waste landfill at the company's Ford City site near the Allegheny River which resulted from the disposal of glass polishing waste. [58] Chemical testing revealed high levels of arsenic, lead, antimony, iron and chromium at the site. [58] The environmental groups claimed that the company violated the Clean Water Act and Resources Conservation and Recovery Act and failed to follow an administrative order issued by the DEP under the Pennsylvania Clean Streams Law to clean up the site in 2009. [58]
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is a United States-based 501(c)(3) non-profit international environmental advocacy group, with its headquarters in New York City and offices in Washington D.C., San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Bozeman, India, and Beijing. The group was founded in 1970 in opposition to a hydro-electric power power plant in New York.
Earthjustice is a nonprofit public interest organization based in the United States dedicated to litigating environmental issues. Headquartered in San Francisco, they have an international program, a communications team, and a policy and legislation team in Washington, D.C., along with 14 regional offices across the United States.
The Energy Task Force, officially the National Energy Policy Development Group (NEPDG), was a task force created by U.S. President George W. Bush in 2001 during his second week in office. Vice President Dick Cheney was named chairman. This group's stated objective was to “develop a national energy policy designed to help the private sector, and, as necessary and appropriate, State and local governments, promote dependable, affordable, and environmentally sound production and distribution of energy for the future." The final report was released on May 16, 2001.
Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs), also known as Green tags, Renewable Energy Credits, Renewable Electricity Certificates, or Tradable Renewable Certificates (TRCs), are tradable, non-tangible energy certificates in the United States that represent proof that 1 megawatt-hour (MWh) of electricity was generated from an eligible renewable energy resource and was fed into the shared system of power lines which transport energy. Solar renewable energy certificates (SRECs) are RECs that are specifically generated by solar energy.
The Environmental Law and Policy Center (ELPC) is a Midwest-based non-profit environmental advocacy group, with offices in Chicago, Columbus (Ohio), Des Moines (Iowa), Duluth (Minnesota), Jamestown (North Dakota), Madison (Wisconsin), Sioux Falls (South Dakota), and Washington, D.C. ELPC's mission is to advance environmental progress and economic development together throughout the Midwest through projects that advance clean energy, clean air, clean water and clean transportation.
Renewable energy commercialization involves the deployment of three generations of renewable energy technologies dating back more than 100 years. First-generation technologies, which are already mature and economically competitive, include biomass, hydroelectricity, geothermal power and heat. Second-generation technologies are market-ready and are being deployed at the present time; they include solar heating, photovoltaics, wind power, solar thermal power stations, and modern forms of bioenergy. Third-generation technologies require continued R&D efforts in order to make large contributions on a global scale and include advanced biomass gasification, hot-dry-rock geothermal power, and ocean energy. In 2019, nearly 75% of new installed electricity generation capacity used renewable energy and the International Energy Agency (IEA) has predicted that by 2025, renewable capacity will meet 35% of global power generation.
According to data from the US Energy Information Administration, renewable energy accounted for 8.4% of total primary energy production and 21% of total utility-scale electricity generation in the United States in 2022.
Citizens for Pennsylvania's Future (PennFuture) is a nonprofit environmental advocacy organization based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, United States. As of 2021, the organization has five offices across Pennsylvania: Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, Mt. Pocono and Erie.
A green-collar worker is a worker who is employed in an environmental sector of the economy. Environmental green-collar workers satisfy the demand for green development. Generally, they implement environmentally conscious design, policy, and technology to improve conservation and sustainability. Formal environmental regulations as well as informal social expectations are pushing many firms to seek professionals with expertise with environmental, energy efficiency, and clean renewable energy issues. They often seek to make their output more sustainable, and thus more favorable to public opinion, governmental regulation, and the Earth's ecology.
Green jobs are, according to the United Nations Environment Program, "work in agricultural, manufacturing, research and development (R&D), administrative, and service activities that contribute(s) substantially to preserving or restoring environmental quality. Specifically, but not exclusively, this includes jobs that help to protect ecosystems and biodiversity; reduce energy, materials, and water consumption through high efficiency strategies; de-carbonize the economy; and minimize or altogether avoid generation of all forms of waste and pollution." The environmental sector has the dual benefit of mitigating environmental challenges as well as helping economic growth.
The environmental policy of the United States is a federal governmental action to regulate activities that have an environmental impact in the United States. The goal of environmental policy is to protect the environment for future generations while interfering as little as possible with the efficiency of commerce or the liberty of the people and to limit inequity in who is burdened with environmental costs. As his first official act bringing in the 1970s, President Richard Nixon signed the U.S. National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) into law on New Years Day, 1970. Also in the same year, America began celebrating Earth Day, which has been called "the big bang of U.S. environmental politics, launching the country on a sweeping social learning curve about ecological management never before experienced or attempted in any other nation." NEPA established a comprehensive US national environmental policy and created the requirement to prepare an environmental impact statement for "major federal actions significantly affecting the quality of the environment." Author and consultant Charles H. Eccleston has called NEPA the world's "environmental Magna Carta".
New Energy for America was a plan led by Barack Obama and Joe Biden beginning in 2008 to invest in renewable energy sources, reduce reliance on foreign oil, address global warming issues, and create jobs for Americans. The main objective of the New Energy for America plan was to implement clean energy sources in the United States to switch from nonrenewable resources to renewable resources. The plan led by the Obama Administration aimed to implement short-term solutions to provide immediate relief from pain at the pump, and mid- to- long-term solutions to provide a New Energy for America plan. The goals of the clean energy plan hoped to: invest in renewable technologies that will boost domestic manufacturing and increase homegrown energy, invest in training for workers of clean technologies, strengthen the middle class, and help the economy.
Mark Zachary Jacobson is a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University and director of its Atmosphere/Energy Program. He is also a co-founder of the non-profit, Solutions Project.
Philip David Radford is an American activist who served as the executive director of Greenpeace USA. He was the founder and President of Progressive Power Lab, an organization that incubates companies and non-profits that build capacity for progressive organizations, including a donor advisory organization Champion.us, the Progressive Multiplier Fund and Membership Drive. Radford is a co-founder of the Democracy Initiative, was founder and executive director of Power Shift, and is a board member of the Mertz Gilmore Foundation. He has a background in grassroots organizing, corporate social responsibility, climate change, and clean energy. He currently serves as the Chief Strategy officer at the Sierra Club.
The climate change policy of the United States has major impacts on global climate change and global climate change mitigation. This is because the United States is the second largest emitter of greenhouse gasses in the world after China, and is among the countries with the highest greenhouse gas emissions per person in the world. Cumulatively, the United States has emitted over a trillion metric tons of greenhouse gases, more than any country in the world.
The energy policy of the Obama administration was defined by an "all-of-the-above" approach which offered federal support for renewable energy deployment, increased domestic oil and gas extraction, and export of crude oil and natural gas. His presidency's first term was shaped by the failure of his signature climate legislation, the American Clean Energy and Security Act, to pass, and then climate and energy disasters including the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010 and then Hurricane Sandy, which took place during the 2012 election. In his second term, Obama lifted the ban on crude oil exports and approved liquified natural gas exports; his planned regulatory approach to reducing greenhouse pollution in the electricity sector, the Clean Power Plan, was blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Communities for a Better Environment (CBE), previously known as Citizens for a Better Environment, is a policy-focused non-profit organization started in 1971 by Marc Anderson and David Come in Chicago, Illinois. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, CBE expanded to California, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. CBE established itself in San Francisco in 1978 and expanded to Los Angeles in 1982. Today, CBE is based in Oakland, CA and Huntington Park, CA, effecting positive change in communities throughout California, including Richmond, East Oakland, Vernon, Huntington Park, Boyle Heights, Pacoima, Wilmington, and SE Los Angeles. CBE was the first environmental organization to practice door-to-door canvassing by directly involving community members. In 1980, CBE won the United States Supreme Court decision on Village of Schaumburg v. Citizens for a Better Environment 444 U.S. 620, protecting the 1st and 14th Amendment Rights of door-to-door activists with CBE and countless other public interest organizations. CBE's early combination of grassroots organizing with research and legal work provided the innovative edge needed to challenge large-scale industries and refineries, and government policies.
The Clean Power Plan was an Obama administration policy aimed at combating climate change that was first proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in June 2014. The final version of the plan was unveiled by President Barack Obama on August 3, 2015. Each state was assigned an individual goal for reducing carbon emissions, which could be accomplished how they saw fit, but with the possibility of the EPA stepping in if the state refused to submit a plan. If every state met its target, the plan was projected to reduce carbon emissions from electricity generation 32% by 2030, relative to 2005 levels, as well as achieving various health benefits due to reduced air pollution.
The desert-covered Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the geographically largest country in the Middle East. Moreover, it accounts for 65% of the overall population of the GCC countries and 42% of its GDP. Saudi Arabia does not have a strong history in environmentalism. Thus, as the number of population increases and the industrial activity grows, environmental issues pose a real challenge to the country.
Fossil fuel regulations are part of the energy policy in the United States and have gained major significance with the nation's strong dependence on fossil fuel-based energy. Regulatory processes are established at the federal and state level due to the immense economic, socio-political and environmental impact of fossil fuel extraction and production. Over 80% of the United States' energy comes from fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas, and oil. The Bush administration was marked by the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which provided a monetary incentive for renewable energy adoption and addressed the issue of climate change. The Obama administration was made up of advocates for renewable energy and natural gas, while Donald Trump built his campaign on promises to revive the coal industry.