Tell FERC: No bailouts for dirty, expensive energy!

The Trump administration wants to allow outdated coal and nuclear power plants to keep running -- and keep making profits for their owners -- even though they’ve proven far worse for consumers than wind and solar.

FERC doesn’t have to follow the extreme anti-environmental agenda of the Trump administration. It can block the proposal. But we need your help to push it to act!

Tell FERC: Protect consumers, not the nuclear and coal industries!

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To whom it may concern,

The Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) billion-dollar bailout proposal for nuclear and coal power plants is unjustified and unnecessary and would be devastating to the environment, economy, and consumers. As the Harvard Environmental Policy Initiative stated in its comments, DOE has failed even to make the necessary case that market prices regulated by FERC are “unjust and unreasonable.” FERC must reject this and any other proposals for bailouts, subsidies, and preferences for dirty energy, and focus on the transition to 100% clean, efficient, renewable energy.

Nuclear and coal are dirty, polluting, dangerous, and uneconomical energy sources. DOE’s own August 2017 grid reliability report confirms that the U.S. doesn’t need nuclear reactors and coal plants to keep the lights on, but this proposal would force consumers to pay billions of dollars in inflated utility bills for their electricity every year. Baseless subsidies for nuclear and coal will lead to expensive and equally baseless subsidies for natural gas.

The real way to ensure reliable, resilient electricity is with efficient, affordable, local renewable energy, efficiency, and storage–and modern, smart energy infrastructure and microgrids. Every dollar we waste propping up dirty, old fossil fuel and nuclear power plants is a dollar that could instead be spent building a clean, efficient, prosperous, sustainable energy system for the future.

If you really want to boost our economy, create jobs, revitalize local communities, and boost small businesses, then clean energy is the only way to go. Our green energy economy can keep the lights on and create millions more jobs than dirty energy could ever provide. Solar and wind are already creating twice as many jobs as coal and nuclear combined -- ten times as many for the amount of energy generated, and at lower cost.

I urge you to reject all proposed bailouts, subsidies, and incentives for nuclear power and fossil fuels -- not only the Department of Energy’s direct bailout, but other alternative, “market-based” schemes that would subsidize nuclear, coal, and natural gas power plants. It’s time to put dirty energy and the grid of the past behind us and build the renewable, efficient grid of the future.

Thank you,

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