Friends of the Earth believes our energy use should not make us, or the planet, sick. We promote conservation and the use of clean energy, and we fight to end our unhealthy relationship with harmful energy sources that endanger humans, cause pollution and exacerbate the climate crisis.
Follow the links to learn more about our work to promote clean energy and efficiency as well as our effort to fight harmful energy sources including bad biofuels, big oil, dirty coal and other dirty fuels, and risky nuclear reactors.
Read the latest news and updates from our energy campaigns below:
The 2010 House Interior Approprations Bill passed with a narrow win for biofuels and a major loss for CAFOs in committee. Overall, the common theme between both the biofuel and CAFO amendments was a broad attack on science. Both amendments may have had little regulatory impact, but still would have prevented the EPA from merely examining and better understanding the broad range and types of emissions different agricultural sectors contribute to global warming.
Friends of the Earth has launched an online advertising campaign in opposition to the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill moving through Congress. Here are some of the ads we're running on progressive and environmental websites.
The American Clean Energy Leadership Act of 2009 (ACELA) fails to heed President Obama’s call for clean energy jobs and a green economy. Instead it takes the same past false steps and increases our reliance on failed dirty energy sources.
ACELA 2009 is expected to become a part of a larger climate and energy bill that would come to the Senate floor in the fall. It would be combined with global warming legislation from Chairwoman Boxer’s Environment and Public Works Committee, an energy tax package from Chairman Baucus’s Finance Committee and pieces from other committees.
A bill intended to spur the United States’ transition to a clean energy economy and reduce global warming pollution is advancing in Congress. The bill (H.R. 2454), sponsored by Representatives Henry Waxman and Ed Markey, passed the House Energy and Commerce Committee on May 21.
Friends of the Earth appreciates the work members of Congress have put into crafting and debating this bill and welcomes its multi-pronged approach. Using an array of complementary strategies to transition to a clean energy economy is smarter than relying on any single policy option.
Unfortunately, special interest lobbyists paid by Big Oil, Dirty Coal and other polluters—as well as Wall Street traders—have managed to substantially weaken the bill. (The fact that giant polluters like Shell Oil and Duke Energy, which is trying to build new coal-fired power plants, are backing the bill demonstrates its impotence.)
On June 8, a settlement was reached shortly before Shell was due to stand trial in U.S. federal court for complicity in the executions of Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other nonviolent Nigerian activists.
After 13 years of legal battles, the deaths of these activists who opposed Shell's gas flaring and environmental devastation of their homeland have been recompensed. Shell was forced to pay $15.5 million, including $5 million for a trust to benefit communities in Ogoni territory in Nigeria, the homeland of the executed activists.
Just when you thought that the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill couldn't get any worse, it does.
According to Friends of the Earth's analysis of the bill, the bill would over 100 billions of dollars in permits to the industries that contribute greatest to global warming: coal and oil. Happily, the bill also provides a significant amount of money to low income and consumers as well as smaller portions to international adaptation and clean energy technology transfer.
On May 21, comprehensive climate change legislation passed a congressional committee for the first time in history. Unfortunately, what should be a momentous occasion for all of us is, instead, a huge letdown.
For more than 10 years, I have fought in the trenches with champions such as Congressmen Henry Waxman and Ed Markey (the bill's sponsors), hoping for an opportunity to pass the sort of bold clean energy bill that our planet desperately needs. After last year's elections, we finally have that opportunity, but it's being squandered with this bill.
The last week’s deliberations on climate legislation in the House Energy and Commerce Committee 
did not leave environmental safeguards from biofuels unscathed. The bill containes severely compromised language on forest protections for the Renewable Fuels Standard’s biofuels mandate. While several amendments to further weaken forest protections were introduced, they fortunately failed to get enough votes in committee voting.
The biggest looming threat, however, is increasingly noisy calls to hold the climate bill hostage if the global warming protections in the Renewable Fuels Standard are not significantly weakened. While amendments to weaken this provison did not pass in committee, these global warmng provisions are still under attack by the powerful agricultural committee.
On Wednesday, we released a joint statement with Greenpeace and Public Citizen to express our concern about disturbing changes to the new climate bill currently being discussed in Congress:
We are extremely troubled by the reports coming out of the Energy and Commerce Committee last night on additional compromises to the already flawed American Clean Energy & Security Act. The world needs real leadership from Congress and the Administration to address global warming — action that will enable us to transform our economy with clean, renewable energy technology, new green jobs and show leadership internationally. If reports are true, the compromises being struck on the bill undermine these goals.
At its annual pilgrimage to lobby in Washington, the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA), an umbrella organization of public interest organizations working on U.S. Department of Energy nuclear issues, recognized our southeastern nuclear campaign coordinator, Tom Clements, as “Grassroots Activist of the Year.” The award was presented on April 28 in the Rayburn House Office Building to a gathering of activists based both in Washington and around the country.
