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:
Mike is a member of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nations, an indigenous community located at Fort Chipewyan (or Fort Chip for short) in Alberta, Canada. European traders established an outpost here in 1821, and in subsequent years the tar sands industry has sunk its teeth into the land and the inhabitants.
Biofools Day 2010 is rapidly approaching! We’re calling out some of the biggest promoters of harmful industrial biofuels. We’ve highlighted five major biofuels proponents, including corporate executives, industry lobbyists, and government representatives, and we’ve dubbed them Biofools. Now, we need your help to vote for number one.
Happily, last year several environmentally damaging tax credits expired. These subsidies went to a range of dirty energy sources, including fossil fuels and bioenergy, at the expense of taxpayers. Unfortunately, Congress is quickly working to retroactively reauthorize them despite their high economic and environmental costs. Not only does this fly in the face of Obama's call to end global subsization for fossil fuels, but it also ignores fiscal responsibility in a time of economic strife for the country. Friends of the Earth wrote to Congress and asked that many of these credits remain unauthorized.
President Obama has recently adopted an “anything goes” approach to energy policy. In his State of the Union address, President Obama announced support for increased oil drilling, “clean” coal, and new nuclear reactors. Soon after, the president called for more than $55 billion in government loan guarantees to begin construction on the first new nuclear reactors in the United States in thirty years. Then came the news on February 16 that President Obama was giving out the first loan guarantee, $8 billion to Southern Company, to start building two reactors in Georgia.
In
early February 2010, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its final rules on the Renewable Fuels Standard. EPA stood up to the biofuels industry and accounted for the indirect greenhouse gas emissions that biofuels production causes when calculating the global warming impact of biofuels. However, contrary to previous scientific analysis, EPA found that corn ethanol produced at non-coal powered facilities emits fewer greenhouse gas emissions as compared to gasoline, even when considering indirect land use changes. Friends of the Earth looks forward to digging further into the data in order to determine the basis for this sudden shift to a pro-corn outcome.
Friends of the Earth recently released two TV ads in South Carolina and Georgia opposing the Obama administration's proposed bailout of the nuclear industry. For more information about the ads, see our release. They're called "Family" and "Risk," and you can see them below:
Resources and information on Friends of the Earth's tar sands campaigns.
President Obama's climate negotiators are in Copenhagen, joining leaders from across the globe for the critical two week climate conference. Friends of the Earth U.S. president Erich Pica and staff members Nick Berning, Kate Horner, Karen Orenstein, Ian Illuminato and Elizabeth Bast are reporting in a variety of ways on what's happening both inside and outside those talks. We're working with more than 400 colleagues in the Friends of the Earth international network to push President Obama and other leaders of developed countries to lead the way to a strong and just global agreement to tackle climate change.
Check back here regularly from December 7 - 18 for videos, pictures, notes and ways you can become involved!
