LA Beyond Coal Collecting Business Endorsements

Members of Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign are stepping up their campaign to stop the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) from using coal by gathering endorsements from Los Angeles businesses. Volunteers are telling business owners all over Los Angeles about the city's dependence on dirty coal-fired power plants - LADWP gets 39% of its power from coal-and asking the owners to sign Beyond Coal endorsement forms and put stickers in their windows.

As the LA Beyond Coal Campaign has grown, we've formed three teams in the San Fernando Valley, West Los Angeles, and Central Los Angeles. Each team covers several L.A. City Council districts. Often partnering with Greenpeace, we have collected endorsements from over 250 businesses, ranging from wine shops to pizza parlors, shipping centers to clothing stores. Our goal is to collect another 500 endorsements by August. We are presenting them to the City Council members as they roll in.

These endorsements will show the City Council - which has significant influence over LADWP's energy strategy - that a broad swath of stakeholders support the city's move away from coal and toward clean energy.

You can help this drive to get our city off dirty coal and onto renewable energy! Do you know a business in LA that would be willing to endorse us? Join us on one of our upcoming team canvassing dates.For more information about and to volunteer forthe Beyond Coal campaign, check out our website.

The down and dirty on coal

Coal-fired power plants are one of the largest sources of global warming pollution in the U.S., and the Sierra Club's nationwide Beyond Coal Campaign aims to drastically reduce their carbon dioxide emissions. We've already helped stop plans for 150 new coal plants over the last eight years, keeping more than 570 million tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

Los Angeles is at the forefront of this continuing fight to convert existing dirty coal plants to cleaner sources of energy. The city gets energy from one coal plant in Utah and another in Arizona. Besides emitting global warming gases, these plants discharge vast quantities of mercury, nitrous oxide, and other air pollutants and consume huge amounts of water.

The good news is that Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has pledged to rid LA of coal-fired power by 2020. With that leadership and a growing grassroots campaign, LADWP has proposed selling its ownership share of the Navajo Generating Station in Arizona. But the utility plans to keep getting power from the Intermountain Power Plant in Utah until 2027. The Los Angeles Beyond Coal Campaign is dedicated to bringing about a transition away from coal-generated power by 2020.

Worried about rising rates?

Here's the truth: our electricity rates will rise no matter what kind of energy we use. The cost of coal is rising dramatically all by itself. But as we switch to clean energy, the DWP must invest wisely in energy efficiency programs. Regardless of rate increases, energy efficiency has tremendous potential to keep our electricity bills down. Furthermore, jobs in the clean-energy economy have grown at three times the rate of other sectors.