Las comunidades de color, que a menudo sufren la peor parte de la crisis climática, ayudaron a elegir a Biden y “es hora de asegurarnos de que nuestro gobierno ofrezca una recuperación real que reconozca la dura realidad que nuestras comunidades continúan enfrentando en el terreno”, según Elizabeth Yeampierre. , copresidente de la Climate Justice Alliance. “Hemos tenido suficientes excusas, suficientes retrasos”.
LAF Fellowship Spotlight: Bringing Environmental Justice to the Energy Grid
Andrea’s project explores how investments toward the cost of maintaining peaker plants could be redirected toward renewable energy generation and storage in environmental justice communities. From the onset, she knew that collaboration would be a central component of her approach. Despite pandemic-related barriers to that effort, Andrea has managed to conduct interviews and liaise with local environmental justice groups, such as UPROSE. “Any investment in these communities will come from their own visioning. I hope to speculate on scenarios that can influence those community planning processes.”
PEAK COALITION RELEASES PLAN TO RETIRE ALL NYC PEAKER PLANTS BY 2030
The PEAK Coalition, composed of NYLPI and environmental justice partners, has released The Fossil Fuel End Game: A Frontline Vision to Retire New York City’s Peaker Plants by 2030 –– the first-ever plan to retire all fossil-fuel peaker power plants in New York City by 2030 and replace them with clean, local distributed energy solutions including offshore wind, local solar, and battery storage. This decentralized approach creates a more resilient power system than the current grid, which depends on centralized fossil-fuel power plants.
Water Solutions Are Climate Adaptation Solutions
“You can’t say that with Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans the loss of life was simply because there was an extreme weather event. The loss of life comes out of a legacy of neglect and racism,” says Elizabeth Yeampierre, co-chair of the Climate Justice Alliance.
The Solutions Project Launches First-Ever Women's Climate Week
"As a woman in the climate movement, I am encouraged by The Solutions Project's Women's Climate Week," said Elizabeth Yeampierre. "Across the nation and especially here in New York, women have been at the forefront of some of our biggest climate and environmental justice wins. Our most recent example: NYSERDA's $200 million investment to make the frontline community of Sunset Park an offshore wind energy hub. This project will generate thousands of local jobs and accelerate New York's transition to a carbon-free and more just and equitable future."
"Women are problem solvers, leaders, creators, and the backbones of our families, communities, organizations, businesses - nearly everything," Walton said. "We've seen this throughout history and throughout the evolution of the climate movement. Please join us in celebrating these climate history makers this week and every week."
Grist 50 2021
She’s schooling her peers on environmental justice
She was 14 and looking for her first summer job when Nyiesha Mallett met the climate and justice organizers at the community organization UPROSE. Something clicked. Even though her mother is from the island nation of Grenada, she had never thought much about climate change.
“Nyeisha Mallet gives us all a good reason to feel optimistic about the future.” — Regina Hall, actress
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Elizabeth Yeampierre: Climate change is the result of a legacy of extraction, of colonialism, of slavery. A lot of times when people talk about environmental justice they go back to the 1970s or ‘60s. But I think about the slave quarters. I think about people who got the worst food, the worst health care, the worst treatment, and then when freed, were given lands that were eventually surrounded by things like petrochemical industries. The idea of killing black people or indigenous people, all of that has a long, long history that is centered on capitalism and the extraction of our land and our labor in this country
RETIRING NEW YORK CITY'S PEAKER FLEET COULD BE THE ENDGAME FOR FOSSIL FUELS
On Wednesday, the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance (NYC-EJA), UPROSE, THE POINT CDC, New York Lawyers for the Public Interest (NYLPI) and Clean Energy Group (CEG) released a comprehensive roadmap, representing the first detailed plan that sets forth specific strategies and policies to retire and replace a city’s entire fleet of fossil-fueled peaker plants.
By 2025, about 3.2 GW--approximately half of the city's existing peaker plants--can be replaced with a combination of offshore wind, rooftop solar, energy efficiency measures, and battery storage, according to the report. By 2030, all remaining peaker plants in the city--approximately 2.9 GW--can be replaced using a similar combination of these resources.
The majority of these are already required under the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), which establishes specific targets for clean energy development, including 6 GW of rooftop and community solar by 2025, 3 GW of energy storage by 2030, and 9 GW of offshore wind by 2035.
New York City’s most polluting fossil fuel plants can retire by 2030 thanks to renewables, storage
In a new study by Strategen Consulting, commissioned by a collection of environmental justice groups called PEAK Coalition, around 5.6GW of rooftop solar, 3GW of offshore wind, 5,400GWh of energy efficiency measures and 4,200MW of energy storage could fulfil the role of the city’s entire fleet by 2030. PEAK Coalition's membership includes grassroots organisation UPROSE, community development group The POINT CDC, New York City Environmental Justice Alliance (NYC-EJA), New York Lawyers for the Public Interest (NYLPI), and Clean Energy Group (CEG).
The Fossil Fuel End Game: A Frontline Vision to Retire NYC's Peaker Plants by 2030
The PEAK Coalition includes New York City Environmental Justice Alliance (NYC-EJA), UPROSE, THE POINT CDC, New York Lawyers for the Public Interest (NYLPI), and Clean Energy Group (CEG).
The report lays out a technically feasible strategy to replace about half of the existing fleet of polluting peaker plants in New York City with a combination of offshore wind, distributed solar, energy efficiency, and battery storage by 2025. The remaining peaker plants could be reliably and cost-effectively replaced with the same mix of resources by 2030. While the plan calls for major investments in new resources, most of these new resources are already required by the state’s law to address the climate crisis, the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA).
Women Run the Climate World. Just Ask Elizabeth Yeampierre
Elizabeth’s outspokenness left me feeling inspired. She pulls no punches and calls it like she sees it. She radiates an energy many women of color will be attracted to because, well, it feels familiar and refreshing all at the same time. She can so easily put into words what the rest of us are feeling and thinking yet unable to communicate. Y’all gotta see her in action to understand. Today, you’ll get a taste.
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Executive Director of UPROSE, the oldest Latino community-based organisation in Brooklyn, Elizabeth is a Puerto Rican attorney and environmental and climate justice leader and co-chairs the Climate Justice Alliance. With an impressive working history in a number of regional and national positions, she was chosen as the opening speaker for the first White House Forum on Environmental Justice. Elizabeth is an instrumental community leader and continues to spotlight the intersection of racial justice and the climate crisis in the environmental conversation.
How the legacy of environmental racism continues to shape housing in America
Elizabeth Yeampierre is co-chair of the Climate Justice Alliance and spoke to Yale Environment 360 about the project.
She told the publication how people in the community came together to build their own solar power system, which helped reduce pollution in the neighborhood and lowered energy costs.
“With the cooperative, the community actually owns the utility, owns the energy source. People will be able to access renewable energy, at a reduced cost, be hired locally to build it — and have ownership. So it’s really exciting. We’re hoping this model will birth more projects like this,” she said.
Senator Markey Introduces Legislation To Help Identify Environmental Justice Communities
“As a national alliance of frontline groups and environmental justice organizations, the Climate Justice Alliance is excited to support the establishment of this interagency committee as a good starting point and first step toward engaging the very communities who have bared the brunt of environmental racism and injustice for far too long,” said Elizabeth Yeampierre, Executive Director of UPROSE and Board Co-Chair of the Climate Justice Alliance. We look forward to ensuring it truly supports those communities most impacted, those who are forging local climate justice solutions that stop the practice of sacrifice zones continued through false solutions, and rather resource just, community based solutions that leave no one behind.”
South Brooklyn Marine Terminal To Become A Wind Turbine Assembly and Maintenance Plant, Bringing 1,200 Jobs To Sunset Park
Elizabeth Yeampierre estimates that her team at UPROSE – the Brooklyn community-based environmental justice organization she oversees – has been advocating for the creation of green jobs along the industrial waterfront of Sunset Park for over two decades.
“I found a flyer the other day at UPROSE that was dated ‘97 or ‘98,” said Yeampierre, who’s served as executive director to the Sunset Park-based organization since 1996.
Climate activists celebrate Brooklyn wind turbine plant
“This is an example that another world really is possible,” Elizabeth Yeampierre, the president of Uprose, a Sunset Park-based advocacy organization that promotes for racial and environmental justice and sustainable development, said at a press conference Thursday. “New York City is going to position itself as a leader on climate justice, and it’s going to send a message to other industrial waterfront communities that have been surrounded by petrochemical industries, waste transfer stations and powerplants, they’re going to show that it’s not only possible to bring in infrastructure, but to reduce carbon, coal pollutants, but to hire people and pay them decent wages.”
“Had the rezoning had gone through, it would have severely limited the supply chain and expansive impacts that offshore wind will bring to Sunset Park,” said Summer Sandoval, energy democracy coordinator at Uprose. Down the line, Uprose would like to see “manufacturing and decommissioning of wind turbines somewhere on the waterfront,” as opposed to having parts imported from abroad. “The long-term opportunities would have been much more difficult,” she said.
State to develop wind turbine plant on Brooklyn waterfront
“This is an example that another world really is possible,” said Elizabeth Yeampierre of advocacy group Uprose. “New York City is going to position itself as a leader on climate justice.”
Meet the Green Agitators Who Planted Seeds for Brooklyn’s Coming Wind Turbine Assembly Hub
“The possibility of bringing good paying jobs to our community and to also address climate change, for us, that’s everything,” said Elizabeth Yeampierre, executive director of the local group UPROSE. “That’s what we fight for. We fight for our people, for our abuelas, for our tias, every single day.”
NY Expands Offshore Wind Projects, Bringing Wind Hub To Brooklyn
Yeampierre said UPROSE is working with unions on developing the workforce. A part of the governor’s announcement includes a $20 million training institute at SUNY Stony Brook and Farmingdale State College for wind and renewable energy careers.
Sunset Park activists, officials, environmentalists quick to endorse wind-energy proposal
“This is a climate Justice victory— this is what the industrial waterfront of the future looks like. Addressing climate justice in NYC demands non-traditional partnerships ready to support frontline solutions and birth a frontline green new deal starting with our industrial waterfronts. Offshore wind is a necessary part of operationalizing our community-led Green Resilient Industrial District proposal in Sunset Park, Brooklyn to utilize our industrial sector to create thousands of well-paid clean energy jobs and to build for our climate future,” said Elizabeth Yeampierre, executive director of UPROSE and co-chair of the Climate Justice Alliance.