Saving Energy Together in the Four Lakes Group (Madison & SW Wisconsin region)

by Seth Nowak, Conservation Committee Chair

Four Lakes Conservation Committee has called on all our group members and the general public to save energy this fall as the keystone for our new campaign. My aim is to work with our group’s Conservation Committee to unleash the phenomenal and enormous volunteer potential within our group to create a model campaign that is totally integrated with the John Muir Chapter Global Warming Priority Campaign. As
we refine it, we can adapt it to groups all across the John Muir Chapter.

As we continue to build our efforts, involve more people, and get more results, we’ll be taking notes on what works and what doesn’t in order to improve our campaign. Our global warming and clean energy campaign listserv already has 31 people on it. We’re working closely with the Madison Area Clean Energy Coalition each week. The Coalition’s member organizations boast thousands of members, working towards a similar vision.
The momentum is growing and it is incredibly exciting. We’ve been asked by a local newspaper editor, “Why are we getting so many letters about energy issues?”Working with Sierra Club Midwest Office Staff, we helped get a nearcapacity hearing room full of supporters to the MG&E air pollution permit hearing, the day after the mid-term congressional elections.

What’s amazing is that every single speaker during the entire hearing was on the side of lowering air pollution limits and advocating solutions. No one said anything about just renewing the permit as it was, or that we had
lowered air pollution enough, or that we should free up the utility from burdensome environmental regulation. This went on for hours and we’re only a few months into our campaign!

The Four Lakes Conservation Committee has an integrated plan:

1. Saving Energy Together
All 4,300 of us save energy as individuals, both at home, at work and away from home. We’ll write down what we promise to do on the Energy Saving Pledge Form, and then add up how much energy we are saving every
few months. The center of the campaign is individuals taking action to do simple tasks that make a difference to save energy. For example, changing one incandescent light bulb to a compact fluorescent and will save
energy, money, and reduce global warming pollution.

2. Stop the Line
American Transmission Company is planning to build new high-voltage electric transmission lines because of increasing electricity demand. Each line will cost $100 million dollars and every route proposed cuts
through a natural area such as the UW Arboretum or a state park. If we can save energy and reduce electric demand, the central argument for building new lines will fail.

3. Advocate Co-Generation
Today 75% of our electricity is from coal burned in dirty, deadly, outmoded coal-fired power plants. There are no so-called “clean” coal plants in the Four Lakes area. Some are 100 years old, using outmoded systems from the 1950’s and lacking modern pollution controls. They spew out soot, smog, and mercury, poisoning our air and water. The health effects are staggering, making heart attacks and asthma attacks more frequent and
more deadly. Every fish you catch in any lake now contains toxic mercury, and much of it got there from coal pollution. Mercury doesn’t go away, so even if we were able to reduce the amount of mercury from coal
plants, it would still keep building up in our lakes, our fish, and our bodies. Since we won’t stop needing energy totally, we can replace dirty coal plants in Madison with one cleaner, more efficient natural gas
fired co-generation plant as a model for what can be done. Co-generation refers to a power plant that uses the “waste” heat from generating electricity to heat buildings, making it vastly more efficient.

Saving Energy Together fulfills every aspect of the Sierra Club mission statement, keeps money in our wallets, and grows our economy, improving our communities both now and for decades to come. If we each take just one new energy saving step, it will add up to a massive change that will make a huge difference. Sierra
Club has a wealth of information and resources you can use to make saving energy easier, more educational, and fun. So let’s do something! See the www.4lakes.org website for more information
on taking action.

Seth Nowak lives in Madison and is the Four Lakes Conservation Committee Chair. He is on the Steering Committee of the Madison Area Clean Energy Coalition, is an energy volunteer at Clean Wisconsin, and serves on the Board of the Citizens Energy Cooperative of Wisconsin.