As we round out an especially celebratory Earth Day Week, work at Public Citizen Texas is as fast-paced as ever. Though, today, our staff is pausing to celebrate a huge victory for all Austinites: yesterday, city council approved the Austin Energy Generation Plan.
Our staff worked their tails off to ensure that not only is the plan green and affordable but also that the process involved the public as much as possible.
We’re excited about the plan for its overarching goals:
1) Increase energy efficiency to 800 megawatts across the decade
2) Increase AE supply of renewable energy to 35% by 2020
3) Increase our solar production to 200 megawatts by 2020
4) Decrease our carbon emissions to 20% below 2005 levels by 2020
We’d particularly like to thank Matt Johnson and the Clean Energy for Austin coalition for all their hard work.
Now, the week in review…
Tom Smitty Smith is speaking to the employees of Texas Instruments at the company’s Earth Day party about corporate social responsibility/ sustainability.
Interns Andrew Sauls, Mona Avalos, and Patrick Reck met with Austin State Representative Elliott Naishtat. Rep. Naishtat shared stories about how he first came to Texas through the VISTA program and how his early activism led to a career in politics. He talked about his role as Vice Chairman (and former Chairman) of the Public Health Committee; and he discussed his involvement in the 2003 Democratic AWOL rendezvous in Oklahoma in order to stop Tom Delay’s scandalous–and by all rights illegal–attempt to usurp power through an unprecedented redistricting measure.
Andrew also finished his report on the greenest cities in the U.S. and is compiling a blog or two to present his findings.
David Power, this weekend, will complete his certification in Nonprofit Leadership and Management through the Texas Association of Nonprofit Organizations. The program is sponsored by the Center for Community Based and Nonprofit Organizations at the Austin Community College.
David and other Public Citizen advocates have been organizing candidate briefings for the upcoming Pedernales Electric Coop elections. A public forum will be held in Johnson City on April 27th. At the PEC headquarters, Public Citizen will educate the candidates about good governance and energy efficiency in order to demonstrate how energy efficiency affects and can help the coop keep prices low for consumers. Pedernales is the largest electric coop in the country.
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By promoting cleaner energy, cleaner government, and cleaner air for all Texans, we hope to provide for a healthy place to live and prosper. We are Public Citizen Texas.
