Renewable Energy & Climate Crisis

Climate crises are a part of our daily lives in ways that could have been prevented. All we have is now, and our actions make a difference. Renewable energy is an investment that should have been included in the energy mix and subsidized decades ago yet we are seeing the economic, social, and political viability of renewable energy alternatives, such as solar, today more than ever before.

Current Campaigns

Renewable energy now

New Jersey can lead by investing in responsible renewable energy projects, grid hardening and reducing energy consumption overall. Consideration for the overburdened communities across the state experiencing cumulative physical and mental impacts from fossil fuel emitting energy infrastructure must be made as innovative renewable energy solutions become ever available. Cutting contamination at the source, Waterspirit is working to divest from fossil fuel to invest in lasting secure methods of energy consumption. Oregon just accomplished divestment-NJ should be next! See our Winter/Spring 2024 DivestNJ Campaign Brief for ways to help. Waterspirit is ensuring that such projects are done responsibly, with respect for all life, by ensuring a community rooted public process. See DivestNJ’s first 2024 Statewide Zoom HERE. Shouldn’t investments in a livable future be prioritized? Join us!

Don’t Gas the Meadowlands

This project has been prevented! See our blog post: NJ Transit Dirty Gas Project is Scrapped

Don’t Gas the Meadowlands, an enduring and growing statewide coalition of grassroots organizers, community leaders, health experts, and concerned residents alike, continues to put pressure on NJ Transit. Through providing comments to NJ Transit leadership both in person and over the phone, this focused group held NJ Transit to their once promise to withdraw the air permit for a methane gas power plant. Sharing a renewable energy option we knew was possible, NJ Transit did the right thing for current and future generations! This project could be completed using renewable energy alternatives. NJ Transit has since voted to increase rates by double digits. Reciprocative public engagement is at an all time low. Join us!

Stop Dumping on Newark

Newark is overburdened as defined by New Jersey’s landmark environmental justice law, S232, which is set to be implemented, and could be implemented sooner if leadership allowed. 50% of Newark residents are living in low income households and 60% majority people of color. This historically marginalized community is still facing the onslaught of multipronged industry pollution and related direct, indirect and cumulative physical and mental health impacts across generations in 2024. Advocating in solidarity with the beautiful lives thriving in Newark, Waterspirit aims to help amplify the need for investments today that will tangibly right the wrongs of the past. We may build the future we wish to see, together.  To get involved, see our Winter/Spring 2024 campaign brief.

Recent Highlights

Our coalition efforts have been capable of preventing even more methane gas pipelines, such as stopping the Williams/TRANSCO Northeast Supply and Enhancement (NESE) fracked gas pipeline and compressor station and preventing more unnecessary dirty methane gas in the Keasbey section of Woodbridge, NJ Transit’s proposed dirty gas microgrid project. We continue to prevent more fossil fuel projects and stifle those that are still vying for approval, like that before PVSC (see above).

Waterspirit’s Public Policy & Justice Organizer, Rachel Dawn Davis, partook in a technical conference before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission November 2021 (she wrote about it here). Since then, it has become clear that FERC is being pressured by polluters to pause on considering social costs of methane production. Methane is 86 parts more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon per 100 years and finally in 2023 this is becoming more mainstream knowledge. No federal entity should be taking seriously, let alone investing in technologies reliant on the fossil fuel. We must build a just and stable future that works for workers and pension holders. Check a webinar demystifying Carbon Capture Utilization and Sequestration (CCUS) “Addressing False Solutions: Blue Hydrogen is a Climate Disaster.” Rachel Dawn was quoted about this in the publication Common Dreams, “100 + Groups Urge Congress to Abandon ‘Carbon Utilization Fantasy.’”

On the heels of the hydrogen hub announcement from the US Biden Administration, Rachel Dawn recently shared about the importance of educating ourselves and decision makers about the dangers of methane pollution while strengthening people powered prevention.

Visit our Calls to Action page for relevant, timely advocacy activities.