Beyond Coal

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign students amped up the pressure in their coal divestment campaign last week through photo petitions and chalking on campus that called for their school to divest coal!

Join hundreds of students and Bobby Kennedy, Jr in signing UIUC's Divest Coal Petition!

Beyond Coal students at UIUC got 130 photo petitions in just one afternoon - check out all the smiling faces of coal divestment on their flikr.

When I pulled into East Lansing yesterday the first thing I saw was the two looming towers of the Michigan State University campus coal plant. MSU's T.B. Simon coal plant is the largest campus coal plant in the country. And this week we need all hands on deck to build momentum to shut it down.

This Friday April 13, MSU's Board of Trustees will vote on an "Energy Transition Plan." The plan while seeming strong at face value, is missing critical elements. Most notably it lacks: 1) a date to retire the coal plant and 2) a full-scale plan to rapidly scale up efficiency and renewables.

As a result of student pressure, the plan does state the ultimate goal is to power MSU with 100% clean energy. This is a testament to the power of student organizing, and demonstrates that the university understands it’s important to transition to clean energy. However, without an actual plan to retire the coal plant, it’s a hollow promise and we need to change that.

Here in Chapel Hill, the Blue Devils down the road at Duke University are our fiercest college rivals. Hate’s a strong word, but there’s nothing we savor more as UNC students than crushing Duke in basketball.

But there’s another Duke we like even less: Duke Energy.

While UNC students won a campaign to get our campus power plant to phase out coal use by 2020, our university still purchases roughly 70 percent of our electricity from the Charlotte-based electric utility company and its filthy fleet of coal and nuclear power plants. As part of our coal divestment campaign, we’re pushing to figure out whether our school’s endowment holds stock in Duke Energy, which is on our “Filthy 15” list of companies that are hurting our communities by mining and burning coal.

Just a quick update on some things we have done at UNC to kick some coal ash this past week:

Hosting a Student Body President Forum on Sustainability – ‘Beyond Coal ditches the hippie garb and wears a tie’