The results of a Poll released by El Paso Electric Company (EPE) conducted with electric customers in El Paso, Texas on August 15 and 16 shows strong preferences for renewable energy and energy efficiency.

"The customers of El Paso Electric join those from three other major regions of Texas in calling for a clean and renewable energy future,” said Karl R. Rabago, energy program manager for the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). 'El Paso Electric took the right step in giving customers a real opportunity to voice their opinions."

Highlights of the poll results include: customers prefer clean energy options over fossil energy by overwhelming margins. When asked which option EPE should pursue first, 44% chose energy efficiency and 42% chose solar and wind energy options. (Environmental Defense Fund).

EDF Launches Electronic Labeling for Electricity

The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) announced the launch of its Electronic Labeling Project. Now with a click of a button, customers can find out where their electricity comes from, how much electricity they use, and how much pollution is emitted in producing their electricity.

The Electronic Label can be found by pointing your Internet browser to:
http://www.edf.org/programs/energy/green power/x calculator.html.

EDF's automatic pollution calculator uses estimated data from the Energy Information Administration to generate a simple and understandable label with essential facts about electricity. EDF's Electricity Facts label is designed to be similar to the nutrition labels now appearing on processed foods throughout the country.

The goal of the project is to give customers an idea of the kind of information they can have and use when choosing electricity products. As competition emerges in the electric industry, and as even regulated utilities begin offering new kinds of electricity products, customers need basic information to make important product and service choices. Utilities and other electricity providers have the hard data needed to make labels work.

EDF is working with advocacy groups around the country to create disclosure and labeling requirements for all providers. The Environmental Defense Fund, a leading, national nonprofit organization, represents 300,000 members. EDF links science, economics, and law to create innovative, economically viable solutions to today's environmental problems. (EDF)

Energy & Environmental Advocates Slam House Draft Highway Bill

House of Representative Transportation Chair Bud Shuster (R-PA-09) introduced a bill on August 28 on the reauthorization of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA). The three year bill is fraught with sections that will undermine the progressive reforms contained in the 1991 ISTEA law.

After much discussion and many assurances from committee members that the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) program would be retained without revision, Bud Shuster's draft bill would pervert CMAQ to allow the construction of new highway capacity. This new provision would allow state departments of transportation (DOTs) to use as much money as they choose to build more roads.

Currently, the construction of new capacity is allowed only if it accommodates high occupancy vehicles most of the time. In the final blow, Shuster proposes to allow states to transfer ('flex”) 50 percent of their CMAQ, Enhancements, and interstate maintenance money into other programs. Therefore, 50 percent of any increase in CMAQ and Enhancements funding could be transferred to any project, including entirely new roads.

This combination of bad provisions is akin to gutting the program. CMAQ provides a critical link between transportation and the Clean Air Act and funds projects that help reduce transportation's impact on the nation's air quality. For example, CMAQ funds have: trained mechanics to repair alternative fuel vehicles in Wisconsin; helped purchase 28 natural gas buses in Boise, Idaho, and replaced 18 diesel buses with electric buses in Santa Barbara; built pedestrian overpasses to reconnect neighborhoods split by highways; and many other innovative projects. Enhancements funding goes toward projects that build hiker/biker trails on old railroad beds, plant roadside trees and similar projects.

As of March of this year, funding was in place for a transportation alternative system in Houston. The design for the first phase of a 350 mile bike trail including bridges over the busiest thouroughfares was also near completion. A second and third phase will provide a total of over a thousand miles of dedicated bikeway for our area. Total funding for the project is $48 million, about 85 percent of which was supposed to come from ISTEA. Once again the major funding from ISTEA is being jeopardized by politicians with other agendas.

The draft bill establishes a 'high risk road safety improvement” program that would fund the construction and operational projects that improve the safety of high risk roads. This provision could allow state DOTs to widen rural roads to four lanes and not just widen sharp curbs in mountainous areas, for example.

These are just a few of the methods that Shuster is using to increase the amount of new road capacity. Each of these provisions could increase the amount of vehicle miles traveled and thereby increase the nation's oil dependence as well as air pollution attributable to cars and trucks. If your Representative is on the House Transportation Committee, the Public Citizn's Critical Mass Energy Project urges yo to call or write your Congressperson and ask him/her to:

LI>1. Support CMAQ in its current form and not to allow the use of these funds for an increase in single occupancy vehicle highway capacity.
• 2. Remove the 50% "flexibility" provision. 3. Support the idea of rural road safety improvements as long as they don't result in an increase in capacity. (Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy Project)

Artic Food Chain Threatened by Global Warming

Shrinking sea ice in the Arctic due to rising temperatures is causing reductions in ice algae crucial to the entire Arctic food chain from fish to seals and polar bears, scientists have told a Greenpeace expedition.

The Western Arctic is one of the fastest warming regions in the world, at 0.75 degrees Celsius per decade for the past three decades or several times the average global rate. Norwegian studies have found the area of the Arctic Ocean covered by sea ice has declined 5.5 percent since 1978. The Arctic is seen as an early indicator of the impacts of global climate change, caused primarily by the burning of oil, coal, gas.

Dr. Vera Alexander of the Fisheries and Ocean Science Department at the University of Alaska, an expert on ice-edge ecology, has been observing dramatic changes in temperature and ice-edge extent for the past 20 years. Dr. Alexander stated that the continued decline of the sea ice will affect the production of algae, which live beneath the ice, and form the very base of the arctic food chain. 'Without the ice algae,” Alexander noted, 'there would be no possibility of a food chain as we know it.” The resulting impacts would ripple up the food web affecting fish, seals and polar bears.

Polar bear biologist Dr. John Lentfer of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service also expressed concerns about the impacts of global warming. Noting that bears give birth in snow dens, Dr. Lentfer stated that rising temperatures and earlier spring melts could expose bear cubs too early in their development to the harsh arctic environment.

Even amidst the increasing signs of human-induced climate change, the oil industry in the Alaskan Arctic is rapidly expanding towards the Russian and Canadian borders, seeking to develop and open up several major new oil fields.

"We can't afford to burn the oil we have already found,” said Steve Sawyer, Greenpeace Arctic Expedition leader. 'Burning more than about one quarter of the world's existing reserves of oil, coal and gas risks causing catastrophic climate change. It's completely irresponsible to spend billions exploring for more."

Dr. Lentfer has also predicted serious direct impacts for polar bears resulting from ARCO's off-shore oil development in the area of Camden Bay, off the coast of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Lentfer told Greenpeace the area has the highest number of polar bear dens in Alaska. ARCO Oil plans to conduct exploratory drilling there in November, 1997.

In December nations of the world will meet in Kyoto, Japan to agree on carbon dioxide emission limitations and reductions. Greenpeace is calling for an end to all new oil exploration as a first step in the necessary phase out of fossil fuels.

CONTACT: Steve Sawyer on board the Arctic Sunrise: (872)130-2577 Paul Horsman in Anchorage (907)277-8234 Kalee Kreider in Washington, DC (202)319-2523 (Greenpeace)