Mayor Bloomberg announcing $50 million donation to coal campaign.
Photo courtesy of the National Sierra Club.

Last Wednesday an NRDC report found that Pennsylvania has some of the worst toxic air pollution from fossil-fueled power plants, finishing second to neighboring Ohio. The following day the Bloomberg Philanthropies joined the Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal Campaign” with a $50 million, four-year commitment. In his video-taped annoucement, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg explained his intent is to make our air healthy by helping to effectively retire one-third of the nation’s aging coal-powered plants by 2020.

Welcoming the support of the Bloomberg Philanthropies Randy Francisco, the Sierra Club’s Coal to Clean Energy representative in Pennsylvania, said on Thursday: “While this announcement is exciting for the Sierra Club and the Beyond Coal campaign, it is ultimately a profound, ringing endorsement of our whole movement, and the strategy that all the organizations working on coal have been pursuing, day in and day out, for the past decade.”

In a press release the Sierra Club explained that the $50 million grant will fill a significant portion of the campaign’s projected $150 million four-year budget and will have a significant impact in advancing the efforts of the Beyond Coal campaign.

The partnership will play a key role in helping the Sierra Club achieve their impact goals of:

• Cutting 30% of coal production by 2020
• Reducing mercury pollution from coal by 90% by 2020
• Replacing a majority of coal with clean energy

For more about the Allegheny Group’s ‘Coal Action Team’ and it’s “Beyond Coal’ activities, contact Randy at randy dot Francisco at sierraclub dot org.