Bloomberg 'Beyond Coal' Campaign

Just one day after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) signaled that its Clean Power Plan would be rescinded, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg disclosed that his charitable foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, will be donating another $64 million to the Sierra Club and other public interest groups for the specific purpose of supporting the advocacy group's "Beyond Coal" initiative. 

Bloomberg Philanthropies has previously contributed more than $100 million to the program. Bloomberg's charitable organization said that it has partnered with the Sierra Club since 2011 and shares similar goals of protecting the environment and improving air and water quality, thereby advancing public health interests. In a press release from his foundation, Bloomberg deemed misplaced the EPA's contention that the Clean Power Plan was the culmination of Washington's "war on coal." 

To the contrary, he said, utilities and local and state governmental authorities had already begun transitioning away from coal and fuel oil on their own, because cleaner and cheaper resources were more readily available. 

Bloomberg described the Beyond Coal plan as aimed at developing more clean, green energy alternatives at the state and local levels. Bloomberg claimed that from 2011 to 2017, the Beyond Coal program has been instrumental in reducing from 13,000 to 7,500 the number of deaths a year attributable to carbon emissions in the United States. He averred that during that same time frame, the number of operational coal-fired generating plants has been cut in half. He expressed an ongoing commitment to the objectives of the campaign and encouraged local agencies, other social and environmental justice groups, and individual citizens to join with the Sierra Club in working toward even greater reductions in carbon emissions.