Sierra Club Foundation

The Sierra Club’s Beyond Oil Coalition has led and re-engaged environmental organizations and other allies to develop a more comprehensive strategy around oil to achieve more carbon reductions from the transportation sector. We recommend renewing support to the Sierra Club to facilitate the continued coalition building, and to refine strategy and start elements of the strategy addressing communication, redefining the debate around oil in the United States in the midst of an oil boom, and seeking strict environmental regulations for oil production.

This is our third year funding the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign, which seeks to retire at least one-third of the nation’s coal-fired power plants by 2020. This campaign is a major component of the Hewlett Foundation’s U.S. climate and energy strategy for 2014. Over the next three to five years, utilities will face market and regulatory pressures that could make coal plant operation more expensive than cleaner energy alternatives. This project is designed to seize those opportunities, with the aim to retire 105 gigawatts of existing coal capacity in the United States and replace that output with clean energy.

The Sierra Club was one of the leaders of the Go 60 coalition for clean vehicles that helped achieved the most aggressive fuel economy standard, the 54,4 miles per gallon by 2025, in the US. With this grant Sierra Club will lead and re-engage the coalition of environmental organizations and other allies to develop a more comprehensive strategy around reducing oil consumption to achieve more GHG reductions from the transportation sector beyond vehicle efficiency.