Letter from the Director
We’re Rising to Meet New Challenges!
As I write this note on my Maryland porch, the temperature is climbing to 102 degrees and my phone is screaming about an “Extreme Heat Watch” across the region. Meanwhile, it’s so hot in Europe that record numbers of people are drowning, trying to cool off in rivers and lakes. Scientists say a Super El Nino, linked to climate change, is driving the heat. There’s also new evidence that global warming is leading to fewer clouds on the planet, compounding the terrifying runaway heat.
So there, I’ve gotten the panic phase of this note out of the way. Now I’ll recover the only way I know how: By talking about ACTION! We at Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN) read the same headlines as everyone else, then we keep ourselves sane by going out and fighting the fossil fuel polluters at every turn. And we promote renewables like the amazing 160-megawatt solar farm whose ribbon cutting I attended in Garrett County, Maryland in May. It’s now the biggest solar farm in the state and, soon, will be one of the biggest sheep farms too as 4,000 sheep graze below the panels in a perfect example of “agrovoltaics.”
But I’m not going to sugarcoat the big picture, especially with a brand new climate threat breathing down our necks: Data centers. Their rapid spread could soon reverse two decades worth of climate policies in Maryland, Virginia, and D.C. Never mind the artificial intelligence horrors this buildout could lead to (and if you haven’t watched the film The AI Doc, stop reading and watch it now!) Just the electricity needed by all these data centers – with 72 new gas plants proposed so far to power them in the US – would be equal to all of Australia’s climate pollution combined.
As you’ll see in the following pages, our team is all in on dramatically slowing down the data center buildout and demanding – DEMANDING – that they be powered with 100% clean energy.
You’ll also read about the success of “balcony solar” bills in all three jurisdictions where we work, allowing apartment dwellers and others to meaningfully lower their power bills while fighting climate change. And we’re working hard to advance “polluters pay” legislation in all three jurisdictions, forcing Big Oil – a la Big Tobacco and Big Opioid – to pay for the climate adaptation costs they have created by knowingly advancing climate harms for corporate profit.
Finally, you’ll also read about our federal work to protect funding for FEMA and NOAA, two agencies working to understand and protect Americans from climate disasters. No matter how hot it gets, we won’t stop fighting.
Sincerely,
Mike Tidwell
Executive Director
Chesapeake Climate Action Network & CCAN Action Fund
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Federal
Defending Climate Science and Preparedness
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) are on the frontlines of the climate fight. For every dollar invested in these agencies, the American people receive nearly seven dollars in benefits. And yet, the Trump Administration has proposed a $1 billion cut to NOAA, including the complete elimination of the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR), which develops tools to predict extreme weather events. Under the same proposal, $1.3 billion would be cut from FEMA – these cuts would make our communities less safe.
In response, we hosted a rally on the National Mall to defend NOAA and FEMA and worked with partners to demand Congress reject the Administration’s proposals. In an encouraging sign, Congress introduced a counterproposal to fund OAR at NOAA and pressured the Administration to drop its idea to dismantle the deep-ocean observation network. Congressional pressure has also led to FEMA hiring back many of its wrongfully dismissed employees from 2025. The fight is not over but our collective voices have stopped this Administration from executing some of its most destructive ideas. With your support, we will move ahead rapidly now! Donate today.
No Immunity Waiver
Across America, states and localities are working to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for their contributions to the climate crisis. CCAN Action Fund’s teams in Maryland and D.C. have successfully passed legislation to begin the process for accountability in those jurisdictions. In an attempt to stop these victories, the American Petroleum Institute (API), the lobby arm of the fossil fuel industry, is begging Congress for an “immunity shield.” This shield would prevent states and localities from seeking accountability, and Senator Ted Cruz and Representative Harriet Hageman introduced a bill that would do just that.
CCAN Action Fund quickly leapt into action to defend “make polluters pay” legislation and stop the fossil fuel industry from receiving a “get-out-of-jail free” card. With the help of former Washington Governor Jay Inslee, we delivered over 130,000 petition signatures with partners to congressional leaders, including 13,483 signatures from our members saying “no immunity” for the fossil fuel industry. Our team is taking on this fight from all angles: running ads in key congressional districts and placing op-eds in local newspapers to highlight the threat of the Cruz-Hageman bill. We’ll keep fighting this bill until it’s defeated. Sign our petition.
Washington, DC
A Major Step Forward to Make Polluters Pay
In June, just nine months after we launched our campaign, the D.C. Council passed and fully funded a study to make polluters pay! The study will calculate the total cost of climate change in the District and identify priorities for how the District can best adapt to extreme weather events. We are now one step closer to making sure that Big Oil — not D.C. residents — writes the check for the costs of extreme weather in the District. This victory came after more than 1,300 individual actions were taken by D.C. residents – but the work isn’t done! Over the next year, our team will continue to build our movement, from extreme weather rapid response across the District, to community listening sessions, we’re bringing the fight for climate justice to people across DC! Join the movement by signing our petition.
Bringing New Leaders and Lower Bills
From stopping Project Pipes to rejecting utility bill rate hikes, D.C.’s utility regulator – the Public Service Commission (PSC)– has the power to protect the planet and people alike by holding our monopoly utilities accountable to our climate laws. Instead, our PSC Commissioners have too often sided with polluters and profits. Now, two of our PSC Commissioners are up for reappointment. So, CCAN Action Fund is demanding new leaders who will lower our energy bills and fight for our climate. In February, we were joined by nearly 100 D.C. residents demanding new leadership at D.C.’s utility regulator at the agency’s annual oversight hearing.
Following a winter of skyrocketing utility bills, monopoly utility rate hikes, and yet another approval of the next phase of Project Pipes, CCAN Action Fund members have pushed the envelope and made new leadership at the PSC possible for the first time in years. Ready for lower utility bills? Add your name here.
Maryland
More Momentum in Maryland
We’re building power year-round in Maryland! With two newly launched Action Teams – in Prince George’s and Montgomery counties, and one in development in Anne Arundel County – we now have four Action Teams in Maryland! Building our people-power is crucial to our climate campaigns and preparing us to activate a diverse and powerful movement in the months ahead as we push forward our priorities to Make Polluters Pay and to clean up dirty data centers. Join your local action team.
Progress on Making Polluters Pay
We are working with over 200 coalition partners to educate and empower Marylanders to charge the largest, most polluting fossil fuel companies for climate change impacts, like flooding and extreme heat, that we are seeing across the state. Over the summer, CCAN is focusing on public outreach! You’ll see our team and coalition partners at parades, community events, and more. All in preparation for 2027, when the coalition will support Maryland’s polluters pay bill, the Responding to Emergent Needs from Extreme Weather (RENEW) Act.
No New Dirty Data Centers
Rapid, unrestrained data center development is a threat to our pocketbooks, ecosystems, water resources, jobs, and communities. In response, we are working to call for a statewide requirement that any new data center constructed in Maryland be powered with its own clean energy – new clean energy that the data center companies bring online themselves to meet their energy needs! Because at CCAN, our stance is that data centers constructing and using clean energy is the floor, not the ceiling, for data center reform.
To clean up data centers in Maryland, our organizing team is working to assist local organizations in their own fights against new data center construction. Together, we’ve won fights in Baltimore City, Harford County, Montgomery County, and Frederick County to enact data center bans, moratoriums, and ambitious local requirements for future development.
We are in conversations to develop the most ambitious, protective, and feasible statewide policy to ensure that the Big Tech takeover doesn’t hurt Marylanders. Join us in November for our People Over Data Centers – Maryland Action Summit in Baltimore.
Virginia
Steps Forward for Clean Energy in the Commonwealth
Virginia’s 2026 legislative session delivered some of the most significant clean energy progress the Commonwealth has seen in years — and it happened because people across Virginia spoke up and demanded action.
Among the session’s biggest victories was Virginia’s return to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a proven program that reduces power plant pollution while investing in flood resilience and energy-efficiency programs across the state. Lawmakers also passed landmark solar siting reforms, ending local solar bans and clearing the way for more clean energy projects!
Virginia also became the second state in the nation to authorize plug-in “balcony solar,” opening the benefits of clean energy to millions of renters, condo residents, and homeowners who are unable to install rooftop solar. And, in a major step toward a cleaner grid, legislators dramatically expanded Virginia’s battery storage goals, helping ensure that clean energy can power our homes and businesses more reliably and affordably!
These victories build on progress to expand residential solar and storage, improve access to energy-efficiency programs, streamline clean energy deployment, and prepare communities for electric vehicles. Donate to support future victories!
Data Center Moratorium, NOW!
We have an uphill battle in Virginia to address out-of-control data centers. And for a while, we had the momentum. Policies to better control data centers enjoy bipartisan support in Virginia, and legislators introduced well over 50 bills this legislative session to control their environmental and economic impacts. But Big Tech got its way and the proposals failed.
We are committed to holding Virginia policymakers accountable for their continued failure to protect Virginia’s communities and environment from out-of-control data center growth – including by pushing for a pause on any new approvals until Virginia has strong guardrails in place that protect communities, prevent data centers from passing their energy costs onto Virginians, safeguard our water and land resources, and ensure our clean energy transition continues on track and on time. Message your Virginia leaders: Demand a moratorium now!
ACTION MEMBERSHIP
EcoMoCo: Montgomery County Volunteers Are Joining Us to Build More Climate Advocacy Power!
Rolling up their sleeves to get to know each other and make a real difference, EcoMoCo is one of CCAN’s newest action teams, based in Montgomery County, Maryland! Formed in July of 2025, the team launched by building their relationships with one another, sharing their ideas for the world as it should be, and laying the foundation for their collaboration as well as long term clean energy progress. They know our sustained success means having a longer table, not a higher fence.
Along with supporting CCAN’s mission and campaigns, the team identified early on their priority issues of data center education and reform as well as reliable, accessible, and sustainable public transportation. Last year, team members were instrumental in CCAN Action Fund’s victory to pass the RENEW Act by assembling and executing in-district meetings with state legislators.
Continuing to build on that momentum, EcoMoCo team members are conducting outreach in various parts of the county with door-to-door canvassing in many of the neighborhoods hardest hit by climate change to hear from residents about how high utility bills are impacting them, and offer them the opportunity to support our campaigns centered around data center reform and making polluters pay. The team also works to share energy assistance and community resources. You can find them tabling at cultural events and resource fairs throughout the county, representing CCAN and building new partnerships with community organizations.
To do this outreach, they are using organizing skills they have learned and developed, such as the ones offered this summer through CCAN’s Summer Skill-Up Series, which includes an Introduction to Organizing, One-on-One Relational Meetings, and Power Mapping. These training sessions introduced the concept of organizing, theory, and skills for building a strong foundation on how to recruit people, keep them engaged, and move them into action and leadership.
CCAN EcoMoCo meets monthly on the third Sunday afternoon of the month and their meetings rotate around the county. To learn more about this group or how to join, contact: ccan-ecomoco-team@chesapeakeclimate.org
Saving Trees from Invasive Vines
Our Tree Rescue Teams are Growing Across the DMV
After spending the winter braving snowcrete-covered sidewalks to survey over 1,500 trees and talk with hundreds of homeowners about the threat of invasive vines, our tree rescue teams had a busy spring!
Once the snow melted (enough), we rolled up our sleeves and got to work. We primarily focused in Ward 7 of D.C. and in Hyattsville and Riverdale in Prince George’s County, Maryland, engaging with hundreds of new volunteers during our weekly events on Saturdays and Wednesdays. So far this year, we’ve already saved over 1,600 trees!
We also launched a new volunteer effort thanks to a grant from the D.C. Department of Energy and Environment (DOEE). This project has allowed us to expand they type of plants that we remove by supporting assisted natural regeneration efforts in Langdon Park in NE D.C. So far, we’ve held six events removing non-native invasives such as bush honeysuckle, multiflora rose, porcelain berry, kudzu, and more! The energy has been amazing and we are so grateful for all of the volunteers who have contributed to the effort. Check out our calendar to find an event in D.C. or Maryland.
