The climate crisis will require life style changes and spending changes!

From Stephanie Wissman, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, November 9, 2023

Regarding the article “Pittsburgh-based plan passed over as hydrogen hub selections draw statewide praise” (Oct. 13, TribLIVE): Building a lower carbon future means ensuring the success of the Department of Energy’s new hydrogen hubs. The hubs are networks of clean hydrogen producers, consumers and connective infrastructure working together to kick-start the growth of a low-carbon hydrogen economy.

Pennsylvania and the Appalachian region’s abundant natural gas and skilled workforce make our area a prime location for hydrogen development, with the promise of economic growth and advancing shared climate goals.

A recent study found that if policies are implemented to support all types of hydrogen development, it could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 37% through 2050 and inject billions of dollars into the economy through jobs. To unlock these benefits, we need to start building the necessary infrastructure.

Given a workforce of over 423,000 already supported by the natural gas and oil industry, Pennsylvania is ready to embrace this new energy opportunity. With over half the proposed hubs using hydrogen produced from natural gas and carbon capture, this project will kick-start the next generation of energy development.

Pennsylvania has a proud history of energy production and a wealth of potential for innovation. Let’s all work together to make hydrogen a cornerstone of our cleaner energy future.

>>> Stephanie Catarino Wissman, Executive Director, American Petroleum Institute Pennsylvania, Harrisburg

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‘Climate Scam’: 180+ Groups Tell Biden to Drop Support for Hydrogen

From an Article by Jake Johnson, Common Dreams, August 22, 2023

“Calling hydrogen clean energy is a scam to prop up the oil and gas industry,” said one campaigner.

More than 95% of hydrogen produced in the United States is made using fossil fuels, but that hasn’t stopped its backers — including industry groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — from touting the energy source as critical to the fight against climate change.

A diverse coalition of advocacy organizations on Tuesday implored the Biden administration to stop buying into the hype.

In a letter to officials at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), more than 180 groups called on the administration to abandon plans to invest in hydrogen projects, warning that “a large-scale buildout of hydrogen infrastructure will further exacerbate the climate crisis and disproportionately harm people of color, low-income communities, and Indigenous peoples.”

Two recently enacted pieces of legislation—the Inflation Reduction Act and a bipartisan infrastructure measure championed by oil industry ally Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.)—include benefits for the hydrogen industry.

The latter bill authorized the Department of Energy to spend roughly $8 billion on developing Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs (H2Hubs), drawing outrage from community organizers in Colorado, New Mexico, and other states behind the Western Interstate Hydrogen Hub, a project aimed at expanding U.S. hydrogen production.

“We recognize that the Bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act directs DOE to fund these hubs, but we ask DOE to find a different path and reject this false solution. It’s time for DOE to do the right thing,” the groups wrote in their letter on Tuesday.

The groups behind the letter — including the Center for Biological Diversity and Food & Water Watch — note that hydrogen production generates significant planet-warming emissions.

“Hydrogen lifecycle emissions which use carbon capture and storage are 20% greater than directly burning natural gas or coal, and 60% greater than burning diesel oil, because of the increased fossil fuels required to power it,” the letter states. “The process of producing gray and blue hydrogen is a major source of fugitive methane emissions from flaring, transportation, and other upstream processes—releasing even more potent greenhouse gases and exacerbating atmospheric warming over the next two decades.”

“President Biden can’t claim to be a climate leader while his administration continues to embrace the hydrogen climate scam and other policies that continue to perpetuate fossil fuel production and infrastructure.”

As Nature explained in an editorial warning against “overhyping” hydrogen, “Most hydrogen is currently made by processes—such as steam reformation of natural gas (methane)—that produce large amounts of CO2 as a by-product.”

“Although ‘green’ hydrogen can be made by using electricity from renewable sources to split water molecules,” the outlet added, “this process is costly compared with more conventional production methods.”

Silas Grant, a campaigner with the Center for Biological Diversity, said Tuesday that “calling hydrogen clean energy is a scam to prop up the oil and gas industry.”

“The Biden administration’s plans to expand this dirty energy will only increase oil and gas extraction at a time when the climate emergency demands the opposite,” said Grant. “We need investment in affordable, reliable, community-supported renewable energy like wind and solar.”

The coalition’s letter comes two months after New Mexico-based advocacy organizations urged the Biden administration to reject funding for the Western Interstate Hydrogen Hub, arguing the initiative would “devastate public health, clean air, Indigenous sacred places, and the climate.”

“The climate crisis poses a grave threat to all life on Earth,” the groups wrote in a letter to the U.S. Energy Department. “DOE has the power to help lead a transformation to a more sustainable future. To do so, you must help phase out fossil fuels and reject false solutions like hydrogen.”

But the Biden White House has yet to waver in its support for hydrogen, claiming in a brief last month that “clean hydrogen has the potential to play an important role in decarbonizing the U.S. economy.”

Jim Walsh, policy director at Food & Water Watch, countered Tuesday that investments in hydrogen are “a distraction from real climate action that will cause more pollution, more strain on water resources, and more extraction of climate warming fossil fuels.”

“President Biden can’t claim to be a climate leader while his administration continues to embrace the hydrogen climate scam and other policies that continue to perpetuate fossil fuel production and infrastructure,” Walsh added.

Virginia environmental groups call for a declaration of climate emergency & protest the Mountain Valley Pipeline in Richmond (8/2/22)

From an Article by Sarah Vogelsong, Virginia Mercury, August 2, 2022

A deal between Democratic congressional leadership and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin III over sweeping federal climate legislation could force the completion of Mountain Valley Pipeline, according to a one-page summary of the agreement’s provisions obtained by The Washington Post.

The final item on the summary reads: “Complete the Mountain Valley Pipeline.”

Since the surprise 11th-hour deal between Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and the Democratic Manchin resurrected President Joe Biden’s climate change agenda last week, Virginia environmental groups and many landowners in the state’s southwestern region have been waiting uneasily to learn the agreement’s terms.

Numerous national news outlets reported that Manchin’s support was linked to promises by Democratic leaders to pass separate legislation smoothing the fraught federal permitting process for fossil fuel pipelines such as Mountain Valley, a 303-mile-long conduit planned to carry gas from the Marcellus shale fields of West Virginia into Virginia.

The summary released Monday, which a Manchin spokesperson confirmed Tuesday reflects the provisions the senator is seeking, offers the clearest look yet at what those promises are. For Mountain Valley, the asks are twofold: First, require federal agencies “to take all necessary actions to permit the construction and operation” of the pipeline. Second, transfer jurisdiction over legal cases concerning the pipeline from the Richmond-based 4th Circuit Court of Appeals to the D.C. Circuit.

Lee Williams, director of Green New Deal Virginia and advocacy chair of the Richmond-area Falls of the James chapter of the Sierra Club, reacted to the proposal with dismay. Environmental groups “want everything” that’s in the federal climate bill known as the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, she said. “We’ve been asking for it for the last decade. Unfortunately, to get Sen. Manchin to vote for it, they literally threw Southwest Virginia under the bus.”

Exactly what Democratic leaders promised Manchin, however, remains unclear. Despite the one-page summary that has been released, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine (D) said during a Tuesday teleconference that “there is no connection between voting on the Inflation Reduction Act and then having to vote for the Mountain Valley Pipeline or a permitting bill.” Also, “The deal was (that) in exchange for getting an agreement on the Inflation Reduction Act, we will have the opportunity to debate and vote on permitting improvements, but no one’s made commitments about how they’re going to vote, and I’m certainly not going to make a commitment until I see what that bill is,” he said.

Valeria Rivadeneira, a spokesperson for Virginia Sen. Mark Warner (D), said the senator would review the proposal “once the full legislative text is made available.”

Originally expected to be completed by 2018, Mountain Valley Pipeline has been hampered by staunch opposition in both Virginia and West Virginia, hundreds of environmental violations and a string of successful legal challenges in the 4th Circuit that have repeatedly stripped the project of necessary federal permits. Construction has proved especially halting along a Southwest Virginia corridor that crosses through part of the Jefferson National Forest in Giles, Craig and Montgomery counties.

This summer, with few immediate breakthroughs evident, the developers sought permission from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which has authority over pipeline construction, to extend its deadline another four years.

With delays and costs mounting, investors have become increasingly skeptical that the pipeline will ever be completed. In a February filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, project investor NextEra Energy wrote that “continued legal and regulatory challenges have resulted in a very low probability of pipeline completion.”

The deal with Manchin could change all that. Amid news of the agreement, shares in lead pipeline developer Equitrans Midstream soared to a three-month high Tuesday.

“MVP is being recognized as a critical infrastructure project that is essential for our nation’s energy security, energy reliability, and ability to effectively transition to a lower-carbon future,” Equitrans spokesperson Natalie Cox wrote in an email.

More than 300,000 miles of natural gas pipelines exist in the U.S., she noted in a lengthy statement. “None of these existing pipelines have undergone the extensive level of environmental research, analysis and review that has been performed on the MVP project.”

The reforms to the federal energy permitting process outlined in the summary document, which would include timelines for permitting reviews and a statute of limitations for court challenges, leave Virginia environmental groups in a tight spot. Organizations that last week hailed the sudden reappearance of federal climate action are now left scrambling to decide whether they can swallow a deal that includes Mountain Valley Pipeline, a project many have spent years opposing.

“We’re not going to sit by and roll over and let Southwest Virginia be a sacrifice zone,” Williams told the Mercury Tuesday after leading a demonstration in downtown Richmond calling on Biden to declare a climate emergency, one of many organized by activists nationwide. “But we don’t want to blow up the deal. It’s a fine line.”

We don’t want to blow up the deal. It’s a fine line. Some groups have already come out in opposition.

“We firmly oppose any approach by Congress that sacrifices frontline communities as part of a political bargain,” said Jessica Sims, Virginia field coordinator for environmental and economic development nonprofit Appalachian Voices, in a statement. The group’s North Carolina field coordinator, Ridge Graham, called any legislation requiring completion of Mountain Valley “unacceptable.”

But others were reluctant to speak on the record, indicating they are still sorting out their stances in a rapidly evolving situation.

Regardless of the Manchin deal, Kaine on Tuesday emphasized the need for reforms to federal pipeline permitting, saying he thought FERC’s initial review of Mountain Valley had been “shoddy.” Also, “I view many of the controversies that are connected with the Mountain Valley Pipeline as having been sort of stoked by an inadequate federal permitting process through FERC,” he said, citing “in particular the unwillingness or inability of FERC to get information out to the public and appropriately take public comment and then take that into account in terms of deciding (a) whether a pipeline was necessary and (b) whether the proposed route was the right route.”

A spokesperson later said that Sen. Kaine believes improving permitting “is preferable to having members of Congress decide outcomes on individual energy infrastructure projects.”

Both Kaine and Warner, as well as Virginia Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, have previously proposed federal legislation to change the federal review process for proposals and clarify when eminent domain can be exercised. Those bills were crafted in response to not only Mountain Valley Pipeline but the Dominion Energy and Duke Energy-backed Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which would have stretched from West Virginia to North Carolina via Virginia but was canceled in July 2020.

Pittsburgh and Allegheny County dominate western Pennsylvania

PITTSBURGH – County Executive Rich Fitzgerald issued the following statement regarding the release of the 2022 U.S. Energy and Employment Report (USEER), an annual study which tracks employment trends across the energy sector and within key energy technologies:

“The USEER report showed that U.S. energy sector jobs grew 4% over 2020, outpacing overall U.S. employment, while also adding more than 300,000 jobs in the past year. Pennsylvania is one of the top states in terms of percent growth in transmission, distribution and storage energy jobs, and its energy workers represent 3.3% of all U.S. energy jobs, and 4.6% of total state employment. And employers in Pennsylvania are more optimistic than their peers across the country about energy sector jobs growth in the coming year.

“It’s easy to see why. Energy, and our transition to clean energy, has really been this region’s strong suit. We’ve been looking at and finding ways to make the transition from reliance on fossil fuels well before addressing climate change became a priority. We have the country’s first Green Building Alliance, and its largest 2030 District. We have focused on reducing our energy footprint for existing buildings, while also talking about standards for new construction. Pittsburgh International Airport has invested in a microgrid and generates its own power from natural gas and the largest solar farm in the county.

Pittsburgh Regional Transit has begun work to electrify its bus rapid transit (BRT) system. Our building trades have invested in training, green technologies and innovations to build a green workforce. We have invested in hydro by entering into a power purchase agreement for renewable electricity from a new low-impact, run-of-river hydroelectric facility on the Ohio River. The development of autonomous vehicles in our region will assist in net reductions of greenhouse gas emissions. Wabtec is located here and is exploring the electrification of rail.

“No matter the industry, this region is working towards net-zero emissions. The USEER reflects that investment and our commitment. President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law provides $62 billion for the Department of Energy to expand access to energy efficiency, deliver reliable and clean power, and build new technologies. We are thrilled to have had Secretary Granholm here today to release the report and to convene a roundtable of officials to talk about the opportunities for good-paying jobs that will drive clean energy across the country and in this region, while also revitalizing our manufacturing industry.”

“One of the things that we heard today was that between now and 2030, as industries across the globe look to decarbonize, there will be an approximately $23 trillion market in which clean energy jobs will thrive. We look forward to the opportunities and the future growth that these investments will mean to our region. We partner better than anyone – from private companies to public institutions to the building trades, universities and the philanthropic community – and will work collaboratively and cooperatively to meet the needs of our region and this country in clean energy.”

# # #

Office of County Executive Rich Fitzgerald
101 Courthouse │ 436 Grant Street │ Pittsburgh, PA 15219
Phone: 412-350-6500 │ Fax: 412-350-6512 │www.alleghenycounty.us

There is more to be said and lots to be done.

From an Interview by Mike Ludwig, Truthout, May 28, 2021

As President Joe Biden haggles with Republicans on infrastructure, youth climate activists continue pushing for the bold vision of a Green New Deal. Sunrise Movement activist Lily Gardner says Biden should forget the GOP and listen to young people, who are fired up about the prospect of a Civilian Climate Corps that would create thousands of jobs combatting the climate crisis and building a sustainable future.

TRANSCRIPT — This is a rush transcript and has been lightly edited for clarity.

Mike Ludwig: Welcome back to Climate Front Lines. Everyone in Washington is talking about infrastructure, or at least President Joe Biden’s attempts at negotiating with Republicans over new jobs and infrastructure spending. But for young people, broad investments in the highways and the energy systems and the people that make this country tick is about so much more than political deal making ahead of the midterm elections – it’s about reducing pollution, it’s about jobs and housing, it’s about the transportation systems we will use to get around for decades to come, it’s about creating resilient communities in the face of the climate crisis. Infrastructure is about what the future could look like, and with climate crisis raising so many questions about life on Earth for the next few decades, young people are paying close attention.

So, while Biden haggles with Republicans, the Sunrise Movement network of youth climate activists is pushing for a $10 trillion investment in a Green New Deal. $10 trillion is a lot more than Biden’s original $2.3 trillion infrastructure proposal, even if you add the additional $1.8 trillion Biden would invest in education and support for families. But $10 trillion is not some pie-in-the-sky number dreamed up by millennials, it’s based on legislation backed by Green New Deal Democrats in Congress.

A Green New Deal idea I find really interesting is the Civilian Climate Corps, basically a government jobs program what would put people to work improving communities and building next generation of clean infrastructure. As we will learn in a moment, young climate activists are walking hundreds of miles across the country to raise awareness around this idea. Biden has called for a Civilian Climate Corps too, but he has yet to secure funding. I wanted to know what young activists are doing about that, so I spoke with Lily Gardner, a national spokesperson for the Sunrise Movement.

As President Biden haggles with Republicans on infrastructure, youth climate activists continue pushing for the bold vision of a Green New Deal. Sunrise Movement activist Lily Gardner says Biden should forget the GOP and listen to young people, who are fired up about the prospect of a Civilian Climate Corps that would create thousands of jobs combatting the climate crisis and building a sustainable future.

TRANSCRIPT — This is a rush transcript and has been lightly edited for clarity.

Mike Ludwig: Welcome back to Climate Front Lines. Everyone in Washington is talking about infrastructure, or at least President Joe Biden’s attempts at negotiating with Republicans over new jobs and infrastructure spending. But for young people, broad investments in the highways and the energy systems and the people that make this country tick is about so much more than political deal making ahead of the midterm elections – it’s about reducing pollution, it’s about jobs and housing, it’s about the transportation systems we will use to get around for decades to come, it’s about creating resilient communities in the face of the climate crisis. Infrastructure is about what the future could look like, and with climate crisis raising so many questions about life on Earth for the next few decades, young people are paying close attention.

So, while Biden haggles with Republicans, the Sunrise Movement network of youth climate activists is pushing for a $10 trillion investment in a Green New Deal. $10 trillion is a lot more than Biden’s original $2.3 trillion infrastructure proposal, even if you add the additional $1.8 trillion Biden would invest in education and support for families. But $10 trillion is not some pie-in-the-sky number dreamed up by millennials, it’s based on legislation backed by Green New Deal Democrats in Congress.

A Green New Deal idea I find really interesting is the Civilian Climate Corps, basically a government jobs program what would put people to work improving communities and building next generation of clean infrastructure. As we will learn in a moment, young climate activists are walking hundreds of miles across the country to raise awareness around this idea. Biden has called for a Civilian Climate Corps too, but he has yet to secure funding. I wanted to know what young activists are doing about that, so I spoke with Lily Gardner, a national spokesperson for the Sunrise Movement.

Lily Gardner: So I think there are a number of components of that question. The first is that when we look at 10 trillion in the context of other crises that we faced throughout American history, even right, we know that at the peak of the war effort in World War II, America spent 40 percent of our GDP in one year, which is equivalent to $8.5 trillion right now in one year alone.

Right. So. What we are asking for is $10 trillion, at least 1 trillion over the next decade. And that looks really small in comparison to the ways in which we’ve mobilized throughout history. When we knew it was necessary. And now the question is why 10 trillion and quite frankly, it’s because we’re seeing a lot of room to grow in areas like housing research and development, and maybe most importantly, the Civilian Climate Corps, when we look at Biden’s current plan. So, it’s small in a historical comparison and also necessary in the sense of actually tackling the climate crisis.

Mike Ludwig: Can you tell us a little bit about the vision for a Civilian Climate Corp and why it matters to young people?

Lily Gardner: Absolutely. So I think right now has everybody, um, including yourself, knows young people are facing two converging crises and a climate crisis and an economic crisis. And this is a moment that really demands bold action, especially from President Biden and the federal government, which we view as the creation of the Civilian Climate Corps. A policy is needed that would create government jobs program, very similar to what we saw as a part of the New Deal and in the wake of the Great Depression, that would put a new generation of Americans to work combating the climate crisis. And the way that they would do that is through building up sustainable infrastructure that would support making our communities stronger through good paying and union jobs.

And I think the second thing, and I think the thing that really makes Representative Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Markey’s vision of a Civilian Climate Corp distinctive is that the CCC would prioritize giving good jobs to communities who have been disproportionately harmed by the climate crisis, by systemic racism and by our broken economy.

The Green New Deal is good for everyone in the long run

RE: Climate Change, Economic Sustainability and Environmental Preservation

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey just re-introduced the Green New Deal resolution in Congress.

Since this landmark resolution was first introduced two years ago, one thing has become clear: the fight for climate justice can only be won by tackling jobs, justice, and climate. Together.

The Green New Deal is one of the most popular policy proposals in the country. 57% of voters want their members of Congress to co-sponsor the resolution.1 It has inspired countless other bills like the Green New Deal for Public Housing introduced by Sen. Sanders, and the Green New Deal For Cities that Rep. Cori Bush introduced on Monday.

But despite all this, the Green New Deal has yet to pass through Congress. We have a once in a generation opportunity to push forward transformational change through this resolution. The plan for a Green New Deal, and economic, racial, and climate justice is on the table, but it’s up to our grassroots strength to force Congress to act.

Will you sign on as a Grassroots Co-Sponsor of the Green New Deal, and send a message to every Democrat, Republican, and Independent in Congress that we’ve waited long enough and we won’t tolerate inaction any longer?

The Green New Deal is one of the most strongly supported pieces of legislation because people across the country want bold climate action now. Already, over 100 members of Congress signed on as co-sponsors of the resolution, but we need more – and we need bolder action from the White House.

The Biden administration’s current infrastructure plan doesn’t go far enough. $2 trillion over 10 years isn’t enough. We need a minimum of $16 trillion dollars to address the scale of the crisis we are facing.

The Green New Deal makes it clear that we need to transition from fossil fuel jobs to fair, clean energy union jobs that support people and the climate. We can make sure we have a livable planet for future generations if we take action today – if our leaders stand up for people, not profits. If we pass the Green New Deal.

Please add your name now as a Grassroots Co-Sponsor of the Green New Deal. We’ll be in touch with more ways you can help grow support for the Green New Deal and related bills in Congress.

With hope, Team 350

Newspaper columnists write for money and fame

From an Article by Nick Martin, New Republic, March 25, 2021

Greg Kozera’s weekly column glorifies natural gas and can reach hundreds of thousands of readers throughout shale country. The industry also helps pay his salary.

“If we hit our CO2 targets and every one of us are living in abject poverty, is that really how you really want to live?” Greg Kozera is making his pro-fracking case to me. Later in our phone call, he’ll argue that renewable energy depends on child labor in Congolese cobalt mines and observe that his golden retriever lived to the ripe age of 14 years old romping around three fracking wells, proving that the practice poses no health risks. He makes a version of this case every weekend in the opinion pages of newspapers throughout Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania—the case for natural gas, for industry, and, if you take his word for it, for America.

Four years ago, an editor at the Parkersburg News and Sentinel in West Virginia contacted Shale Crescent USA, a nonprofit “messaging” organization in Marietta, Ohio, whose funders include natural gas companies and pipeline construction companies, to ask what the group’s work entailed. Kozera, a former oil and gas salesman who now serves as Shale Crescent’s head of marketing, responded by suggesting the paper run a five-part series, authored by himself, about how to return jobs to the Mid-Ohio Valley by embracing natural gas. The series debuted in August 2017 and was such a hit, to hear Kozera tell it, that the paper offered him a weekly column. Then the column started getting picked up by other regional papers, including the Charleston Gazette-Mail and occasionally the Columbus Dispatch.

Today, Kozera’s weekly pro-fracking column often runs in eight to 10 local papers throughout the Ohio River Valley, reaching anywhere from 60,000 readers to well over 200,000 if his column is picked up by the region’s major papers like the Gazette-Mail, Dispatch, or Akron Beacon Journal. It reaches even more when recirculated by national publications like the New York Daily News, which has one of the largest readerships in the country.

Four years after the News and Sentinel’s initial inquiry, Kozera is now one of the most ubiquitous voices in the fracking conversation in the Marcellus Shale region, which stretches from southern New York down through the three crucial battleground states of West Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. And for nearly as long as he’s been writing those columns, environmentalists and climate scientists have asked the newspapers publishing his words a simple question: Why have they given this man a megaphone?

West Virginia newspapers, like most local news outlets, have had a rough few decades. Once a bastion of accountability journalism and cross-town rivalries, the region’s dailies were decimated by mergers and layoffs of the late 1990s and early 2000s, just as the natural gas industry was about to explode, replacing the declining coal economy. Since the shale boom of 2008, West Virginia has set state records every year in terms of natural gas production. The focus, and even ownership groups, of the adjacent regional newspapers has shifted accordingly. In 2018, the Charleston Gazette-Mail, already the result of a merger of two competitors, was bought by HD Media; its founder, Doug Reynolds, the son of a tobacco tycoon who now owns upward of eight newspapers in West Virginia, is the president and CEO of a natural gas pipeline company.

As local outlets struggle to inform the community while maintaining their readership, the extractive industry promises readers a seductive short-term fix to a generations-spanning crisis. These readers, in turn, hold outsize sway in the national conversation: Both Pennsylvania and Ohio remain swing states, while West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin now operates as the deciding vote in the tightly split chamber. The fight for the hearts and minds of these voters is happening locally. Messengers like Kozera have both a captive and disproportionately powerful audience.

Kozera columns follow a formula. He offers short bursts of useful, blandly agreeable Chicken Soup-esque advice as packaging peanuts while delivering the gospel of fossil fuels. Last March, for example, Kozera opened a column with a seemingly level-headed lede about how he hoped that the Trump administration would speak honestly about the threat of the pandemic. The column then unspooled into a hodgepodge commentary on “truth,” connecting Kozera’s experience being stood up in college to the unfolding economic ruin. After a brief detour into Trump-Russia trutherism, the point of the piece emerged: “As an engineer, I have caught the major media in numerous lies and half truths about energy, renewables and hydraulic fracturing.” (He generally refers to all fossil fuel critics as “antis.”)

In a January column purportedly about the importance of focus, Kozera quoted motivational speaker Willie Jolley saying, “Success isn’t about hocus pocus it is about focus focus”; spent a couple paragraphs on Covid-19; criticized Trump’s second impeachment; praised the high school soccer team he coaches (state runners-up this year!); and then took an abrupt turn into an oil and gas sales pitch: “At Shale Crescent USA our focus is on creating jobs. It was sad to see the Keystone XL pipeline project shut down this week with the loss of over 10,000 jobs out west.”

Shale Crescent’s goal, according to its website, is to “deliver targeted messaging to high energy intensive industry decision makers.” When Kozera called me last week to chat about his columns, it was clear why Shale Crescent tapped him to deliver that message. His script was flexible; his manner laid-back and affable. He just wants people to have good-paying jobs, he said. Fostering ties between the fracking industry and local communities is a lot like his role coaching the high school soccer team. He wants his community and his country to be self-sufficient. He’s an “environmentalist at heart,” and his job is “not about oil and gas,” but part of a moral-driven effort to help raise the standard of living.

He also happens to be dead-set on convincing anyone willing to listen that natural gas is America’s best and only path forward.

“I believe we have an ethical responsibility to [speak up],” Kozera told me, “if someone’s proposing something that I know is going to kill a bunch of people.” And renewable energy, Kozera said, will kill people. “Make solar panels in Cambridge, Ohio—that’s great. Those are real good jobs, we’ll do that,” Kozera said. But, “when the sun doesn’t shine, the wind doesn’t blow, and people start dying in the dark, I got a problem. I got a serious problem with that. And the best way I can think to solve that is to educate the public so they understand what’s at stake.”

There isn’t actually evidence that transitioning to solar and wind energy will kill people; coal and oil already kill millions every year through emissions alone (more, when you factor in spills and other accidents), while estimates suggest wind or solar might kill one person every 29 or 53 years, respectively. But Kozera’s tone relayed nothing but an air of reasonableness — he wasn’t so much trying to convince me that wind and solar are the harbingers of death as he was trying to get me to agree that people dying in the dark is bad.

This superficial air of compromise and common sense pervades his work. He does not deny climate change. “You can’t keep putting garbage in the atmosphere without bad stuff happening,” he said. But he’s adamant that the American government, its industries, and its citizens should support the continued increase of fracking and natural gas production. America, he told me, should ramp up fracking and export the gas back to China, to aid in the shuttering of its coal plants and build a sustainable revenue stream and economic bedrock for American towns. (Fracking’s massive release of methane — a greenhouse gas 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the short term — doesn’t seem to factor into Kozera’s vision.)

The picture he paints for the readers of the News and Sentinel, the Times, the Jeffersonian, and the rest is simple: Fracking will give them jobs. It won’t poison them. “The antis are still looking for one well where fracturing has contaminated ground water,” he wrote in October.

The editors and publishers who ran Kozera’s column did not issue a correction or addendum to his piece, even though both ProPublica and the Environmental Protection Agency have documented numerous cases of suspected fracking contamination of local groundwater. In 2019, a report found oversight of the fracking industry’s wastewater disposal procedures and permits has been patchy and inconsistent in West Virginia, potentially endangering drinking water.

In recent years, research has linked fracking to higher incidences of numerous health problems, with particularly robust evidence for asthma and pregnancy and birth outcomes. On the phone, Kozera offered a verbal shrug, saying of fracking: “If it was really as bad as everybody said it was, we should all be dead by now.”

The thing about talking to Kozera is that, even when you disagree with him at every juncture, it’s a cordial conversation. That’s its power: Research tells us this blend of the casually personal and political is the best way to persuade people, whether that means convincing them that climate change is real or that fossil fuels should rule the world. It’s called “deep canvassing.” Instead of having to go door to door or visit every local meeting to convince people to invite the fracking industry into their towns, Kozera can currently reach a regular readership of 60,000 that expands into the hundreds of thousands depending on which other dailies choose to syndicate that week.

The people who could fact-check his claims don’t have that platform, even though they’re trying hard to break through. Last week, Eric Engle, who heads a variety of conservation efforts, including the nonprofit organization Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action, wrote to the News and Sentinel protesting the outsize role Kozera has been given in the paper’s opinion pages.

Shortly before the November election, Randi Pokladnik, an Ohio resident with a Ph.D. in environmental studies, penned an op-ed in the News and Sentinel refuting one of Kozera’s pieces about the merits of fracking.

And after Kozera tried to blame the February winter storm catastrophe in Texas on renewable energy, community member Jean Ambrose wrote a letter to the editor objecting both to the inaccuracies and the broader thrust of Kozera’s columns. “The buildout of the region based on natural gas hasn’t delivered as promised,” she wrote. “You know it, and I know it. But Kozera hopes you don’t remember that, and keeps pushing fake facts so we’ll let fossil fuels squeeze the last bit of profit out of our communities before they take their private jets and move to Cancun.”

Ambrose is right. That’s the really troubling part of this story: It’s not just that fracking pollutes and Kozera says it doesn’t. The core appeal of Kozera’s original column — the promise of jobs and prosperity that helps people look away from the pollution, and the reason his original series probably did well at the News and Sentinel — has now been debunked by a number of economic studies.

In February 2019, research produced by the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy and the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis found that many of the industry’s early projections overstated the actual impact of natural gas production on West Virginia’s economy. From 2008 to 2017, the natural gas industry added 2,500 jobs, not the 5,700 that were predicted, the study’s authors wrote: “The only reason that there has been any growth in employment at all from 2008 to 2017 is the increase in employment due to natural gas pipeline construction, which are largely temporary jobs,” almost half of which go to out-of-state workers.

This pattern holds for nearly every major natural gas project proposed in the past 12 years: When a pipeline is completed, the need for construction jobs disappears, and the day-to-day operations of these fracking outposts or pipelines are continued by a relatively small number of employees.

Neither Engle, Ambrose, or Pokladnik — all of whom are good writers, by the way — gets a spot in the paper on a weekly basis. Their voices and their columns are, by nature of being in response to Kozera, reactionary, and as such, easily sidelined. Relegated to the task of debunking sweeping claims, their articles necessarily read as more pedantic than Kozera’s mishmash of half-truths.

When Kozera asked me how “we” would feel hitting emissions targets but living in abject poverty, he followed it up with a personal appeal. “You’ve got a lot more living to do than I do,” Kozera said. “Your kids should have every opportunity that I’ve had — that my kids have had — and they should have the opportunity for a future brighter than anything we’ve ever had. And that’s possible.”

The truth is, there is no one person or paper to blame or thank for Kozera growing into a mainstay regional columnist, except maybe Kozera himself. The paper needs readers, and many of its readers need jobs. Greg Kozera promises both. That he can simultaneously make that promise, maintain his grandfatherly tone, and launder an agenda as blatant as any you’ll hear or read is his gift—and maybe the Ohio River Valley’s curse.

the latest studies provide important information

From an Announcement by Ryan Clover, Halt the Harm Network, March 4, 2021

Join in a network Coffee Break conversation with Joanne Kilgour Esq., the executive director of the Ohio River Valley Institute.

Meet Joanne, and learn more about a study they’ve just released that shows almost no job growth in fracking counties, despite gas production boom. If you’d like to meet Joanne, discuss the study, and get questions answered, please join in the event!

JOHNSTOWN, Pennsylvania, – A new Ohio River Valley Institute report titled, “Appalachia’s Natural Gas Counties: Contributing more to the U.S. economy and getting less in return” quantifies the decade-long failure of the natural gas boom in the Marcellus and Utica fields to deliver growth in jobs, income, and population to the 22 Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia counties that produce more than 90% of the region’s natural gas.

About Coffee Break — Coffee Break is a weekly live-stream discussion with researchers, leaders, community organizers, filmmakers, and artists involved in Halt the Harm Network, which provides a directory and support to leaders in the fight against oil & gas.

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See also: Fracking Counties Economic Impact Report – Ohio River Valley Institute, February 12, 2021

Since the start of the fracking boom, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia’s biggest gas-producing counties have seen declines in their share of jobs, income, and population.

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See also: Fracking and Personal Pollution – Fractured USA, By Kristina Marusic, Halt the Harm Network, March 1, 2021 (See also the Series in FrackCheckWV.net).

Legislation that would create jobs and save money

From the Letter by Eric Engle, Charleston Gazette, February 20, 2021

The West Virginia Legislature’s 2021 session is off to a ferocious start. Bills are being introduced and considered rapidly, with very little time given for public input and very limited public access to committee proceedings or other activities at the Capitol building.

Those of us trying to keep track of legislation have to do all we can to keep the public informed and keep constituents in contact with their delegates and senators. To that end, there are very important pieces of legislation for West Virginia’s economic, energy, public health and environmental future that I’d like to bring to your attention, and I encourage you to contact your representatives about them quickly.

Senate Bill 30, titled “Permitting third-party ownership of renewable and alternative energy generating facilities,” and the similar House Bill 2249, titled “Permitting customers and developers to enter into solar power purchase agreements,” have been introduced to the Senate Economic Development Committee and the House Energy and Manufacturing Committee, respectively.

These bills would legalize power-purchasing agreements (PPAs) in West Virginia and have bipartisan backing, with SB 30 introduced by Sen. Charles Trump, R-Morgan, and HB 2249 introduced by Delegate Barbara Fleischauer, D-Monongalia.

The coalition West Virginians for Energy Freedom, longtime advocates for PPAs in West Virginia, defines PPAs as “a widely available method to finance distributed energy generation projects such as rooftop solar panels or landfill bio-gas.” West Virginians for Energy Freedom explains: “These third-party agreements are legal in at least 28 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. States such as Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Georgia offer PPAs, but they are not available in West Virginia.”

PPAs can bring renewable energy to West Virginia, while creating jobs, saving West Virginia’s energy consumers money and improving public health and environmental protection as we inevitably move away from fossil fuels. They also help foster the kind of energy independence that both major parties and people along the entire political ideological spectrum can get behind.

Another crucial piece of legislation, introduced by Delegate Evan Hansen, D-Monongalia, HB 2287, titled “Providing for solar energy production on formerly mined land,” would “encourage solar energy development on lands formerly used for mining and certain third-party co-generation projects, to provide electricity for commercial, industrial and manufacturing businesses or institutions of higher education or nonprofit organizations that are located in or will locate in West Virginia,” according to the summary

Many businesses and corporations are pledging to reduce, and eventually eliminate, their greenhouse gas emissions in the coming years and decades. If we want those entities to locate in West Virginia and bring their jobs with them, we have to be able to accommodate their energy and other infrastructural needs and goals.

HB 2287 gives us a leg up on attracting and retaining these investments, while also providing cheaper energy for our existing commercial, industrial and nonprofit entities. There’s no reason why partisan politics or political ideology should get in the way of all the potential in this bill.

The House Energy and Manufacturing Committee is chaired by Delegate Bill Anderson, R-Wood. The Senate Economic Development Committee is chaired by Sen. Chandler Swope, R-Mercer. Please contact these chairmen and let them know you want to see House Bills 2249 and 2287 and Senate Bill 30 on the committee agendas and see them passed. The legislative session ends April 10.

West Virginia deserves a more diversified economy, with more and better jobs, cheaper energy and better protection of our health and natural resources. These bills can help us get there.

>> Eric Engle is chairman of Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action, most active in the Parkersburg — Marietta area in the Ohio River valley.

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See also: What West Virginia’s Changing Climate Means for Its Farmers | USDA Climate Hubs — By Evan Kutta, West Virginia University, Institute of Water Security and Science and Jason A. Hubbart, West Virginia University, Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design

See the FracTraker Alliance for extensive coverage

From an Article by Nick Cunningham, DeSmog Blog, February 11, 2021

The fracking boom has received broad support from politicians across the aisle in Appalachia due to dreams of enormous job creation, but a report released on February 10 from Pennsylvania-based economic and sustainability think tank, the Ohio River Valley Institute (ORVI), sheds new light on the reality of this hype.

The report looked at how 22 counties across West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio — accounting for 90 percent of the region’s natural gas production — fared during the fracking boom. It found that counties that saw the most drilling ended up with weaker job growth and declining populations compared to other parts of Appalachia and the nation as a whole.

Shale gas production from Appalachia exploded from minimal levels a little over a decade ago, to more than 32 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) in 2019, or roughly 40 percent of the nation’s total output. During this time, between 2008 and 2019, GDP across these 22 counties grew three times faster than that of the nation as a whole. However, based on a variety of metrics for actual economic prosperity — such as job growth, population growth, and the region’s share of national income — the region fell further behind than the rest of the country.

Between 2008 and 2019, the number of jobs across the U.S. expanded by 10 percent, according to the ORVI report, but in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, job growth only grew by 4 percent. More glaringly, the 22 gas-producing counties in those three states — ground-zero for the drilling boom — only experienced 1.7 percent job growth.

“What’s really disturbing is that these disappointing results came about at a time when the region’s natural gas industry was operating at full capacity. So it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which the results would be better,” said Sean O’Leary, the report’s author.

The report cited Belmont County, Ohio, as a particularly shocking case. Belmont County has received more than a third of all natural gas investment in the state, and accounts for more than a third of the state’s gas production. The industry also accounts for about 60 percent of the county’s economy. Because of the boom, the county’s GDP grew five times faster than the national rate. And yet, the county saw a 7 percent decline in jobs and a 2 percent decline in population over the past decade.

“This report documents that many Marcellus and Utica region fracking gas counties typically have lost both population and jobs from 2008 to 2019,” said John Hanger, former Pennsylvania secretary of Environmental Protection, commenting on the report. “This report explodes in a fireball of numbers the claims that the gas industry would bring prosperity to Pennsylvania, Ohio, or West Virginia. These are stubborn facts that indicate gas drilling has done the opposite in most of the top drilling counties.”

A Boom Without Job Growth

This lack of job growth was not what the industry promised. A 2010 study from the American Petroleum Institute predicted that Pennsylvania would see more than 211,000 jobs created by 2020 due to the fracking boom, while West Virginia would see an additional 43,000 jobs. Studies like these were widely cited by politicians as proof that the fracking boom was an economic imperative and must be supported.

But the Ohio River Valley Institute report reveals the disconnect between a drilling boom and rising GDP on the one hand, and worse local employment outcomes on the other. There are likely many reasons for this disconnect related to the long list of negative externalities associated with fracking: The boom-and-bust nature of extractive industries creates risks for other business sectors, such as extreme economic volatility, deterring new businesses or expansions of existing ones; meanwhile air, water, and noise pollution negatively impact the health and environment of residents living nearby.

“There can be no mistake that the closer people live to shale gas development, the higher their risk for poor health outcomes,” Alison Steele, Executive Director of the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project, told DeSmog. “More than two dozen peer-reviewed epidemiological studies show a correlation between living near shale gas development and a host of health issues, such as worsening asthmas, heart failure hospitalizations, premature births, and babies born with low birth weights and birth defects.”

Moreover, oil and gas drilling is capital-intensive, not job-intensive. As the example of Belmont County shows, only about 12 percent of income generated by the gas industry can be attributable to wages and employment, while in other sectors, on average, more than half of income goes to workers.

In other words, it costs a lot of money to drill, but it doesn’t employ a lot of people, and much of the income is siphoned off to shareholders. To top it off, equipment and people are imported from outside the region — many of the jobs created went to workers brought in from places such as Texas and Oklahoma.

Despite the huge increase in shale gas production over the past decade, the vast majority of the 22 counties experiencing the drilling boom also experienced “economic stagnation or outright decline and depopulation,” the report said.

“[W]e could see long ago that the job numbers published and pushed out by the industry years ago were based in bluster, not our economic realities,” Veronica Coptis, Executive Director of Coalfield Justice, a non-profit based in southwest Pennsylvania, told DeSmog, commenting on the report. “At industry’s behest and encouragement, Pennsylvania promoted shale gas development aggressively in rural areas for more than a decade. And yet, the southwestern counties at the epicenter of fracking do not show any obvious improvement in well-being.”

Petrochemicals Also a False Hope

After natural gas prices fell sharply amid a glut of supply beginning in 2012, the number of wells drilled began to slow. Industry proponents then pinned their hopes on a new future: plastics. Petrochemical facilities would process low-cost natural gas into the building blocks of plastic and spur a virtuous cycle of new manufacturing while prolonging the drilling boom.

But the petrochemical promise has mostly been a mirage. Most of the proposed ethane crackers have been cancelled or delayed. Only one has moved forward: Shell’s ethane cracker in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, which was lured to the state with a $1.6 billion tax credit, the largest tax break in Pennsylvania history.

Even in Beaver County, job growth has been anemic: the county saw employment actually contract by 0.5 percent between 2008 and 2019, despite breaking ground on Appalachia’s flagship petrochemical facility, according to ORVI. In reality, the Shell cracker will employ several thousand people temporarily during construction, but only employ 600 people permanently when it comes online.

The market for petrochemicals has soured dramatically since Shell gave the greenlight on the project several years ago, raising doubts about future growth. And yet, in 2020, the Pennsylvania legislature passed another $667 million tax credit intended to lure in more petrochemical facilities to the state. Democratic Governor Tom Wolf supported it.

As the ORVI report concluded: “[P]olicymakers should look very critically at proposals to expand or otherwise assist the natural gas industry, which has yet to demonstrate that it is capable of contributing positively locally or on a large scale to the states and counties where it is most prevalent.”

Food & Water Watch analysis of employment

From an Article by Alison Grass, Pittsburgh Tribune Review, October 16, 2020

The road to the White House once again runs through Pennsylvania, which explains the campaign photo ops and nonstop TV ads. It also means we’ll be treated to a lot of claims about fracking. Unfortunately, much of what we’re hearing about drilling is not rooted in the facts.

The stories that the Trump campaign and the fracking industry tell are straightforward: Fracking equals jobs, and lots of them. Trump tells his supporters that 600,000 (or occasionally even 900,000) fracking jobs in Pennsylvania are at risk due to a ban on drilling. That is nowhere near the truth — the real number is under 30,000 — and Joe Biden does not support a fracking ban in the first place.

The Trump team makes the same kinds of boasts about the Shell petrochemical cracker plant going up in Beaver County, which has become a regular campaign backdrop. In a sense, this is perfectly fitting; that facility, and the massive public subsidies that have been wasted on it, are emblematic of Trump’s distorted fossil fuel agenda. The public will eventually shell out $1.6 billion — in the form of corporate tax credits — to help subsidize the $6 billion facility, which will convert fracked gas byproducts into plastics. This is, in Trump’s view, a huge success story; he even once bizarrely claimed credit for the plant’s existence.

But the Shell saga is not a success, it’s a cautionary tale. Contrary to the boasts of petrochemical backers, the plant was mostly built with imported materials and out-of-state workers. Instead of providing for thousands of local, permanent jobs, it will create about 600. And these massive corporate giveaways don’t create jobs — they serve to widen the inequality gap.

The fossil-fuel industry and its political allies are telling us the same story we’ve always heard: If you want the jobs, you have to put up with living with the air and water pollution. But new research from Food & Water Watch shows that “choice” is false. Our new analysis — “Cracked: The Case For Green Jobs Over Petrochemicals In Pennsylvania” — shows that a similar level of investment in wind and solar manufacturing would create as many as 16,000 permanent jobs.

But let’s be real: Subsidies and tax breaks alone are unlikely to attract manufacturers. The most effective way to ensure the transition to a green economy is through a large-scale buildout of publicly owned renewable electricity. This should include a comprehensive, New Deal-scale green public works program that guarantees employment for fossil-fuel workers and prioritizes American-made renewable energy and energy-efficient equipment, materials and appliances.

The fact that clean energy manufacturing provides a much more serious jobs boom should move Pennsylvania’s political leaders to pursue policies to create an economy that works for everyone. Unfortunately, state lawmakers are still banking on fossil fuels and petrochemicals.

Right now, the entire “debate” around fracking in Pennsylvania is marred by outlandish exaggerations and a willful blindness to the realities of the fossil-fuel business. As national media outlets pontificate about what the presidential candidates will do to “protect” fracking jobs, the industry is in the midst of a devastating collapse. While the campaign rhetoric spins fantasies about hundreds of thousands of good jobs, in the real world fracking jobs are disappearing and companies are going bankrupt.

The Shell cracker plant does not represent the kind of future that will truly benefit all Pennsylvanians. Instead of spending billions of dollars to create a few hundred jobs — and unknown quantities of air and plastic pollution — the state should make serious investments in wind and solar manufacturing, which will create far more stable, long-term jobs at a fraction of the cost.

>> Alison Grass is research director at the national advocacy group Food & Water Watch.

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FACT CHECKER: Trump campaign promotes false claim that Biden would end fracking – The Washington Post, October 7, 2020

More than six months after former vice president Joe Biden became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, the Trump campaign still acts as if it is running against Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).