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.

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

Shell Cracker on Ohio River in March 2019 (FracTracker Alliance)

From an Article by Nick Cunningham, Yale 360 Environmental News, 3/21/2019

Once known as the Steel City, Pittsburgh is shedding its polluted past and embracing a rebirth built on health care, education, and technology. But the region’s surging fracking industry is attracting a $6 billion ethane plant and other petrochemical facilities, raising new pollution fears.

Pittsburgh is a city on the upswing, rebounding this century from its rustbelt past by developing more innovative sectors such as health care, education, and technology. Uber is testing its self-driving cars in Pittsburgh. Carnegie Mellon University is home to a world-renowned Robotics Institute. And the city made an aggressive bid for Amazon’s HQ2, which the mayor viewed as key to moving the Steel City beyond its roots in heavy industry.

Progress toward a cleaner, post-industrial future is not linear, however. Although the air in Pittsburgh has dramatically improved from the days when it was one of America’s most polluted cities, it still contains high levels of hazardous pollutants, in large part because of several major steel foundries and coke works still in operation, according to the Clean Air Council. The rise of hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas, now more than a decade old, has exacerbated regional air quality problems. Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is located, is out of compliance with federal air quality standards on fine particulate matter (PM 2.5) and sulfur dioxide. In 2018, the region barely met the federal ozone standard after falling short in years past.

Now, Pittsburgh and the surrounding area are embracing a new wave of industry tied to the fracking boom in western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio. Nothing better embodies this surge than a massive, $6 billion ethane cracker currently being built 30 miles northwest of Pittsburgh by Shell Chemical Appalachia, a subsidiary of the oil giant Royal Dutch Shell. The facility will process huge quantities of natural gas and natural gas liquids from the prolific Marcellus and Utica shales and turn them into the building blocks of plastic. The plastic pellets produced by “cracking” ethane molecules will then be sold to manufacturers producing consumer and industrial products such as plastic bags, packaging, automotive parts, and furniture.

When it comes online in 2021, Shell’s ethane cracker will also add significantly to air pollution in western Pennsylvania, becoming the region’s largest source of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which are harmful gases emitted by solids or liquids, including combusted fossil fuels. The facility will also emit substantial amounts of nitrogen oxide (NOx), sulfur dioxide (SO2), fine particulate matter, and other hazardous air pollutants, the Clean Air Council says. All of these have been linked to an increased risk of respiratory problems such as asthma, as well as to cardiovascular effects and a heightened risk of cancer.

Environmental groups, along with some local residents, have fought the ethane cracker. But local and state political leaders are almost uniformly supportive of the project, regardless of party affiliation. So are labor leaders and many local citizens, seeing the arrival of Shell’s facility as a pivotal moment in the creation of a new, large-scale industrial sector that could rival the region’s glory days of steel production.

“Employment in western Pennsylvania has never been better,” says Ken Broadbent, business manager at Steamfitters Local 449, noting that construction at Shell’s ethane cracker will eventually provide jobs for 1,500 steamfitters, some of whom will make more than $100,000 a year. “I’ve never seen this many jobs for construction workers in western Pennsylvania, and I’ve been a steamfitter for 45 years. Natural gas is going to be bigger than the steel industry back 30 or 40 years ago. There’s 50 years to 100 years of natural gas in this tri-state region. This thing is not going away.”

Asked if he is concerned about air pollution from the plant, Broadbent acknowledged the threat, but said the economic opportunities are too important. “It concerns everybody — we fish, we hunt, our kids breathe the air like everybody else,” he said. “But we’ve also got to realize that people have got to work for a living, too. If you’re not working, it won’t matter how much pollution you have.”

Construction of the Shell facility is expected to reach its peak this year, with up to 6,000 total workers on site. When operational, the plant will employ 600 people on a permanent basis.

Pennsylvania’s Governor Tom Wolf, a Democrat, has hailed Shell’s ethane cracker as the “biggest private-sector investment in Pennsylvania since World War II” and touted the prospect of a transformation of western Pennsylvania as a fracking-driven energy “hub,” with the cracker just the first in a series of petrochemical projects. Executives and industry analysts refer to Shell’s ethane cracker as an “anchor” project around which new infrastructure would be built — the associated pipelines, compressor stations, gas processing facilities, and a new ethane storage facility.

But this reindustrialization of western Pennsylvania, and the resulting increase in air and water pollution, is of growing concern to some in the region. They note that in recent years the Pittsburgh area has benefitted from a job-creating shift to cleaner economic sectors, driven by major local institutions like the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

“This region for [the last] 30 years started making some really smart decisions — investing in education and health care, letting universities lead the way, letting innovation be the driver, having a much more diversified economy and, especially, climbing up the value chain and getting away from those basic commodities that leave a toxic legacy,” says Matt Mehalik, executive director of the Breathe Project, a local nonprofit working to reduce air pollution.

Although the fracking boom has undeniably created jobs and pumped money into the region, scientists and environmentalists say it is bringing with it polluted wastewater, dirty air, roads crowded with gas industry trucks, and rural areas dotted with noisy and unsightly drilling platforms.

Ted Auch of the FracTracker Alliance, a non-profit that keeps tabs on the health effects of the shale gas industry, notes that it has gone through several phases over the past decade. At the start of each phase, he says, the industry pushed for new investments that justified the next level of intensification. First, the industry needed more pipelines in order to move excess gas out of the region. Then it needed more wells to dispose of fracking wastewater, says Auch. Then the ability to export gas abroad. A year ago, exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) began from a newly constructed terminal on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, moving Marcellus shale gas across the world to Japan.

===== Pittsburgh’s work on combatting climate change through 2030 would be negated by this single Shell plant.=====

Auch says he fears that Shell’s ethane cracker, plus others in the works, may unleash yet another wave of drilling. “So now we’re on like our third or fourth version of reasoning for why [the industry] needs X, Y, and Z,” says Auch.

Auch and others say that at a time when scientists are issuing increasingly stark warnings about the worsening impacts of global warming and the need to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the fracking boom in northern Appalachia, coupled with the construction of related infrastructure and facilities, is moving the region and the U.S. in precisely the wrong direction.

They note that in 2017 the city of Pittsburgh unveiled an ambitious plan to slash greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 (using a 2003 baseline), which would equate to a reduction of 2.1 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year. Shell’s ethane cracker, which needs to burn natural gas to create the high temperatures needed to “crack” ethane, is expected to emit 2.2 million tons of greenhouse gases annually. In other words, all of Pittsburgh’s work on combatting climate change through 2030 would be negated by a single plant.

The plant’s critics also maintain that Shell’s ethane cracker represents a significant setback in the region’s long battle to clean up its air. Pittsburgh is ranked in the top 10 nationwide for most polluted cities in terms of year-round particulate matter. Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is located, is ranked in the top 2 percent nationally in terms of cancer risk from hazardous air pollutants, according to a 2013 study by the Center for Healthy Environments and Communities at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health.

Shell refutes the notion that its Pittsburgh-area ethane cracker will adversely affect the health of nearby communities. “Shell takes the health of the community and our staff very seriously,” says Joe Minnitte, a company spokesman. He notes that the potential health effects from hazardous air pollutants were evaluated when Shell applied for, and received, its air permits from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PA DEP). Indeed, the DEP concluded that the air and health impacts would not exceed federal standards.

“Inhalation risk assessments performed by Shell and PA DEP during that period concluded that chronic cancer and non-cancer risks as well as acute non-cancer risks do not exceed PA DEP’s benchmarks,” Minnitte says. Shell agreed to implement air quality monitoring around its facility.

Moreover, Shell purchased pollution credits to offset its emissions. Industrial emitters frequently buy such credits, particularly in areas that don’t meet federal air quality standards. In Shell’s case, however, this has been controversial, because while the company secured enough credits for its nitrogen oxide pollution, it could not find enough credits for its VOC emissions. So it lobbied the Pennsylvania DEP to convert surplus nitrogen oxide credits into VOC credits. While this may help reduce pollution in a neighboring county from a shuttered facility, pollution will increase in the vicinity of the cracker plant when it comes online, opponents warn.

Another ethane cracker about 75 miles downriver in Ohio — backed by PTT Global Chemical, a Thailand-based petrochemical giant, and its Korean partner, Daelim Industrial Co. — has cleared the regulatory process and expects a final investment decision soon. A third ethane cracker has been proposed nearby in West Virginia. A 2017 report from IHS Markit, an industry consulting firm, found that northern Appalachia – the tri-state area of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia – could support four additional crackers after Shell’s project comes online.

According to the Breathe Project, the Shell facility, plus the PTT Global Chemical and the West Virginia plant, could result in additional health care costs of $20 million to $46 million annually just for Beaver County, where Shell’s facility is under construction. Those estimates include treatment for increased respiratory ailments, lung cancer, asthma, and cardiovascular disease, as well as for loss of work. Neighboring Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is located, could see $14 million to $32 million in additional health care costs annually due to the toll exacted on public health from the three plants, the Breathe Project estimated, based on modeling used by the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Those numbers only accounted for fine particulate matter, not the array of other pollutants expected from the plant. In addition, the region already is impacted by the pollution, including methane leaks, from thousands of shale gas wells, compressor stations, and storage facilities.

Shell’s ethane cracker alone would require 1,000 fully producing shale gas wells to feed it on an ongoing basis, according to John Stolz, director of the Center for Environmental Research and Education at Duquesne University. But he notes that shale gas wells are known to have steep declines in their production rates, meaning that many more wells will need to be drilled to keep the cracker plant running for decades to come.

Some citizens in the region already are alarmed by the health and environmental impacts of the fracking boom. Allen Young is a correctional officer who lives roughly a mile or two from a shale gas well in Powhatan Point, Ohio that exploded and leaked gas for several weeks in February 2018 before it was contained by its owner, XTO Energy, a subsidiary of ExxonMobil. In the days following the explosion and gas leak, Young, his wife, and their two children started having nosebleeds, headaches, and respiratory problems, which he attributes to the leak.

When asked about the possibility of several ethane crackers coming into the region, including the proposed PTT Global Chemical cracker that would be built just a few miles from his house, Young replies, “I’ve seen firsthand there’s no regulation with these people. They do what the hell they want, when they want, how they want to do it. Money talks … This is kind of like the little Cancer Alley of the Ohio Valley.”

Young was referring to Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley,” a stretch of petrochemical and chemical facilities along the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge that has been emitting toxic pollution into nearby communities for decades. Late last year, the U.S. Department of Energy laid out the case for locating a network of petrochemical plants in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, citing the national security concerns of having too many storage and petrochemical facilities concentrated near the Gulf of Mexico coast due to its vulnerability to natural disasters — a danger that will only grow as the climate continues to change.

The ethane crackers under construction or planned in the Ohio River Valley are illustrative of a broader wave of investment flowing into petrochemicals. According to the American Chemistry Council, from 2010 to late last year, more than $200 billion in investment poured into 333 chemical and petrochemical projects in the U.S., much of it “geared toward export markets for chemistry and plastics products.”

Although the growth in consumption of natural gas and oil is expected to slow worldwide in the decades ahead, in part because of the wider adoption of electric vehicles, no end is in sight for the consumption of plastic. “Petrochemicals are rapidly becoming the largest driver of global oil consumption,” the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a 2018 report. By mid-century, according to the IEA forecast, petrochemicals will account for half of the total growth in oil demand – more than trucks, aviation, or shipping.

It’s increasingly common for consumer plastic to make a mind-boggling journey that begins with drilling for oil and gas in Texas, separating out the various natural gas liquids from one another, cracking the ethane to produce polyethylene along the Gulf of Mexico coast, and shipping the plastic pellets to Asia to be processed into plastic wrap or packaging, which is then shipped back to grocery stores in the U.S. Ultimately, when that plastic reaches the consumer, it is often used once and discarded in a matter of minutes or seconds. The climate impact is profound. Carbon dioxide emissions from the petrochemical sector are expected to rise by 20 percent through 2030, according to the IEA.

In the Ohio Valley, the lure of major sources of new employment in a region that has seen an exodus of industries is hard to pass up, says Mehalik of the Breathe Project. But he adds that these communities shouldn’t have to bear the burdens of pollution that might also preclude other forms of cleaner economic development. Pittsburgh’s recent comeback has had little to do with heavy industry, Mehalik says, and the emergence of a major petrochemical industry puts a lot of that progress in jeopardy.

“So now, all of a sudden, it’s like, ‘Here we go again,’” says Mehalik. “It’s like we’re going back on a bender, doing things that we know are bad for us. And yet it’s happening. That, to me, is the ultimate outrage. It’s just an insane economic development strategy.”

Allegheny County has increasing drilling & fracking

From an Article by Reid Frazier, The Allegheny Front, February 9, 2018

Michael Thomas didn’t think the Marcellus shale industry, with its multi-acre well pads and large drilling operations, would come to the Pittsburgh suburb of Plum. But then one day last summer, it did.
“I was on vacation and I got an e-mail from a council member that said, ‘Are you going to the meeting tonight?’” said Thomas, the borough manager. “And my response was, ‘What meeting?’”

It was a public hearing for an underground injection well for fracking waste, held by the EPA. Around 200 residents came out to oppose the project. Pretty soon the borough got word that another company wanted to build shale gas wells in Plum.

This came as a surprise to Thomas, the borough’s manager for 13 years. There were small, conventional gas wells in Plum. But Thomas thought the drilling industry would stay in more rural parts of the state.

“We were not anticipating a lot of requests or a lot of permit requests for wellheads in Plum because — all things being equal — you can get a lot more property up in Elk County, a lot cheaper, than you can in Allegheny.”

But in the last couple of years, interest in gas drilling in Pittsburgh’s suburbs has slowly but surely increased. Wells have been permitted or are being planned for as close to four miles from the city line. And according to research from the oil and gas watchdog Fractracker Alliance, about 18 percent of Allegheny County is leased to gas drillers.

That has rekindled a debate about the risks and rewards of drilling in suburban Pittsburgh, as suburbanites and elected officials now have to decide what to do about fracking in their backyards.

Risk vs. reward

Fracking has brought jobs to Pennsylvania and riches for some landowners, but also controversy. Opponents say the process burdens local communities with truck traffic, emissions from gas wells, and potential harm to groundwater.

But that debate has largely skipped over Pittsburgh and its biggest suburbs — until now. It’s not hard to see why.

“If you look at a map of oil and gas operations in Pennsylvania, you’ll immediately take note that Allegheny County looks like an island in a sea of gas wells on their maps,” said Doug Shields, a former Pittsburgh city council member, and now an outreach coordinator for the environmental group Food & Water Watch.

“It’s only a matter of time before (fracking companies) come into these high-density populations.”

S&P Global Platts energy analyst Taylor Cavey said in an email that the reason for the interest in Allegheny County could be from the buildout of pipelines in the area and the sheer volume of gas beneath the ground there, which rivals that of Washington County. In Washington County, the production from Marcellus gas wells there is around 12 million cubic feet a day. In Allegheny County, the initial production rate is now between 4 and 12.9 million cubic feet a day.

Still, drilling companies have so far stuck to the surrounding, more rural counties. Allegheny County has just over 134 Marcellus gas wells, while Washington County, to the south, has 1,710, according to Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection data.

Drilling close to Pittsburgh is complicated by the fact that Allegheny County has 130 municipalities, some as small as 50 acres. Each can regulate fracking through zoning. So deciding where companies can drill is now becoming a big, open question in Pittsburgh’s suburbs.

Through his job with Food and Water Watch, Shields offers to help communities update local laws to include gas drilling restrictions. Only about a third have zoning ordinances that have up-to-date oil and gas designations. But he said that’s beginning to change. “These communities kind of woke up quickly and began to understand they need to protect themselves,” Shields said.

Oakmont, next to Plum, has enacted strict limits on where companies can drill gas wells. Monroeville also adopted a restrictive zoning policy; but the municipality is now considering an ordinance that would allow drilling in more areas.

Striking a balance

A few months ago, Plum decided to allow drilling in about one-third of the municipality. Thomas, the Plum manager, said that was a compromise. Some residents who owned gas rights wanted to expand the map to allow drilling in more densely populated areas. Others wanted to restrict it to just a handful of industrial zones.

“My rule is always to try to strike the balance,” said Thomas, who convened a panel of local officials, planning commission members, and sought out expert advice on how to regulate fracking.

If you don’t let people make money, he said, you won’t have a healthy economy. But “if you have everything running rampant,” people will move away. He said public opinion in the borough was mixed, but that most he talked to were friendly to the idea of drilling. “I’d say six out of every 10 people that I talked to (said), ‘Let’s drill,’” he said. “But four of every 10 (said), ‘We’ve got to think about this, we’ve got to stop this.’”

On top of that, he worried that the company drilling the well, Huntley and Huntley, would sue if the borough made its ordinance too restrictive, especially since Plum had allowed smaller wells to be drilled in most parts of the municipality.

Huntley and Huntley did not agree to an interview. But in an email, a company spokesman said that environmental problems predicted by environmentalists at the company’s other sites — like Allegheny County’s Deer Lakes Park — never materialized, and that the company was concentrating its Marcellus drilling on the more sparsely populated parts of the municipality.

“Oil and gas development in these less developed areas will have the benefit of allowing these landowners, who are oftentimes under economic pressure to maintain their open spaces, the ability to keep them as-is, rather than having to sell their land for more intensive development,” said company spokesman Dave Mashek, in an email.

The company’s first Marcellus gas well in Plum is currently taking shape. Backhoes move dirt around the well-pad, which resembles a typical construction site. But in a few months, a drilling rig will be moved on site, to drill down more than a mile underground into the Marcellus shale.

Dave Vento, a former Plum councilman, doesn’t want to see fracking of this scale come to Plum. He’s worried about truck traffic, potential damage to water wells, and whether the development of shale gas wells will drive down property values. He says he understands some of his neighbors would benefit from lucrative royalty payments, but doesn’t think it’s worth it.

“Absolutely, it’s good for them — but at what cost to the rest of the community?” said Vento, who is a foreman for the Pennsylvania Turnpike. “You live in a community, you don’t live by yourself. This isn’t the Wild Wild West. We live in a community. We’re surrounded by humans — you know? It’s just — what you consider your right, (versus) what you don’t consider your right.”

As drilling moves into the suburbs here, it’s a question more and more people will be asking.

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This story is produced in partnership with StateImpact Pennsylvania, a collaboration among The Allegheny Front, WESA, WITF and WHYY.

Pittsburgh at the Three Rivers: Allegheny, Monongahela & Ohio

EDITORIAL: Pittsburgh myth, Paris reality

Guest Editorial by Patrick Gallagher, Chancellor of the University of Pittsburgh

From: Science: June 16, 2017: Vol. 356, Issue 6343, pp. 1103

When announcing his decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement, President Trump reminded the world that, “I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.” In doing so, he repeated a tired trope: that Pittsburgh is a rusty urban relic—a manufacturing city of steel that has fallen on hard times, held back by unfair global competition and onerous environmental regulation. But such a nostalgic version of Pittsburgh, and of many other communities across the country, is a myth. If the president truly wants to represent the interests of Americans, he would learn from the real histories of these regions and promote economic and environmental progress through research, education, and innovation.

“Such history…reminds us that economic and environmental narratives are intertwined.”

Biographer James Parton, visiting Pittsburgh in its manufacturing heyday, described the smoky, sooty landscape as “hell with the lid taken off.” By the early 1940s, after decades of leading the nation in steel production, the city was paying a heavy price for its economic success. Industry leaders, realizing that environmental catastrophe would be bad for business, partnered with local government in one of the country’s first clean air initiatives.

Environmental regulations did not drive the region’s coal industry—long the engine of manufacturing—to collapse. That industry’s fate is more intricately tied to the availability of low-cost natural gas, whose rise—including the shale gas boom—was buoyed by U.S. research efforts during the oil embargo of the 1970s. A lack of innovation and investment were the true linchpins of Pittsburgh’s economic distress. Its aging and inefficient factories were unable to compete with foreign firms. The city lost nearly half of its population, unemployment peaked at 17% in 1983, and Pittsburgh became an economic shadow of its former self.

The region clawed back from its economic breakdown by refocusing on technology innovation fueled by federally funded research at its major universities, especially Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. Today, Pittsburgh is home to one of the most vibrant technology and health care markets in the country. It is teeming with startup companies and is an internationally recognized research leader in medicine, robotics, advanced manufacturing, big data, and autonomous systems. It is no accident that the top of the city’s tallest building now advertises the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center—not U.S. Steel.

Such history, seen in Pittsburgh and elsewhere across the country, reminds us that economic and environmental narratives are intertwined. Climate change creates economic costs, a simple reality of doing business on a finite planet. There can be costs associated with countries working together to slow and adapt to global warming, or costs can result from natural disasters and climate-caused disruption. The economic upside, under these circumstances, is to be the first to develop and market innovative solutions to global climate change and its effects.

Instead of shielding domestic businesses from this opportunity, the United States should be increasing its investments in climate- and energy-related research and supporting the most innovative companies. Training and education should be bolstered so that all Americans can thrive in this rapidly changing economy. The draconian cuts proposed in these areas by the Trump administration augur a less-competitive economic future—even if environmental restrictions are lifted.

The real story of Pittsburgh, and the real story of the United States, points to an economic approach to the challenge of climate change that is drastically different from that voiced by the president. It’s a story that says, from a place of hard-earned experience: Be the innovation leader.

The US under Trump is in chaos

Energy 202: Trump’s Paris speech needs a serious fact check

From an Article by Dino Grandoni, Washington Post, June 2, 2017

Donald Trump spent 131 days contemplating what life would be like if the United States left the Paris climate agreement. Ultimately, he seemed to like what he saw, and followed his gut.

This past Thursday, the president made official his long-rumored decision to withdraw the United States from the 195-nation accord.

Speaking outside the White House, Trump fulfilled a campaign promise to remove the United States from the landmark deal aimed at curbing climate-altering emissions and keeping global warming below a threshold — 2 degrees Celsius above the global temperature before humans began burning fossil fuels — at which the worst consequences of climate change are believed by the scientific community to take hold. (The Post’s Philip Rucker and Jenna Johnson have the main story here.)

A wide swath of world leaders, top scientists and business titans immediately condemned the decision. But in a Rose Garden speech, Trump said withdrawal was necessary for U.S. economic security.

“I am fighting every day for the great people of this country,” he said. “Therefore, in order to fulfill my solemn duty to protect America and its citizens, the United States will withdraw from the Paris climate accord.”

For roughly 25 minutes, Trump laid out his rationale for withdrawal. Some of this made sense — some coal jobs, for example, will indeed be saved by eliminating the Clean Power Plan, one of President Barack Obama’s main efforts at meeting the Paris commitment.

But many of the other reasons Trump gave for withdrawing seemed at best strained and at worst unfounded.

Below we break down some of the claims we found especially difficult to understand:

CLAIM #1: For weeks, as the tug-of-war between the pro- and anti-Paris camps in the White House played out, Trump seemed to grope for a way to claim a middle ground on the Paris decision. The bone he chose to throw Paris supporters is the possibility that the United States can somehow ”reenter” the agreement in the future.

In his speech, Trump promised to “begin negotiations to reenter either the Paris accord or really an entirely new transaction on terms that are fair to the United States.”

“We will see if we can make a deal that’s fair,” he continued.” And if we can, that’s great. And if we can’t, that’s fine.”

THE PROBLEM: From the start, the Paris agreement was designed to have the plasticity Trump seemed to be seeking by talking about some kind of renegotiation. The breakthrough Obama and others made in the lead-up to Paris was allowing nations to choose the amount of greenhouse-gas emissions they were willing to cut.

“Paris already gives countries tremendous flexibility, and no penalties,” said Michael Gerrard, a professor of environmental law at Columbia and director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. ”Trump obviously didn’t read the Paris agreement, and his statement was written by people who willfully misrepresented its contents — his staff or their lobbyist friends.”

Unlike its predecessor, the Kyoto Protocol, the Paris accord did not legally bind nations to emissions targets. The only thing keeping a nation in check was pressure from its international peers. Under the agreement, the United States could miss an emissions goal and face no penalty. It could reset that goal, too, with no formal consequence. It’s unclear what other concessions the United States could gain from a renegotiation.

Also, a new Paris deal may not be practical.

Right after Trump announced his decision, three large European nations indicated they have no interest in a do-over. Italy, Germany and France issued a statement barely an hour after Trump’s speech, saying that the Paris accord “cannot be renegotiated since it is a vital instrument for our planet, societies and economies,” according to Reuters.

Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt — who lobbied heavily for leaving the deal — argued on CNN after the Rose Garden announcement that Paris was a “failing agreement to begin with.” He added that Trump has repeatedly said he is “committed to continuing” climate-change discussions, but with “America at the forefront of those discussions.”

CLAIM #2: While Trump as president has taken a decidedly softer stance toward China than he did while running for office, he used the Paris announcement to take a swing at one of his favorite punching bags to illustrate the raw deal he believes the United States got under the agreement.

“China will be allowed to build hundreds of additional coal plants,” Trump proclaimed. “So, we can’t build the plants, but they can, according to this agreement.”

And again, Trump said: “Under the agreement, China will be able to increase these emissions by a staggering number of years, 13. They can do whatever they want for 13 years. Not us.”

THE PROBLEM: Not so. Again, the agreement does not bind any nation to any emissions target. What China did choose to do under the agreement is have its carbon emissions “peak” by 2030 before then declining. The world accepted that longer leash for China and other developing nations to let them use fossil-fuel energy to promote greater economic growth.

But to meet that goal, China cannot “do whatever they want” until then, as Trump said, at least if China wants to meet that voluntary 2030 target. It needs to begin acting now to control emissions — and in fact, is signaling to the world it is already doing so by announcing in January the cancellation of plans to build more than 100 coal-fired power plants.

The Paris deal “is more fair to the U.S. than previous agreements because it includes all the major economies of the world, not just the rich countries, so both developed countries and developing countries have skin in the game,” Jody Freeman, a Harvard Law School professor and director of the school’s Environmental Law and Policy Program, said. Trump’s ”portrayal is at odds with reality,” she added.

CLAIM #3: In a baby step for a politician who once dubbed the idea of climate change a hoax, Trump suggested in his speech that human activity can warm the planet — albeit backhandedly, and to make the point that the climate accord is futile. Here’s what Trump tweeted in 2013:

“Even if the Paris Agreement were implemented in full, with total compliance from all nations, it is estimated it would only produce a two-tenths of one degree — think of that, this much — Celsius reduction in global temperature by the year 2100,” Trump said during the speech, holding up his hand with thumb and index finger only millimeters apart.

THE PROBLEM: While it’s true that current commitments are not enough to meet the two-degree goal, Trump’s figures are off. As my Post colleague Chris Mooney writes, reporting on an analysis from an MIT researcher: “The current country level pledges under the Paris agreement would reduce the planet’s warming by the year 2100 down from 4.2 degrees Celsius (7.6 degrees Fahrenheit) to 3.3 degrees Celsius (5.9 degrees Fahrenheit), or nearly a full degree Celsius.”

CLAIM #4: Trump also singled out for criticism a United Nations initiative that actually predates the Paris deal called the Green Climate Fund. It’s a pool of money that finances climate mitigation and adaptation efforts in poor nations, but Trump is concerned that U.S. contributions are hurting the United States.

“Beyond the severe energy restrictions inflicted by the Paris accord,” Trump said, ”it includes yet another scheme to redistribute wealth out of the United States through the so-called Green Climate Fund — nice name — which calls for developed countries to send $100 billion to developing countries all on top of America’s existing and massive foreign aid payments.”

And that money the United States pays is ”raided out of America’s budget for the war against terrorism,” he said. ”That’s where they came.”

THE PROBLEM: There are a few, according to the nonprofit Friends of the Earth.

The Green Climate Fund contains $10.3 billion not $100 billion. And the U.S. share comes from the Treasury, not any pool or money set aside for anti-terrorism purposes.

“I’d never heard anything like this before,” Karen Orenstein, deputy director of economic policy at Friends of the Earth, said of the terrorism claim. “It’s totally ridiculous.”

CLAIM #5: During his Rose Garden speech, Trump attempted to rev his coal-country base by saying: ”I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.”

THE PROBLEM: This line is confusing. It was delegates of the nearly 200 nations of the world, not the approximately 2 million people of Paris, who negotiated the climate accord. Paris was simply the city that hosted the talks after which, in the long tradition of diplomatic nomenclature, the agreement was named. Nonetheless, the line is likely to resonate with Trump voters who feel they have been left out of the economic recovery and who do not relate to international diplomats who they don’t believe are working in their best interest.

One other note: Hillary Clinton actually won Allegheny County, Pa., where Pittsburgh is located, by 16 points. Or, as the mayor of Pittsburgh, Democrat Bill Peduto, said: “Pittsburgh stands with the world & will follow Paris Agreement.”

And The Post’s Philip Bump reminds readers what Pittsburgh used to look like: “Once upon a time, the city of Pittsburgh was a robustly blue-collar anchor to the American steel industry. Once upon a time, the air was thick with smog and soot from industry lining the city’s rivers. Once upon a time, decades ago, the collapse of the steel industry and American manufacturing put the city itself at risk.”

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Partners: Google, EDF & Peoples Gas

From an Article by Kara Holsopple, The Allegheny Front, November 18, 2016

This past week, I squished into the backseat of a Google Street View car with Karin Tuxen-Bettman. She manages the Google Earth Outreach program, and she traveled to Pittsburgh from California to demonstrate how a handful of these specially outfitted hatchbacks are helping to fight climate change.

Almost everyone living in a city has seen the Google fleet riding up and down streets, cameras mounted on their hoods. They collect that data that gives Google Maps users a 360-degree view of roads and neighborhoods. But we’re riding in one of four cars that are pulling double duty, because they’re also mapping methane leaks from gas pipelines underneath the streets in 11 cities across the country.

“As we’re driving along, we will be picking up methane concentrations from different sources,” Tuxen-Bettman says.

LISTEN: How Google Street View Cars are Detecting Methane Leaks — Audio Player

Our driver tools around the morning rush in Downtown Pittsburgh, minding his own business and looking out for traffic. But a clear tube under the front bumper of the car is taking in air. It runs inside, along the door and into the trunk. That’s where the analyzer lives.

It’s silver, the size of a couple of shoe boxes and is making a chugging noise. But this rather expensive, research-grade piece of equipment detects methane—the main ingredient in natural gas and a major contributor to global warming. It also picks up on the ethane in gas. It’s the relationship between the two that Tuxen-Bettman says indicates if the methane is coming from the city’s old natural gas infrastructure.

She leans forward and reads two jagged, parallel lines on a monitor that’s mounted in the front seat. “In that last couple minutes, it looks like we did pass some emissions of methane, but I don’t see a corresponding ethane leak, so it’s possible that that could have been emissions from a sewer manhole.”

All of this data is uploaded to the great Google Cloud in the sky and run through an algorithm. Scientists at Colorado State University analyze the results, and if a methane leak from a gas line is suspected, the Google Street View car is instructed to sweep through the area again—just to be sure.

WATCH VIDEO: “Mapping the Invisible”

Google is partnering with the Environmental Defense Fund and Peoples Gas on this project to see where and how much methane is escaping in Pittsburgh.

“Pennsylvania is an important place to do this because it has the largest amount of leak-prone pipe of any state in the country,” says Steve Hamburg, chief scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund.

He spoke earlier, before the test drive, at a briefing in a nearby hotel about the initial pilot project in Pittsburgh. It covers an area stretching across a few neighborhoods, including Downtown, and found 200 leaks—most small, a few big—in a little over 300 miles of pipes. According to the Environmental Defense Fund, almost half of the gas lines in the city are more than 50 years old.

Peoples Gas is already working on a multi-billion-dollar effort to replace these old pipes. In the past, they’ve classified which ones they should yank out first based on things like safety or how well the pipes are performing. But Ed Palumbo, vice president of reliability at Peoples Gas, says the quantity of methane leaking from pipes wasn’t really part of the equation. They simply didn’t have the technology.

“We’re able to take this additional data point, and bring it into our own risk rankings that our engineering group does to help schedule and prioritize those pipeline replacements over the next 20 years,” Palumbo says.

In Pittsburgh, the pilot project found 200 leaks—most small (yellow), a few big (red)—in a little over 300 miles of pipes. Pennsylvania has the most aging, leak-prone pipes of any state in the country. Map courtesy Environmental Defense Fund

The utility’s goal is to quickly and efficiently become more like Indianapolis—another city mapped by the project—where methane leaks are few and far between. Peoples Gas actually contacted the Environmental Defense Fund to get the project rolling in Pittsburgh, and their data are accessible to utilities, regulators and the public.

And what’s in it for Google? Back inside the Street View car, Karin Tuxen-Bettman says they like trying new things. “This is something that I think everybody cares about—environmental air quality and climate change,” Tuxen-Bettman says. “If we can help with the technology piece and partner with organizations that can make an impact on the ground, then it’s a win-win for everybody.”

The project is expanding into more Pittsburgh neighborhoods with help from Carnegie Mellon University. Tuxen-Bettman says Google’s looking into whether it’s feasible for more of their cars to carry the methane sensing equipment. And she hopes someday soon, the cars will do triple duty—by mapping other invisible pollutants in the air, like ozone and fine particulate matter.

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

Former Senator Byron Dorgan

Former US Senator Byron Dorgan was the keynote speaker at a two-day American Petroleum Institute conference in Pittsburgh that kicked off today.  ”A wave of new U.S. oil and gas projects will face heightened federal regulation if the petroleum industry and state regulators can’t control the side effects of the boom, …. Dorgan warned an industry conference here today” Greenwire reported.  (Must be paid subscriber to access Greenwire online.)

“No matter what some might think, we don’t sit around the floor of the Senate saying, ‘What can we regulate today?’” …. “People begin to complain. Groups begin to complain”  Dorgan said.

People living near Marcellus gas wells as well as various environmental organizations called for fast adoption of strong, health-protective, air pollution emissions standards for oil and gas well drilling operations at a daylong U.S. Environmental Protection Agency public hearing in Pittsburgh on September 27th.

All but a dozen of the 108 speakers who signed up to speak at the hearing in the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Downtown, voiced support for the new regulations.  It is proposed to use proven technology and existing best practices to reduce emissions of volatile organic compounds by 95 percent from fracking with high pressure water with various chemicals and 25 percent industry wide. The proposed rules would also reduce emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, by 3.4 million tons and air toxics, such as benzene, a human carcinogen, by 38,000 tons, or almost 30 percent.

Among the speakers were Janet McIntyre, a resident of rural Butler County, Deborah Nardone, director of the Sierra Club’s Natural Gas Reform Campaign, David McCabe, an atmospheric scientist with the Clean Air Task Force, Nadia Steinzor of Earthworks,  and Kevin Stewart, director of environmental health for the American Lung Association.

Kathryn Klaber, president and executive director of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, an industry group representing more than 250 companies operating in the Marcellus Shale play, emphasized the energy production and environmental benefits of cleaner-burning natural gas. She also questioned the economic benefits the EPA’s proposals would have on the industry.  Howard Feldman, director of regulatory and scientific affairs for the American Petroleum Institute, said the EPA proposals are a “reasonable start” but would require some changes to make them workable. He suggested that the final rules be delayed for a full year.

US-EPA WILL ACCEPT WRITTEN COMMENTS UNTIL OCTOBER 11, 2011

The Earthworks Oil and Gas Accountability Project has information available –- talking points/fact sheet.  The WV-Surface Owners Rights Organizations has prepared the following response: (1) This is a good first step, (2)  the oil & gas industry should comply with the same clean air standards as other industries, and (3) the public health needs to be protected from drilling toxics like benzene and other carcinogens. The EPA must finalize the rules, mandated by a court-ordered consent decree, by February 28, 2012.

More Information:  EPA web page about the proposed rules, and the Earthworks fact sheet and talking points

Where and How to Submit Written Comments:
Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID Number EPA–HQ–OAR–2010–0505, by one of the following methods:

• E-mail: a-and-r-docket@epa.gov. Include Docket ID Number EPA–HQ–OAR–2010–0505 in the subject line of the message.
• FAX: (202) 566–9744.
• Mail: Attention Docket ID Number EPA–HQ–OAR–2010–0505, 1200 Pennsylvania Ave., NW., Washington, DC 20460. Please include a total of two copies.
• In addition, please mail a copy of your comments on the information collection provisions to: Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs,
  Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Attn: Desk Officer for the EPA, 725 17th Street, NW., Washington, DC 20503