Small-scale clean energy and low carbon technologies—such as solar panels, smart appliances and electric bicycles—are more likely to push society toward meeting climate goals than large-scale technologies, according to a new study from a team of international researchers.
The findings, published today in Science, suggest governments and investors around the world should prioritize small-scale, low carbon technologies in policy design and research development in order to reduce emissions responsible for climate change in a more efficient and just way.
The study authors make their case for small-scale climate change solutions.
For years, scientists have issued stark warnings that, without drastic cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, we will further warm the planet and increasingly experience "substantial" consequences—wildfires, droughts, flooding, coral reef die-offs, food shortages. A groundbreaking 2018 study from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that the planet is on a trajectory to warm by as much as 2.7-degrees Fahrenheit (compared to pre-industrial temperatures) by 2040.
The message from climate scientists has been clear and consistent—we have to act fast.
In the new study, researchers examined how to best attack the problem with available technologies. They collected information on a wide assortment of energy technologies and examined their viability to help push countries toward meeting international climate change goals, defined in the study as needing to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half within the next decade and to net-zero by 2050.
They tested how well each technology performed in cost, innovation, accessibility, social return, equality of access, investment risk and other characteristics.
The team divided technologies into two categories: "lumpy" technologies such as nuclear power, carbon capture, high speed transit, whole building retrofits; and "granular" technologies such as solar panels, electricity storage batteries, heat pumps, smart thermostats, electric bikes, and shared taxis.
They found the granular options "can help drive faster and fairer progress towards climate targets," said lead author Charlie Wilson, a researcher at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia, in a statement.
"Big new infrastructure costing billions is not the best way to accelerate decarbonization," Wilson said. "Governments, firms, investors, and citizens should instead prioritize smaller-scale solutions, which deploy faster. This means directing funding, policies, incentives, and opportunities for experimentation away from the few big and towards the many small."
Wilson and colleagues wrote the granular tech was "associated with faster diffusion, lower investment risk, faster learning, more opportunities to escape lock-in, more equitable access, more job creation, and higher social returns on innovation investment."
They cautioned that small-scale technology is not always the answer—for example, there are no alternatives for planes or industrial plants.
"Smaller scale innovations are not a panacea," said co-author Nuno Bento, a researcher at the University Institute of Lisbon, in a statement.
However, these smaller technologies are, in general, quicker to get to market and less complex. This accessibility means more jobs—which makes them an easier sell for policymakers crafting climate change plans.
"Large 'silver bullet' technologies like nuclear power or carbon capture storage are politically seductive," said co-author Arnulf Brubler, a researcher at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, in a statement.
"But larger scale technologies and infrastructures absorb large shares of available public resources without delivering the rapid decarbonization we need."
U.S. Steel’s proposed sale to Nippon Steel stokes concerns over labor rights and national security, all while the company continues to break clean air laws in Western Pennsylvania.
PITTSBURGH — On a windy, rainy afternoon in early April, bundled-up protesters gathered in front of U.S. Steel’s corporate headquarters downtown ahead of a shareholder vote on the sale of the company to Japanese-owned Nippon Steel.
They held signs bearing messages like, “Will your grandkids forgive you?” and “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.”
The ongoing political debate over the pending sale of U.S. Steel to Nippon Steel has reached the highest levels of government, but residents near the company’s Pittsburgh-area plants say those conversations are excluding the voices of communities subjected to U.S. Steel’s health-harming emissions.
“It's completely unacceptable and untenable for a community to be subjected to thousands of violations of the Clean Air Act for decades,” Matt Mehalik, executive director of the Breathe Project, a coalition of more than 40 environmental advocacy groups in the region, told EHN during the protest. “The people at the negotiating table need to deal with these issues as part of the sale process.”
After the protesters on the sidewalk chanted “U.S. Steel, you steal our health,” shareholders gathered in a boardroom in the skyscraper high above voted to sell the company to Nippon Steel for $14.1 billion, with 98% of shares voting in favor of the deal. It remains to be seen whether it will go through or be halted by regulators.
“This sale has been pushed forward by U.S. Steel at the expense of both community members and workers,” Hilary Lewis, the steel director for Industrious Labs, an environmental advocacy organization focused on decarbonizing heavy industry, told EHN. “There’s been a lot of pushback because these important stakeholders are just not being heard.”
U.S. Steel has been fined more than $20 million for Clean Air Act violations at its Pittsburgh-area facilities since 2018, and the company recently settled a lawsuit for about $25 million with environmental advocacy groups over more than 12,000 air permit violations in the region. It’s a decades-long pattern and impacted residents accuse the company of acting under a “pay-to-pollute” model, opting to pay fines rather than stop violating clean air laws. Meanwhile, climate advocates say U.S. Steel is lagging behind the rest of the industry when it comes to advancing clean technology and phasing out health-harming and climate-warming coal.
In April, President Joe Biden told steel union workers in Pittsburgh that his administration would attempt to block the sale of the company to Nippon Steel and the national security review that’s now underway could last at least a year. The United Steelworkers Union has opposed the sale, expressing concerns about whether Nippon Steel would honor its existing commitments to things like pensions and other worker benefits and citing Nippon Steel’s history of hiring “anti-union lawyers” in disputes with its U.S. steel plants. The Japanese company delayed the takeover last week by three months.
While the protesters outside U.S. Steel tower want to see the company’s environmental compliance issues in Pennsylvania addressed in these debates, the potential sale has also sparked concerns about how the deal might impact U.S. Steel’s existing, hard-won environmental compliance agreements in the region.
“We’re talking about another country millions of miles away,” Natalie Morris, a resident of Braddock who lives near U.S. Steel’s Edgar Thomson Mill, told EHN during the protest. “I don’t think they’re going to care about us.”
And — whether or not the sale goes through — U.S. Steel remains a distant laggard in the push toward cleaner steelmaking, as steelmakers nationwide are increasingly turning away from coal.
What will a sale mean for U.S. Steel’s existing environmental commitments?
U.S. Steel operates three facilities in the U.S. that still rely on coal. Two are in Pennsylvania’s Monongahela Valley near Pittsburgh and one is in Gary, Indiana.
The company was once an industrial powerhouse, but has faced challenges for several decades due to competition from cheaper steel produced in other parts of the world. The proposed sale to Nippon Steel is pitched as a solution to the company’s financial woes, but union opposition has framed it as a means to generate exponential profits for executives at the expense of workers.
All three U.S. Steel plants still reliant on coal are regularly fined for violating clean air regulations. The Clairton Coke Works, about 15 miles south of Pittsburgh, is the largest coke-making plant in the country —a process that involves cooking coal at extremely high temperatures to create a key steelmaking ingredient known as “coke.” Coke made at the Clairton Coke Works supplies both the other western Pennsylvania steel plant and the Indiana plant.
Residents impacted by the plant’s ongoing pollution problems in Pennsylvania are also worried about what the sale might mean for existing legal agreements over pollution violations.
For example, in March a judge finalized a settlement that requires U.S. Steel to spend nearly $20 million upgrading its western Pennsylvania facilities and put an additional $5 million into health and clean air programs in local communities. It’s the largest Clean Air Act citizen suit payout in Pennsylvania history and the third-largest in U.S. history, according to environmental advocates.
“It's completely unacceptable and untenable for a community to be subjected to thousands of violations of the Clean Air Act for decades.” - Matt Mehalik, Breathe Project
The settlement was the result of a lawsuit filed by the Allegheny County Health Department, which oversees local air quality, and environmental advocacy groups PennEnvironment and the Clean Air Council, in response to a fire that knocked out pollution controls at the company’s Clairton plant in 2018. The incident resulted in weeks of substantial Clean Air Act violations and well-documented health effects.
The agreement also requires U.S. Steel to invest in measures to prevent similar pollution events, creates financial penalties for pollution control equipment outages for the next five years and requires the company to shut down one of its oldest, dirtiest coke ovens.
“This is not just about a financial penalty to U.S. Steel,” Matt Donohue, a staff attorney at the National Environmental Law Center, who argued the case, told EHN. “During discovery it became apparent that if nothing was done there would be more outages, more pollution events and more harm to the communities surrounding the plant. Preventing that from happening was the most important thing to us.”
In an email, U.S. Steel spokesperson Andrew Fulton said, “U. S. Steel employs more than 3,000 hardworking men and women throughout its [southwestern Pennsylvania] facilities … their work has yielded exceptional, measurable results including an environmental and permit regulation compliance rate exceeding 99%.”
U.S. Steel has reached similar settlements over other pollution incidents. According to Donohue and a spokesperson for U.S. Steel, these agreements will remain in place and remain legally binding regardless of who owns the company.
“That’s true for all agreements like this, but because we knew the sale was possible, we also went through our agreement with a fine-toothed comb to make sure that whoever owns this company has to comply with all of the terms of the agreement on the same timeline,” Donohue said.
What would it take for U.S. Steel — or whoever owns the company next — to clean up its operations in Pennsylvania?
The ongoing political debate over the pending sale of U.S. Steel to Nippon Steel has reached the highest levels of government, but residents near the company’s Pittsburgh-area plants say those conversations are excluding the voices of communities.
Credit: Kristina Marusic for EHN
The movement toward cleaner steelmaking in the U.S. is already well underway. About 70% of steel produced in the country is made with electric arc furnaces, which do not use coal, while the remaining 30% still use coal to power blast furnaces. Around 72% of the industry’s climate-warming pollution comes from those remaining blast furnaces.
“Not only is [coal-based steelmaking] inherently dirty, but [Clairton Coke Works] is also regularly out of compliance with health-protective regulations,” Lewis, the advocate from Industrious Lab, said. “A half measure would be just complying with the law, but if we’re actually talking about protecting community health, we need to get coke out of steelmaking.”
In 2019 U.S. Steel announced $1.5 billion in upgrades to its western Pennsylvania facilities, but reneged on that promise in 2021 and instead put that money toward an electric arc furnace in Arkansas.
Electric arc furnaces essentially recycle scrap steel instead of using coke to make new steel products. But on its own, an electric arc furnace isn’t capable of making “virgin” steel, which is considered higher quality, less likely to crack and is needed for certain steel applications, including much of what’s used by the automobile industry.
In order for U.S. Steel to do away with coal at its Pennsylvania plants, they’d need both electric arc furnaces and a method of producing direct reduced iron, a replacement for coke that can be made using green hydrogen from renewable energy.
“A half measure would be just complying with the law, but if we’re actually talking about protecting community health, we need to get coke out of steelmaking.” - Hilary Lewis, Industrious Labs
Last month, a Swedish company announced the first “green” steel plant proposed in the U.S. If the project moves forward, the Mississippi plant will use both electric arc furnaces and direct reduced iron made with green hydrogen to make steel. Green hydrogen isn’t yet available at the scale required to meet total demand for steelmaking, Lewis conceded, but the U.S. Department of Energy is working to change that.
“This Mississippi project is a perfect model that U.S. Steel could follow,” Lewis said, noting that a company in Boston is working on a similar green steel project that uses electricity rather than green hydrogen. “That technology isn’t as commercially advanced as green hydrogen, but the point is that there are numerous clean technologies that U.S. Steel could move toward using instead of coal.”
Making that transition will also be essential to staying competitive as the world decarbonizes, according to Lewis.
“The auto industry makes up about a third of all steel sales,” Lewis said. “That industry has climate goals and commitments that will eventually require them to eliminate the use of steel made using coal, and when they do, they’ll be taking their business to facilities like the new green steel plant in Mississippi and that will leave companies still producing steel with coke behind.”
U.S. Steel declined to go on the record about whether the company has or will consider investing in these technologies for its western Pennsylvania facilities, but noted that they’re working on carbon capture and battery-powered locomotive projects.
“According to the Allegheny County Health Department, hazardous air pollutants have decreased by 80% in Allegheny County over the last 12 years,” Fulton, U.S. Steel spokesperson, said. “U.S. Steel has invested roughly $750 million in its Mon Valley operations in the past five years and invests more than $100 million per year on environmental compliance.”
As for the potential sales impact on environmental efforts, both U.S. Steel and Nippon Steel have set goals of being carbon neutral by 2050, but “neither company has a very concrete plan for how they’re going to do this and neither company is addressing concerns about the ongoing use of coal in steelmaking,” Lewis said.
Nippon Steel has made some investments in electric arc furnaces, but Mehalik, of the Breathe Project, said Nippon Steel also has a record of environmental issues at some of its plants.He expressed concern that even if the company sells, health harms from its Pennsylvania facilities could persist.
“Everywhere that U.S. Steel operates communities are affected and harmed, but it’s particularly acute here,” Mehalik said. “Whether the sale proceeds or not, whoever ends up owning U.S. Steel needs to bring these things to a close.”
CAMERON PARISH, La. — Late into the night, John Allaire watches the facility next to his home shoot 300-foot flares from stacks.
He lives within eyesight of southwest Louisiana’s salty shores, where, for decades, he’s witnessed nearly 200 feet of land between it and his property line disappear into the sea. Two-thirds of the land was rebuilt to aid the oil and gas industry’s LNG expansion. LNG — shorthand for liquified natural gas – is natural gas that's cooled to liquid form for easier storage or transport; it equates to 1/600th the volume of natural gas in a gaseous state. It’s used to generate electricity, or fuel stove tops and home heaters, and in industrial processes like manufacturing fertilizer.
In the U.S., at least 30 new LNG terminal facilities have been constructed or proposed since 2016, according to the
Oil and Gas Watch project. Louisiana and Texas’ Gulf Coast, where five facilities are already operating, will host roughly two-thirds of the new LNG terminals – meaning at least 22 Gulf Coast LNG facilities are currently under construction, were recently approved to break ground or are under further regulatory review.
Although the U.S. didn’t ship LNG until 2016, when a freight tanker left, a few miles from where Cameron Parish’s LNG plants are today, last year the country became the global leader in LNG production and export volume, leapfrogging exporters like Qatar and Australia. The
EIA’s most recent annual outlook estimated that between the current year and 2050, U.S. LNG exports will increase by 152%.
Allaire, 68, watches how saltwater collects where rainwater once fed the area’s diminishing coastal wetlands. “We still come down here with the kids and set out the fishing rods. It's not as nice as it used to be,” he told
Environmental Health News (EHN).
That intimacy with nature drew Allaire to the area when he purchased 311 acres in 1998. An environmental engineer and 30-year oil and gas industry veteran, he helped lead environmental assessments and manage clean-ups, and although retired, he still works part-time as an environmental consultant with major petroleum companies. With a lifetime of oil and gas industry expertise, he’s watched the industry's footprint spread across Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico’s fragile shores and beyond. Now that the footprints are at the edge of his backyard, Allaire is among a cohort of organizers, residents and fisher-folk in the region mobilizing to stop LNG facility construction. For him, the industry’s expansion usurps the right-or-wrong ethics he carried across his consulting career. For anglers, oil and gas infrastructure has destroyed fishing grounds and prevented smaller vessels from accessing the seafood-rich waters of the Calcasieu River.
From the view of Allaire’s white pickup truck as he drives across his property to the ocean’s shore, he points to where a new LNG facility will replace marshlands. Commonwealth LNG intends to clear the land of trees and then backfill the remaining low-lying field.
“You see what’s happening with the environment,” Allaire said. “When the facts change, I got to change my mind about what we’re doing.”
Community bands together
John Allaire, left, purchased 311 acres in Cameron Parish in 1998, and has watched the oil and gas industry's footprint spread to his property.
Credit: John Allaire
During an Earth Day rally in April, community members gathered in the urban center of Lake Charles to demand local oil and gas industries help deliver a safer, healthier future for all. In between live acts by artists performing south Louisiana’s quintessential zydeco musical style, speakers like James Hiatt, a Calcasieu Parish native with ties to Cameron Parish and a Healthy Gulf organizer, and RISE St. James organizer Sharon Lavigne, who’s fighting against LNG development in rural Plaquemines Parish near the city of New Orleans, asked the nearly 100 in attendance to imagine a day in which the skyline isn’t dotted by oil and gas infrastructure.
Not long ago, it was hard to imagine an Earth Day rally in southwest Louisiana at all. For decades, the area has been decorated with fossil fuel infrastructure. Sunsets on some days are highlighted by the chemicals in the air; at night, thousands of facilities’ lights dot the dark sky.
“It takes a lot of balls for people to start speaking up,” Shreyas Vasudevan, a campaign researcher with the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, told EHN in the days after the rally. In a region with its history and economy intertwined with oil and gas production, “you can get a lot of social criticism – or ostracization, as well – even threats to your life.”
Many are involved in local, regional and national advocacy groups, including the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, Healthy Gulf, the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Turtle Island Restoration Network, the Center for Biological Diversity and the National Audubon Society.
“You see what’s happening with the environment,” Allaire said. “When the facts change, I got to change my mind about what we’re doing.” - John Allaire, environmental engineer and 30-year oil and gas industry veteran
But environmental organizers are fighting a multi-billion-dollar industry with federal and state winds at its back. And LNG’s federal support is coupled with existing state initiatives.
Under outgoing Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards — a term-limited Democrat — the state pledged a goal of reaching net-zero greenhouse emissions by 2050. Natural gas, which the LNG industry markets as a cleaner-burning alternative, is cited as one of the state’s solutions. Louisiana is the only state that produces a majority of its carbon emissions through fossil fuels refining industries, like LNG, rather than energy production or transportation. Governor Edwards’ office did not return EHN’s request for comment.
This accommodating attitude towards oil and gas industries has resulted in a workforce that’s trained to work in LNG refining facilities across much of the rural Gulf region, said Steven Miles, a lawyer at Baker Botts LLP and a fellow at the Baker Institute’s Center on Energy Studies. Simultaneously, anti-industrialization pushback is lacking. It’s good news for industries like LNG.
“The bad news,” Miles added. “[LNG facilities] are all being jammed in the same areas.”
One rallying cry for opponents is local health. The Environmental Integrity Project found that LNG export terminals emit chemicals like carbon monoxide –potentially deadly– and sulfur dioxide, of which the American Lung Association says long-term exposure can lead to heart disease, cancer, and damage to internal or female reproductive organs.
An analysis of emissions monitoring reports by the advocacy group the Louisiana Bucket Brigade found that Venture Global’s existing Calcasieu Pass facility had more than 2,000 permit violations.That includes exceeding the permit’s authorized air emissions limit to release nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, particulate matter and volatile organic compounds 286 out of its first 343 days of operation.
The Marvel Crane, the first liquid natural gas carrier to transport natural gas from the Southwest Louisiana LNG facility, transits a channel in Hackberry, Louisiana, May 28, 2019.
“This is just one facility,” at a time when three more facilities have been proposed in the region and state, Vasudevan said. Venture Global’s operational LNG facility — also known as Calcasieu Pass — “is much smaller than the other facility they’ve proposed.”
In an area that experienced 18 feet of storm surge during Hurricane Laura in 2020 — and just weeks later, struck by Hurricane Delta — Venture Global is planning to build a second export terminal Known as “CP2,” it’s the largest of the roughly two dozen proposed Gulf LNG export terminals, and a key focal point for the region’s local organizing effort.
Residents “don’t really want LNG as much as they want Cameron [Parish] from 1990 back,” Hiatt told EHN of locals’ nostalgia for a community before storms like Rita in 2005 brought up to 15 feet of storm surge, only for Laura to repeat the damage in 2020. Throughout that time, the parish’s population dipped from roughly 10,000 to 5,000. “But the wolf knocking at the door is LNG. Folks in Cameron think that's going to bring back community, bring back the schools, bring back this time before we had all these storms — when Cameron was pretty prosperous.”
“Clearly,” for the oil and gas industry, “the idea is to transform what was once the center of commercial fishing in Louisiana to gas exports,” Cindy Robertson, an environmental activist in southwest Louisiana, told EHN.
Helping fishers’ impacted by LNG is about “actual survival of this unique culture,” Cooke said.
In a measure of organizers’ success, she pointed to a recent permit hearing for Venture Global’s CP2 proposal. Regionally, it’s the only project that’s received an environmental permit, but not its export permit, which remains under federal review. At the meeting, some spoke on the company’s behalf. As an organizer, it was a moment of clarity, Cooke explained. Venture Global officials “had obviously done a lot of coaching and organizing and getting people together in Cameron to speak out on their behalf,” Cooke said. “So, in a way, that was bad. But in another way, it shows that we really had an impact.”
“It also shows that we have a lot to do,” Cooke added.
Environmental organizers like Alyssa Portaro describe a sense of fortitude among activists — she and her husband to the region’s nearby town of Vinton near the Texas-Louisiana border. Since the families’ relocation to their farm, Portaro has worked with Cameron Parish fisher-folk.
“I’ve not witnessed ‘community’ anywhere like there is in Louisiana,” Portaro told EHN. But a New Jersey native, she understands the toll environmental pollution has on low-income communities. “This environment, it’s so at risk — and it’s currently getting sacrificed to big industries.”
“People don’t know what we’d do without oil and gas. It comes at a big price,” she added.
Southwest Louisiana’s Cameron Parish is one of the state’s most rural localities. Marine economies were the area’s economic drivers until natural disasters and LNG facilities began pushing locals out, commercial fishers claim.
Credit: Xander Peters for Environmental Health News
Residents “don’t really want LNG as much as they want Cameron [Parish] from 1990 back,” James Hiatt , a Healthy Gulf organizer, told EHN. "But the wolf knocking at the door is LNG."
Credit: Xander Peters for Environmental Health News
For the most part, Cameron Parish’s life and economy has historically taken place at sea. As new LNG facilities are operational or in planning locally, locals claim the community they once knew is nearly unrecognizable.
Credit: Xander Peters for Environmental Health News
A disappearing parish
The stakes are seemingly higher for a region like southwest Louisiana, which is the epicenter of climate change impacts.
In nearly a century, the state has lost roughly 2,000 square miles of land to coastal erosion. In part driving the state’s erosion crisis is the compounding impacts of Mississippi River infrastructure and oil and gas industry activity, such as dredging canals for shipping purposes, according to a March study published in the journal Nature Sustainability. Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority said Cameron Parish could lose more land than other coastal parishes over the next 50 years. A recent Climate Central report says the parish will be underwater within that time frame.
On top of erosion and sea level rise impacts, in August, 2023, marshland across southwest Louisiana’s Cameron Parish burned. The fires were among at least 600 across the Bayou State this year. Statewide, roughly 60,000 acres burned — a more than six-fold increase of the state’s average acres burned per year in the past decade alone.
But while the blaze avoided coastal Louisiana communities like Cameron Parish, the fires represented a warning coming from a growing chorus of locals across the region — one that’s echoes by the local commercial fishing population, who claimed to have experienced unusually low yields during the same time, according to a statement from a local environmental group. At the site of the Cameron Parish fires are locations for two proposed LNG expansion projects.
"The idea is to transform what was once the center of commercial fishing in Louisiana to gas exports.” - Cindy Robertson, an environmental activist in southwest Louisiana
It was an unusual occurrence for an area that’s more often itself underwater this time of year due to a storm surge from powerful storms. For LNG expansion’s local opposition, it was a red flag.
As the Louisiana Bucket Brigade has noted prior, the confluence of climate change’s raising of sea levels and the construction of LNG export terminals — some are proposed at the size of nearly 700 football fields — are wiping away the marshland folks like Allaire watched wither. Among their fears is that the future facilities won’t be able to withstand the power of another storm like Laura and its storm surge, which wiped away entire communities in 2020.
Amidst these regional climate impacts, LNG infrastructure has shown potential to exacerbate the accumulation of greenhouse gasses that cause global warming. For the most part, LNG is made up of methane — a greenhouse gas that’s more than 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Among the 22 current LNG facility proposals, the advocacy group Sierra Club described a combined climate pollution output that would roughly equal to that of about 440 coal plants.
The climate impacts prompt some of the LNG industry’s uncertainty going forward. It isn’t clear if Asian countries, key importers of U.S. LNG, will “embrace these energy transition issues,” said David Dismuke, an energy consultant and the former executive director of Louisiana State University’s Center for Energy Studies. Likewise, European nations remain skeptical of embracing LNG as a future staple fuel source.
“They really don't want to have to pull the trigger,” Dismukes added, referring to Europe’s hesitation to commit more resources to exporting LNG from the American market. “They don't want to go down that road.”
While there will be a tapering down of natural gas supply, Miles explained, “we’re going to need natural gas for a long time,” as larger battery storage for renewables is still unavailable.
“I'm not one of these futurists that can tell you where we're going to be, but I just don't see everything being extreme,” Dismukes said. “I don't see what we've already built getting stranded and going away, either.”
For now, LNG seems here to stay. From 2012 to 2022,U.S. natural gas demand — the sum of both domestic consumption and gross exports — rose by a whopping 43%, reported the U.S. Energy Information Administration, or EIA. Meanwhile, in oil and gas hotbeds like Louisiana and Texas, natural gas demand grew by 116%.
Throughout 25 years, Allaire has witnessed southwest Louisiana’s land slowly fade, in part driven by the same industrial spread regionally. Near where the front door of his travel trailer sits underneath the aluminum awning, he points to a chenier ridge located near the end of the property. It’s disappearing, he said.
“See the sand washing over, in here?” Allaire says, as he points towards the stretches of his property. “This pond used to go down for a half mile. This is all that's left of it on this side.”
BAYTOWN, TX — As Exxon Mobil moves forward with federal re-permitting for its massive petrochemical complex in the Houston area, residents remain frustrated with the lack of accessibility and Spanish-language outreach from the state and company.
At issue is Exxon Mobil’s application for its Baytown Olefins Plant permit, which must be approved by the the Texas Commision on Environmental Quality every five years to continue operations.
The olefins plant — which produces about 10 billion pounds of petrochemical products annually — is part of Exxon’s petrochemical complex in Baytown, which includes the nation’s third-largest refinery. The renewal has been contested by residents and activists due to pollution concerns and 12 consecutive quarters of Clean Air Act violations at the Exxon Mobile Baytown Complex. If approved, the permit would allow the facility to operate for the next five years.
A public hearing this week — the second in as many months — was held for community members to bring comments or questions to Exxon Mobil or the TCEQ.
At the previous hearing community residents brought up concerns about the meeting notice not being published in Spanish on the TCEQ’s site. TCEQ attorney Amy Browning said that the reconvening was a result of the agency’s failure to “publish (the meeting notice) in Spanish electronically on the commission’s site.”
In addition to the original meeting notice not being published in Spanish, Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services, or TEJAS, representative Deyadira Arellano pointed out at both meetings that Exxon’s slides related to their plant operations are not translated to Spanish. At this week’s meeting, Exxon approached her in the break period to offer slides in Spanish to her email. However, Arellano said that her frustration resided with the TCEQ.
TEJAS representative Deyadira Arellano pointed out at both meetings that Exxon’s slides related to their plant operations are not translated to Spanish.
Credit: Cami Ferrell for EHN
“The TCEQ should preview these materials ahead of time,” said Arellano. “It is important to ensure meaningful engagement efforts are inclusive and accessible to all diverse members of our communities.”
Exxon’s Public and Government Affairs Manager Aaron Stryk said that they are “continuously working to improve their Spanish language communications” and do provide Baytown-related communications updates in English and Spanish.
“It is important to ensure meaningful engagement efforts are inclusive and accessible to all diverse members of our communities.” - Deyadira Arellano, TEJAS
The TCEQ publishes all public comments and addresses each of them during the permitting process. English-speaking individuals have access to a digital comment interface 24/7 to comment on the permit while the comment period is open. However, Spanish speakers have no accessibility tools provided from the TCEQ to help navigate the English-only interface. Many have to opt to comment in person or mail in their comments and then have their comments translated, according to TCEQ Attorney Christyn Cavasos.
TEJAS has long advocated for better accessibility for Spanish speakers from the TCEQ. The state agency has a history of neglecting Latino and Spanish speaking communities in their outreach, including important air pollution monitoring information.
The permit will undergo a revision phase if needed after the comments have been finalized. Following the revision, the TCEQ will submit the permit to the EPA which has 45 days to reject it. If applicable, emissions units must comply with new federal regulations.
Sister Susan Francois emphasized the Catholic Church's historical role in colonization while advocating for Indigenous rights at Citibank's shareholder meeting.
Despite the failure of their resolution for the third year, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace plan to continue their advocacy against financing harmful fossil fuel projects.
Citibank's recent report on Indigenous peoples' rights was criticized for not meeting international standards, highlighting ongoing concerns over corporate responsibility.
Key quote:
“This is a clear message to the bank that human rights violations are bad for business.”
— Sister Susan Francois, Treasurer of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace
A rupture in the Mountain Valley Pipeline during recent testing has reignited concerns among environmentalists and locals, intensifying debates over the project's safety and environmental impacts.
A recent Mountain Valley Pipeline rupture occurred during hydrotesting near Roanoke County, with the company affirming the integrity of their testing process.
The incident, which involved a segment being damaged on May 1, was reported without causing injuries but raised environmental concerns due to sedimentation.
Despite ongoing legal and environmental challenges, the company plans to continue construction and testing.
Key quote:
"We are committed to ensuring the safe and responsible operation of this project, and the hydro testing process is an important aspect of preparing this pipeline system to operate safely for decades to come ... "
— Natalie Cox, company spokeswoman
Why this matters:
The Mountain Valley Pipeline, designed to transport natural gas through the Appalachian Mountains, has been touted by proponents as a necessary step toward energy independence and economic growth. However, critics have argued that it poses significant risks to local ecosystems, water sources, and public health.
The World Bank proposes shifting subsidies from high-emission foods like red meat and dairy to more sustainable options such as poultry and vegetables, aiming to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.
The World Bank's new strategy focuses on reallocating funds to support less carbon-intensive foods, like chicken and vegetables.
This approach could drastically lower the agriculture sector's contribution to global emissions, currently at nearly one-third.
The plan coincides with upcoming updates to the Paris Agreement, stressing the urgency of enhanced climate action in food production.
Key quote:
“We have to stop destroying the planet as we feed ourselves.”
— Julian Lampietti, manager for global engagement in the World Bank's agriculture and food global practice
Why this matters:
Red meat and dairy are among the most resource-intensive and polluting agricultural sectors, contributing significantly to greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, and water scarcity. By diverting subsidies to lower-emission alternatives such as poultry and plant-based products, the initiative aims to mitigate these environmental concerns while fostering a more sustainable and resilient food system.
