American environmental law came of age under the aegis of that unlikely ol’ treehugger, Richard Milhous Nixon.
The seminal laws on clean air, clean water, endangered species, and environmental impact statements were born. So were two vital environmental agencies, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the Commerce Department.
Nonprofits matched the frantic pace with the 1970 debut of Earth Day. When the venerable Sierra Club fired its cantankerous boss, David Brower created Friends of the Earth. Some hotshot Ivy League lawyers founded the Natural Resources Defense Council, in friendly competition with some other hotshot Ivies at the Environmental Defense Fund (b.1967).
Also in 1970, a well-connected aide to a Long Island Congressman, fortified with David Brower’s advice and encouragement, founded the League of Conservation Voters.
Marion Edey was taking names — and a nonpartisan clearinghouse for environmental politics was born.
Foremost among the League of Conservation Voters' (LCV) products were its
annual scorecard, which graded the voting performance of every member of Congress on key environmental legislation. And later, LCV’s Dirty Dozen, a scornful list of undeserving candidates for national office.
Political archaeology
For all its legitimate value as a political mainstay for environmentalists, LCV’s website offers geek-out opportunities for a half-century’s worth of American environmental history.
In the ancient 1971-72 edition of the LCV Scorecard, House and Senate members are graded on their votes on clean water, killing marine mammals, and regulating supersonic transport passenger aircraft. Two New York City Democrats drew perfect 100% scores from LCV: Future Mayor Ed Koch and Bella Abzug. The only Senator to score 100% was — surprise! — Earth Day co-founder Gaylord Nelson (D-Wisc.)
And a “zero” of note was the day’s conservative standard bearer, Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.).
In 1973, Congress pondered the Alaska pipeline and OPEC’s first oil embargo. House Minority Leader Gerald Ford rated 11% before resigning to replace Vice President Agnew, and then President Nixon.
In 1977-78, Congress considered several mine safety and nuke safety measures as well as major land conservation efforts in Alaska. There were few perfect scores or shutouts, but freshman Senator Joe Biden (D-Del.) scored a 92%.
In the 1980 scorecard, a young Georgia Republican named Newton LeRoy Gingrich scored 50% -- 15 points better than a young Democrat from neighboring Tennessee, Al Gore.
And as LCV matured, environmental party politics regressed into the tribal mess that dominates all national politics. In last year’s Scorecard, Pennsylvania’s Brian Kirkpatrick was the only Republican congressman who scored higher than 50%.
LCV’s revenues for the last full year available were $78 million in 2020. Not insignificant, but couch change compared to Soros or Steyer, or Donors Trust.
This year, Republicans have once again run the table on LCV’s Dirty Dozen. Bearing rap sheets featuring Big Oil funding and climate denial, LCV has targeted several Republicans in high-profile, pivotal Senate races: Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson; Georgia’s Herschel Walker; Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania; and Arizona’s Blake Masters. Through no fault of LCV’s, “nonpartisan” is now a punchline.
I’m writing this with the TV on in the background. Bleak scurrilous ads vie to persuade me that the Dems are soulless criminals, and that the Republicans are, too.
But groups like LCV can show how the game should be played: By realizing that it is not a game.
Peter Dykstra is our weekend editor and columnist and can be reached at pdykstra@ehn.org or @pdykstra.
His views do not necessarily represent those of Environmental Health News, The Daily Climate, or publisher Environmental Health Sciences.
The justices are set to rule on four cases affecting environmental protections, including EPA's cross-state smog controls and the Chevron doctrine.
The 40-year-old Chevron doctrine, which allows agencies to interpret laws, is under threat, potentially altering long-standing regulatory practices.
A separate case could open old federal rules to new legal challenges, creating the possibility of reopening old cases.
Key quote:
“Brace for impact.”
— Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice in a recent analysis.
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Why this matters:
As the court deliberates, the outcomes will be closely watched by a diverse array of stakeholders, including health professionals, environmental advocates and industry leaders. The decisions could set new precedents for how far federal agencies can go in implementing measures to protect the environment, impacting everything from industrial emissions to natural resource management.
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.”
During a shareholders meeting in Tokyo last Friday, a group of investors in Nippon Steel asked the company to improve its decarbonization strategy and reduce harmful emissions in light of its pending acquisition of U.S. Steel.
Nippon Steel, the largest steel producer in Japan and the fourth-largest in the world, is set to purchase U.S. Steel pending regulatory approval by the US government. The sale is controversial because the United Steelworkers Union strongly opposes it, and has sparked an international political debate over whether U.S. Steel should remain “American owned.”
A group of concerned investors say that Nippon Steel’s purchase of U.S. Steel, which still relies heavily on coal-based steel production at its 11 blast furnaces in the Pittsburgh region, is part of a pattern indicating the company has a “coal addiction.” Nippon Steel has also been buying up coal mines in other parts of the world, and recently started construction on two new blast furnaces in India.
“Steel does not have a climate problem, it has a coal problem,” Brynn O’Brien, executive director of the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility, one of the investment groups calling for changes at Nippon Steel, told EHN. “Shareholders should note neither U.S. Steel nor Nippon Steel have Paris-aligned targets, and the potential addition of U.S. Steel’s 11 blast furnaces to Nippon Steel’s operations will place more pressure on the company to demonstrate to shareholders it has a credible decarbonization strategy.”
O’Brien’s organization, along with the investment groups Corporate Action Japan and Legal & General Investment Management, filed three shareholder proposals ahead of last Friday’s meeting. The proposals asked Nippon Steel to set and disclose short and medium-term greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets aligned with the Paris Agreement, requested that executive profits be linked to the company’s emissions reduction targets (something other steel companies have already done) and asked for increased disclosure of climate-related lobbying activities.
When the proposals were presented at last Friday’s shareholder meeting, they were met with applause from other shareholders, according to people who were present.
“I think that’s a sign of the times that there’s increasing awareness that Nippon Steel has a climate problem it needs to get serious about, and that’s the message these investors sent,” Roger Smith, Asia lead for SteelWatch, an industry watchdog and climate advocacy group, told EHN.
The filing of the proposals came after a group of institutional investors collectively representing nearly $5 trillion of assets informally asked Nippon Steel for more environmental accountability last year, according to the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility. The formal proposals were also supported by the large institutional investment firms Amundi, Nordea Asset Management and Storebrand Asset Management.
“Steel does not have a climate problem, it has a coal problem." — Brynn O’Brien, Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility
The proposals didn’t garner enough votes to be adopted at last Friday’s shareholder meeting, but about 21% of shareholders voted in support of the proposal to align emission goals with the Paris Agreement, 23% of shareholders voted in support of the proposal requesting that shareholder profits be linked to the company’s emission reduction targets and 28% of shareholders voted in favor of the proposal on improved disclosure of climate-related lobbying.
In Japan, climate-related shareholder proposals require a majority of two-thirds of the votes of the shareholders present in order to be adopted, according to O’Brien.
“Not meeting this threshold does not mean a company can or will disregard significant support for a proposal,” he said. “Given the significant shareholder support for all three proposals, we expect Nippon Steel to respond to this strong investor feedback… Good corporate governance requires, at a minimum, the company to analyze the reasons for the vote and consider how its strategy needs to evolve in line with investor expectations.”
Nippon Steel did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the shareholder proposals or its decarbonization strategy.
A competitive disadvantage
While the shareholders who filed the proposals raised climate and public health concerns, their primary concern was financial.
The support for the climate-related proposals at the shareholders meeting “is evidence that investors see a strong link between a credible decarbonization strategy and securing corporate value,” O’Brien said. “Continuing coal investment risks stranded assets, regulatory penalties and competitive disadvantages as global markets shift towards green steel production.”
The Paris Agreement has shifted the steel market dramatically, Smith said.
“It’s now the expectation of governments and steel buyers that low-emission steel will soon be available, and ultimately that will either be requested or required,” Smith said. “Some of Nippon Steel’s biggest rivals have plans to produce green steel in the next few years, but Nippon Steel has nothing to compete with that. They have no low-emissions primary steel, nor do they have any plans to produce it in the near future.”
O’Brien noted that while U.S. Steel’s Pennsylvania plants are problematic, Nippon Steel’s decarbonization strategy would benefit from acquiring the company’s electric arc furnace facilities in Alabama, which have a significantly lower carbon footprint and are necessary for the production of green steel.
“That doesn’t resolve shareholder concerns about making continued investments in coal-based facilities,” Smith said. “Investors need to know, is this just a dead end? Are you just going to run the blast furnaces into the ground and then walk away?”
The steel industry’s critical role in meeting global climate targets
“I don’t think they’re going to care about us," Natalie Morris, a resident of Braddock who lives near U.S. Steel’s Edgar Thomson Mill, told EHN during a protest last month over the sale to Nippon Steel.
Credit: Kristina Marusic for EHN
Steel production is responsible for an estimated 7% of all human-made greenhouse gas emissions, and is the largest greenhouse gas emitter in the manufacturing sector. The steel industry’s carbon footprint impacts other major industries, including construction, transportation and energy production, so shrinking the industry’s emissions could also “substantially cut emissions for all those industries dependent on steel,” according to the World Economic Forum.
Both U.S. Steel and Nippon Steel have set goals of being carbon neutral by 2050, but both companies have been criticized for lacking concrete plans to reach that goal, for their continued reliance on coal when cleaner technologies are available and for that timeline being too slow to achieve the 1.5°C global warming limit established by the Paris Climate Agreement.
The MSCI Global Sustainability Index rates Nippon Steel’s projected emissions as being aligned with more than 3.2°C of global warming, indicating that the company’s “contribution to catastrophic climate change is higher than most.”
“It wouldn’t be a livable planet if every company did that,” Smith told EHN.
U.S. Steel doesn’t have an MSCI rating, but has been ranked “high risk” for investors concerned about sustainability by the investment research firm Morningstar.
“It’s a little ironic that Nippon Steel is coming to the U.S. and buying a company that’s facing all the same problems they’re facing in Japan,” Smith said.
The shareholders plan to continue applying pressure.
“There are further escalation tools available to shareholders, including voting on directors, if insufficient progress is made,” O’Brien said. “Investors want confidence that Nippon Steel is going to remain competitive into the future, and there is strong commitment to ensuring corporate value is secured.”
For the second time this year, a chemical recycling plant built to turn waste into usable products has closed, casting further doubt on the viability of an upstart industry that has been plagued by financial and technical challenges in its effort to scale up.
Fulcrum BioFuels launched its Sierra plant outside Reno, Nevada, in 2022 with the goal of converting municipal solid waste into “sustainable aviation fuel.” But in May of this year the company suddenly laid off its roughly 100 employees and shuttered its website, as Bloomberg first reported. The decision came just as the plant was ready to reopen after a series of technical challenges had forced it offline, continuing a trend of delays and setbacks for a facility that had initially been slated to open in 2010.
Fulcrum representatives did not respond to emails and phone calls and little is yet clear about the company’s future, while its plans to build a larger plant in Gary, Indiana, appear to be hanging on by a thread following bond defaults. Carolyn McCrady, a co-founder of Gary Advocates for Responsible Development, which formed in 2021 to oppose Fulcrum’s plans, said her organization is still challenging Fulcrum’s air permit to build a plant in the city as it waits to learn more about the company’s next steps.
“We feel vindicated and that we were right all along,” McCrady told EHN. “We think all communities should put on their critical thinking hats when people like these come to town and offer something that’s too good to be true.”
As of September 2023, there were 11 constructed chemical recycling facilities in the country using pyrolysis or gasification to convert plastic into fuel or chemicals that can then be used to create new plastic, according to a report from Beyond Plastics and the International Pollutants Elimination Network. Two of those have now closed — news welcomed by environmental advocates concerned that the plants encourage plastic production and discourage solutions that address the roots of the global plastics crisis. Greenhouse gas emissions from the processing of plastic waste are also 10 to 100 times worse than those from the production of virgin plastic, and the release of plastic additives during chemical recycling can cause reproductive, cardiovascular and endocrine harm, the Beyond Plastics report found.
For the chemical recycling industry—facing a precarious moment with state legislation and a global plastic treaty developing—the closure is another indication of financial, technical and regulatory headwinds. Last fall, Youngstown City Council in Ohio voted against SOBE Thermal’s proposal for a plant that would have converted tires into gas. In February, the Regenyx plant in Oregon, which converted plastic waste into a polystyrene precursor, closed before ever reaching capacity, suffering millions in financial losses in the process. And in April, Encina canceled its plans to build one of the country’s largest chemical recycling plants in Pennsylvania.
The chemical recycling industry “will continue to face enormous challenges, both in securing financing, operating economically and producing products that companies want to buy,” Jenny Gitliz, director of solutions to plastic pollution at Beyond Plastics, told EHN. The fact that plastic has so many different chemicals in it further complicates the various conversion processes now in use, Gitliz explained.
Closure a “black eye” for waste-to-fuel efforts
Fulcrum launched in Pleasanton, California, in 2007, focused on developing the infrastructure to use an unusual feedstock to create jet fuel: municipal solid waste. At its Sierra plant, it turned shredded waste, including up to 20% plastic, into synthetic gas through a process called gasification, which heats the feedstock in a low-oxygen environment. After a second step in which the gas is cleaned up, it enters a Fischer-Tropsch reactor, in which it is converted into aviation fuel. Fulcrum’s facility was the first to license the Fischer-Tropsch technology, designed by BP and Johnson Matthey. A spokesperson for BP declined to comment on the closure of Fulcrum’s plant but said the technology can operate economically at large and small scales and is “a key technology in e-fuels production pathways” that it plans to continue to license and commercialize.
The chemical recycling industry “will continue to face enormous challenges, both in securing financing, operating economically and producing products that companies want to buy.” — Jenny Gitliz, director of solutions to plastic pollution at Beyond Plastics
The Sierra plant cost $300 million to build and had a capacity of 12 million gallons of sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF, per year, according to a report published last fall by Beyond Plastics and IPEN. But its first shipment contained just 350 gallons, Bloomberg reported, and the unexpected creation of nitric acid, emissions of nitrogen oxide and the buildup of material in its gasification process contributed to a start-and-stop nature that prevented the plant from ever reaching capacity.
Before closing the Sierra plant, Fulcrum had entered forbearance on $289 million in bonds. The Indiana Finance Authority had authorized $500 million in bonds for Fulcrum’s planned facility in Gary, but the company failed to secure funding for the 52-acre lakefront property where it hoped to build, McCrady said, delaying that project. Fulcrum had also announced its intention to build facilities in Baytown, Texas, and the United Kingdom.
Fulcrum’s partners on the Sierra project included Waste Connections, which was slated to supply waste to the facility and did not respond to a request for comment on the closure. United Airlines invested $30 million in Fulcrum and did not respond to a request for comment. Fulcrum also had an offtake agreement with Japan Airlines, which did not respond to a request for comment. BP had invested $30 million in Fulcrum with a plan to take up to 50 million gallons of fuel per year from its plants, far exceeding the Sierra plant’s capacity.
The aviation industry is racing to meet its goal of making 10% of its fuel sustainable by 2030, but the total SAF volume of 160 million gallons in 2023 was “a drop in the bucket” of the total 100 billion gallons of fuel used, said Steve Csonka, executive director of the Commercial Aviation Alternative Fuels Initiative, a public-private partnership formed in 2006. The conversion of municipal solid waste into fuel could still contribute to that effort—as could the Sierra plant if it’s brought back online by another company—despite the challenge of utilizing a non-homogenous feedstock, Csonka said. But the Sierra plant’s closure is a “black eye” that will hinder that broader project, he said.
Chemical recycling controversy
Ross Eisenberg, president of America’s Plastic Makers, an industry trade group, said in a statement that 10 new or expanded chemical recycling facilities are in development and the industry is in the midst of a normal, lengthy process to scale up. “With chemical recycling able to produce a wide variety of products at the same time as hundreds of companies are committing to use more recycled plastic, there is a tremendous opportunity in the U.S. to recycle more of our post-use materials,” he said.
But to Anja Brandon, associate director of U.S. plastics policy at the Ocean Conservancy, the Sierra plant’s closure is further evidence that the environmental impacts and economics of chemical recycling “just don’t add up.”
“It’s a flashing red light for these other facilities—really for the potential investors or lenders to these other facilities—that this is an industry that has and continues to fail, which I hope decreases the investment and drive for these types of facilities and opens up the market for investments in real upstream solutions,” Brandon told EHN.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan aims to reassure employees about the agency's future and rebuke past efforts to undermine climate science.
EPA Administrator Michael Regan will address employees today, just a few hours before the first presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, about the agency's recovery since Trump sidelined climate scientists and slashed staff.
Regan will highlight the hiring of 5,200 new employees under Biden and emphasize the need for a robust EPA amid escalating climate crises.
New protections have been implemented to shield EPA research from political interference in anticipation of potential future challenges.
Key quote:
“The previous administration ambushed scientific integrity — undermining our agency’s most fundamental principles.”
— Michael Regan, EPA Administrator.
Why this matters:
The future relevance of the EPA is crucial for maintaining scientific integrity and addressing climate change, especially with ongoing extreme weather events and the looming threat of policy reversal under a potential second Trump term. Read more: EPA’s “scientific integrity” program lacks teeth, group alleges.
Donald Trump claims that President Biden's climate policies, including electric tanks and sustainable fuel jets, will weaken U.S. military power, despite the Pentagon's plans to address climate change without compromising military effectiveness.
Trump has criticized Biden's climate policies, claiming they will reduce military efficiency and effectiveness.
The U.S. military has plans to reduce carbon emissions and explore sustainable fuels while maintaining operational capabilities.
Experts argue that electric and hybrid military vehicles offer battlefield advantages and reduce logistical challenges.
Key quote:
“It is not the goal to fail, the goal is to succeed... to have stuff that works well, that provides operational advantages, and also reduces environmental impact.”
— John Conger, director emeritus of the Center for Climate and Security and senior adviser to the Council on Strategic Risks
Why this matters:
Critics argue that Trump's comments overlook the long-term benefits of sustainable military technologies. Electric vehicles and alternative fuels could enhance operational flexibility and resilience, reducing vulnerabilities associated with fuel supply chains. In addition, advancements in green technology are poised to maintain, if not enhance, the military's combat capabilities.
Computer models show that even a small rise in water temperature could trigger significant ice sheet collapse.
This process may be responsible for underestimating past sea level rises and poses severe future risks.
Key quote:
“With every tenth of a degree of ocean warming, we get closer and closer to passing this tipping point.”
— Dr. Alexander Bradley, British Antarctic Survey
Why this matters:
The urgency of addressing climate change becomes more apparent with each new study. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions, investing in renewable energy, and enhancing coastal resilience are steps that must be accelerated to prevent the most severe outcomes of a warming planet.
“Of all the levels of radium in produced water or brine around the world that I’ve looked at, I have encountered none that are consistently as high as what comes out of the Marcellus Shale.”
