Connecticut Using More Fracked Methane Gas to Power the State
by Sierra Club Connecticut
Connecticut has been actively expanding the use and transport of methane or “natural” gas in the state for over ten years, and the results are not good. We pay the highest price for electricity of anybody in the continental U.S., we have the worst air pollution in New England, and the state continues to release greenhouse gas emissions at unsustainably high levels. While emissions from transportation constitute a large percentage of the air pollution released in our state, approximately 40 percent, pollution from energy generation is the next largest source at about 39 percent.
At the same time as the state invested public funds to construct corporate-owned methane infrastructure, it also passed laws and regulations that put up barriers to solar development. Although more solar energy on the grid is associated with improved reliability and fewer greenhouse gas emissions, state agencies and legislators have actively blocked the solar industry. There is only one benefit of reducing people’s ability to access clean energy: it ensures larger profits for Connecticut’s gas and electric monopolies Eversource and UI/Avangrid.
Sierra Club Connecticut is leading the fight to stop fossil gas expansion and to demand that the state convert to a renewable energy-powered economy. There are multiple gas expansion projects we are opposing: the Enbridge gas pipeline expansion from New York to Massachusetts that will cut across the entire state of Connecticut; the Milford and Brookfield gas compressor station expansions that will bring additional methane to NYC, which recently passed a law to phase methane out of new construction; and a brand new Eversource pipeline in Wilton to connect houses to fracked gas rather than to clean, efficient and affordable renewable thermal technology. For more information, see our website: connecticut.sierraclub.org. To get involved, contact Nick at [email protected] or Martha at [email protected].
According to the US Energy Information Agency, the United States is the world’s largest exporter of Liquefied Natural Gas at nearly 14 billion cubic feet/ per day. This compares to around 90 bcf/per day used domestically. The Department of Energy is forecasting a rise in exports to 30 bcf/per day by 2030. ExxonMobil and the energy fund of the Qatari monarchical dictatorship are partnering to build new export processing infrastructure in the USA. These facilities regularly leak methane potent greenhouse gas pollutant and further aggravate respiratory diseases. The gas utilities are pushing state regulators to have ratepayers pay for new LNG pipelines. They are conning the American public into thinking it is about having adequate domestic supplies.
See my Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/voteTomMcCormick for more on fossil exports.