New Analysis Proves Kalama Methanol Project is a Climate Disaster
If built, the Kalama methanol project would unleash a tsunami of fracking to supply all the gas the facility needs to make methanol.
Collection: Fracked Fuel & Petrochemical Projects in the Pacific Northwest
Public Opinion Is Moving Against Natural Gas and Fracking
Surveys show growing skepticism about the fossil fuel industry. Even in swing states where the oil and gas industry looms large, fracked gas isn’t a winner.
Listen In: Policymaking in a Pandemic
This week, I joined KBOO Community Radio‘s Barbara Bernstein for a wide-ranging conversation about how the coronavirus pandemic shapes our policymaking and may change our calculations about climate change. We talked about the profound challenges of the crisis, as well as the way it presents new opportunities for important policies like voting by mail and universal … Read more
2019 Sightline Report Update: Mapping BC’s LNG Proposals
Editor’s note: The report below is the second update of an original Sightline report published in March 2017. Over the past decade, Oregon and Washington have fended off several proposals to build enormous fracked fuel and petrochemical terminals on their coasts. But just to the north, British Columbia’s political leaders have taken the opposite tack, … Read more
Calling Natural Gas a ‘Bridge Fuel’ Is Alarmingly Deceptive
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Methane gas, commonly referred to as “natural gas,” is the fossil fuel with the most positive image. Natural gas is marketed as not just cleaner than other fossil fuels, but as “clean”—a demonstrably false descriptor with an endless number of caveats. Oil and gas companies promote gas subsidiaries by prominently featuring the word “clean” in … Read more
Methane’s 20- and 100-Year Climate Effect Is Like ‘CO2 on Steroids’
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Methane, the primary component of fracked gas, is a highly questionable solution for decarbonization or reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Fracked gas is commonly purported to be a “cleaner” alternative to other fossil fuels but that notion comes from looking at only a pixel in the full emissions picture. Our common understandings are inaccurate. When researchers … Read more
Studying Full Methane Life Cycle Critical to PNW Climate Policy
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]The fossil fuel industry purports that natural gas is “clean,” but that claim fails to account for climate-damaging methane leaks along the supply chain. Poor external reporting requirements mean gas companies don’t have to share how much fugitive methane escapes into the atmosphere each year. With no one to compel more data-sharing from the industry, … Read more
Sightline Testifies at Hearing for Tacoma LNG Protesters
Editor’s note: Watch the testimony provided by researcher Tarika Powell last month in the February 20 pre-trial hearing at the end of this article. Stephen Way, 72, and Carlo Voli, 52, paddled to the Tacoma LNG construction site at the Port of Tacoma before dawn last December 11, and locked themselves to a construction crane … Read more
Event: Environmental Justice in the Pacific Northwest
This Thursday, Sightline researcher Tarika Powell will head to Tacoma, Washington, to discuss the recent local fossil fuel fights and how the environmental permitting process can have unjust outcomes for working-class communities and communities of color. University of Puget Sound groups Loggers Live Green and Puget Sound ECO, along with the school’s English, History, and Environmental Policy departments, … Read more
A Billion Dollar Gas-To-Fertilizer Plant in Longview?
Yet another tentacle of the Northwest gas industry seems to be reaching for Longview, Washington, on the Columbia River, where city authorities are now evaluating plans for a new $1 billion gas-to-fertilizer plant. Pacific Coast Fertilizer proposes to build and operate a facility that would process methane gas (commonly known as “natural” gas) in the … Read more
