These industries are throwing an economic lifeline to the fracking industry. Without the buildout of fracked gas infrastructure, the fracking industry would likely face more severe economic headwinds and find it more difficult to fund drilling and exploration projects.
But as these industries prop up their mutual profits, they are proliferating pollution. Petrochemical plants, gas liquefaction facilities and gas-fired power plants emit air and climate pollution. Far from being a cleaner power source, natural gas is no climate solution.
The power plants emit greenhouse gases and other hazardous air pollutants, and widespread leaks of potent climate gas methane from gas infrastructure such as pipelines mean that declining power plant emissions are outweighed by increased greenhouse gas emissions from methane leaks.
The United States needs to rapidly shift to 100 percent clean, renewable energy to curb the worst impacts
of climate catastrophe. The fossil fuel infrastructure that is currently planned and under construction will have an effective lifespan far longer than the point when experts agree that the world must shed all fossil fuels, meaning that these stranded assets will be wasted economic investments.4 But the fracking industry’s partnership with the triple threat of the plastics industry, gas exporters and power companies is buttressing the climate-destroying expansion of fracking in the United States.
Read complete Food and Water Watch report here.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.