DV Journal

While Republicans say Attorney General Josh Shapiro’s announcement of criminal charges against Energy Transfer is really about politics and not the pipeline, Pennsylvania’s green activists are transparent about what they want.

Kill the Mariner East 2. And do it now.

Which raises the question, what happens if they succeed?

“Now that the attorney general and the grand jury have done their job, there should be no question: It is time for an immediate halt of the Mariner East pipeline project,” green activist Rep. Danielle Friel Otten (D-Upper Uwchlan) said after Shapiro’s press conference. “I am once again calling on Gov. Wolf, the DEP, and the PUC to revoke Energy Transfer’s permits to operate in Pennsylvania.”

State Sen. Katie Muth (D-Chester/Montgomery/Berks) joined Friel Otten and a handful of Pennsylvania progressives to make the same demand in a letter to the Wolf administration.

“We urge you to take immediate action to halt the Mariner East Pipeline project, revoke the company’s permits to operate in Pennsylvania, issue a moratorium on all future permits, and ensure all impacted residents have clean drinking water in their homes through a public water provider,” they wrote.

It’s an extreme stance, particularly given the $2.5 billion, 350-mile project transporting natural gas liquids from western Pennsylvania to the Marcus Hook facility is nearly completed, and thousands of energy sector jobs are at stake.

“Mariner East 2 is critical because the natural gas in southwestern Pennsylvania comes out of the ground with all kinds of other chemicals,” says David N. Taylor, president and CEO of Pennsylvania Manufacturers’ Association. “The natural gas itself is methane, but the methane comes along with ethane, butane, propane, pentane, and natural gasoline, so these are feedstocks that manufacturers can use to make things.”

That is why Taylor says it is so important to get those petrochemical feedstocks from where they are harvested to where they can be processed and then used as a manufacturing input.

“That’s the purpose of Mariner East 2,” says Taylor. “It’s to deliver those inputs from southwestern Pennsylvania to southeastern Pennsylvania.”

Energy Transfer projects the Mariner East and Marcus Hook projects will generate more than $100 million a year for Pennsylvania’s economy. Critics dismiss those numbers, but they concede the energy sector is a key part of the state’s finances.

Speaking about natural gas at an October 4 meeting of the Pennsylvania Senate Environmental Resources & Energy Committee, David Callahan, president of Marcellus Shale Coalition, said Pennsylvania has benefited greatly.

“Thanks to our abundant natural gas resources, along with our embrace of competitive energy markets, Pennsylvania has benefited from tens of billions of dollars in investment and several hundred thousand direct and indirect jobs, including those in the building trades,” said Callahan. “Nearly $14 billion has been invested to date in new natural gas-powered electric generation, not to mention the billions of dollars of investment and thousands of jobs associated with downstream utilization of natural gas and natural gas liquids such as the petrochemical facility in Beaver County that will open up considerable downstream opportunities.”

Callahan went on to add that these natural gas-related investments across the state have brought “billions of dollars to our communities and helped support thousands of more Pennsylvanians with family-sustaining wages.”

If activists succeed in shutting down the pipeline, it would leave manufacturers struggling to get natural gas-related raw materials they need.

“There are many manufacturing processes that require a temperature point that can only be met with natural gas,” says Taylor. “You may have heard about the Shell investment to turn ethane into polyethylene, and polyethylene is at the top of the top of the value chain that — depending on how you process it — can yield every kind of plastic, rubber, paint, glaze, sealant, adhesive, and solvent, all  consumer products people handle and use every day.”

And then there’s the looming national shortage of natural gas. The EU is already suffering through an energy crisis so severe that some nations are considering a return to coal. Lack of access to fuels, natural gas in particular, is driving electricity prices to all-time highs in Europe.

Now come warnings the U.S. may face supply issues as well. Ernie Thrasher, chief executive officer of Xcoal Energy & Resources LLC, told Bloomberg utility companies fear fuel shortages this winter could trigger blackouts.

“These utilities are worried the assets they have can’t get enough fuel,” Thrasher said. “There are people of high authority at large utilities who are deeply concerned.”

Pipeline politics aren’t helping. There has been a spate of pipeline closings due to political pressures since President Joe Biden took office in January. He issued an executive order canceling the Keystone XL pipeline on his first day on the job. In July, Dominion Energy and Duke Energy announced they were canceling the Atlantic Coast pipeline due to “legal uncertainty” in the face of repeated challenges from pipeline opponents. And the plug was pulled on the PennEast pipeline just months after winning a major victory before the Supreme Court for similar reasons.

If convicted, Shapiro’s office says Energy Transfer will be sentenced to fines and restitution.

On this edition of the Delaware Valley Journal “On The Air,” State Sen. Dan Laughlin talks about his plans to run for governor and the pitch he plans to make to Pennsylvania GOP primary voters:

‘Nobody hates me.’

Is there room in the Grand Old Party of 2021 for a consensus-building candidate? Laughlin thinks there is and he explains why.

With DVJournal News Editor Linda Stein and Michael Graham of InsideSources.

The Wolf administration wants the Keystone State to have a carbon-free electric grid by 2050. But not all Pennsylvanians are amped by the idea.

“I think it’s very good for Pennsylvania that Wolf has only one more year left in his term of office and he can’t run for governor again,” says chairman of the Pennsylvania Environmental Resources and Energy Committee Daryl Metcalfe (R-Butler County). “These types of policies are just going to drive up the cost of energy that we all need in our daily lives.”

Gov. Tom Wolf (D) announced the Pennsylvania Climate Action Plan 2021 on Wednesday, calling for statewide action on climate change by all sectors of the state.

“As thousands of Pennsylvanians try to recover from historic flooding and tornadoes related to the remnants of Ida this month, the message is clear: we must move now out of a reactive mode on climate change,” Wolf said.

The Wolf administration’s Department of Environmental Protection echoed the governor.

“As a result of increasing greenhouse gas emissions from human activity, Pennsylvania’s average temperature has risen nearly 2 degrees Fahrenheit since 1900, bringing more heatwaves and increased intensity of extreme weather events, including heavy rainfall and flooding,” said DEP in a statement ahead of the climate plan announcement. “Pennsylvania is on course to climb another 5.9 degrees by the middle decades of this century.”

There is no data showing any increased intensity in extreme weather. And there has been no increase in flooding.

“These conclusions of the IPCC, indicate that it is simply incorrect [emphasis in original] to claim that on climate time scales the frequency or intensity of extreme weather and climate events has increased for: Flooding, drought (meteorological or hydrological), tropical cyclones, winter storms, thunderstorms, tornadoes, hail, lightning or extreme winds,” writes Professor Roger Pielke, Jr. of the University of Colorado.

There are 18 recommendations in Wolf’s Climate Action Plan. They include updating and enforcing building codes, improving energy efficiency in the residential and commercial sectors, increasing the use of on-site solar power in those sectors, adding to the number of electric vehicles, and using programs and incentives to increase energy efficiency in agriculture.

“We’ll get our biggest greenhouse gas emission reductions from creating a carbon-free electricity grid that uses renewable and nuclear energy,” said DEP Secretary Patrick McDonnell at a virtual press conference.

“In a world of wishful thinking, policy changes should be based on sound science so that new regulations are reasonable, cost effective, and achievable with existing technology,” says David N. Taylor, president and CEO of Pennsylvania Manufacturers’ Association.

“Gov. Wolf’s  ‘Action Plan’ fails all of these bright-line tests in moving the goal posts on Pennsylvania’s productive sector,” says David Taylor. “Our manufacturers require reliable and affordable energy to add value and satisfy customers, and private sector innovation has led to dramatic decreases in energy-related emissions over the past two decades.”

As these innovations advance, Taylor says we will continue to drive economic growth while improving our environment, all without unnecessary and costly intervention from  Wolf Administration.

“Among those who can’t afford such absurd illusions are more than 8,000 workers whose livelihoods depend on coal-fired plants in Indiana and Armstrong counties and hundreds of businesses and millions of consumers whose profitability and wealth would be eroded by higher electricity prices resulting from Wolf’s so-called green grid,” says Gordon Tomb, senior fellow for the Commonwealth Foundation.

Leo Knepper at Citizens Alliance of Pennsylvania (CAP) agrees.

“Wolf is living in some sort of an alternate reality if he thinks that something like a zero-carbon energy grid is desirable or realistic for Pennsylvania,” says Leo Knepper, political director for Citizens Alliance of Pennsylvania (CAP). “A paper released in 2016 estimated that the clean energy mandates in place at that time would cost the commonwealth over $700 million in higher electricity costs and 11,000 jobs by 2025.”

The impact of the types of mandates the governor is now suggesting would be far worse, says Knepper.

“Between 2000 and 2018, carbon emissions from energy production dropped by 20 percent, and that’s not due to new mandates,” says Knepper. “Carbon output dropped because natural gas became more price competitive and it is a cleaner-burning fuel.”

As lower-emission energy generation becomes more competitive on a price per kilowatt-hour, Knepper says its consumption will increase and carbon output will naturally decrease further.

“Government trying to front-run the technology and force adoption will result in much higher costs, job losses, and a lower standard of living overall,” says Knepper.

Earlier this year, U.S. Steel announced its plans to cancel a $1.5 billion investment in Mon Valley Works, a decision that affected 3,000 workers. Critics blamed it on the environmental policies from Wolf and President Joe Biden.

“The loss of this $1.5 billion project is a devastating blow to the economy of southwestern Pennsylvania and a slap in the face to the hard-working blue-collar families who were counting on these jobs,” said Pennsylvania state Republican legislators in a May statement. “It is a clear reminder that we need a commonsense, cooperative strategy on energy and the economy.”

“What they announced is the kind of socialist pie-in-the-sky that fits well with Biden’s agenda and AOC’s agenda and The Squad’s agenda from D.C.,” says Metcalfe. “I think Wolf is certainly trying to attract attention from Biden so that when he’s done harming Pennsylvania through his gubernatorial work that he may be able to attract Biden to try to bring him into his administration.”