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Ask a Scientist: Gas Plants Disproportionately Harm Marginalized Communities

Union of Concerned Scientists

Just how bad is fossil “naturalgas? Responsible for 12 percent of all US global warming emissions from human activities, methane traps significantly more heat per molecule than carbon dioxide, making it 86 times more harmful for the first 20 years after it is released into the atmosphere. First, there’s air pollution.

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Why Energy Bills Will Be Even Higher This Winter

Union of Concerned Scientists

US ratepayers very likely will pay even more for electricity and heating this winter compared to the already-expensive winter of 2021-2022. Investors finally started getting tougher on these debt-saddled drilling companies during the pandemic as demand for both oil and gas plunged, pushing a slew of drillers over the edge into bankruptcy.

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Good News—and Bad—about Fossil Fuel Power Plants in 2023 

Union of Concerned Scientists

GW record from 2021. In 2021 alone, the plants slated for retirement emitted more than 28,000 tonnes of nitrogen oxides (NO x ), 32,000 tonnes of sulfur dioxide (SO 2 ), and 51 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), according to EIA data. pollution, which are particles with diameters of 2.5

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Reliance on Gas Power Plants Fuels Inequity

Union of Concerned Scientists

And all this polluting infrastructure has serious health and environmental implications for the surrounding communities. Gas infrastructure harms people and the environment The are multiple harms from gas infrastructure on people and the environment. Most notable of these polluting emissions are nitrogen oxides (NOx).

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Ninth Circuit Holds Berkeley’s Gas Ban Preempted by U.S. Energy Policy & Conservation Act

Law Columbia

The court overturned a District Court ruling to invalidate a Berkeley, California, prohibition on natural gas infrastructure in newly-constructed buildings. Berkeley’s so-called “natural gas ban” was the first local ordinance in the country to effectively require all-electric construction of new buildings.

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New Global Energy Market Risk: War Pushes Overreliance on US LNG in Path of Climate-Amped Hurricanes

Union of Concerned Scientists

In response, Europe has scrambled to replace flows and decouple this dependence , in part by shifting away from gas to clean energy alternatives, in part by increasing local gas production, and in part by turning to imports of liquified natural gas, or LNG—including from the US.

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Ask a Scientist: Two Dozen States Can Meet 100 Percent of Electricity Demand with Renewables by 2035

Union of Concerned Scientists

The shift from fossil fuels in the 100-percent RES scenario reduces the amount of toxic power plant air pollution much more than what we called a “no-new-policy,” or business-as-usual, scenario. Emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides from power plants in alliance states drop 88 percent and 77 percent respectively by 2040.