by Ben Hunkler | Jul 5, 2024 | Blog Posts
Nearly a year and a half since a Norfolk Southern train carrying hazardous petrochemical materials derailed near East Palestine, Ohio, sparking one of the worst environmental disasters in US history, community members are calling on the Department of Justice to hold a...
by Sean O'Leary | Jun 25, 2024 | Blog Posts, Hydrogen & Carbon Capture
Lately we hear a great deal about hydrogen’s environmental and economic promise. But hydrogen deployment also carries risks, not just for health and safety, but economic risks, including higher prices, taxes, and utility bills along with little potential for job...
by Sean O'Leary | Jun 25, 2024 | Blog Posts, Natural Gas
In all, the states of Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia have 85 non-peaker coal and gas-fired power plants with capacities of 100 MW or greater. The following chart lists the plants alphabetically and indicates each plant’s owner, location, start date,...
by Sean O'Leary | Jun 11, 2024 | Blog Posts, Shared Prosperity and Clean Energy
Almost three years ago I wrote a blog post titled, “Renewable Energy: The New Texas Tea.” In it, I compared changes in electric rates in Texas, where what would become a rapid transition to renewable energy was gathering steam, with changes in rates in Ohio,...
by Ben Hunkler | Jun 6, 2024 | Blog Posts, Petrochemicals & Plastics
The Shell Polymers Monaca petrochemicals complex shadowing the banks of the Ohio River in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, has become something of a symbol in Appalachia. To the many families nearby, it represents a constant, draconic threat, belching episodic flames,...
by Joanne Kilgour | Apr 4, 2024 | BIL/IRA Implementation Digest, Blog Posts, Shared Prosperity and Clean Energy
Heavy industry is Pennsylvania’s biggest source of climate pollution and a principal cause of various environmental health concerns in frontline environmental justice communities. A new program known as Reducing Industrial Sector Emissions in Pennsylvania, or RISE PA,...
by Staff | Mar 28, 2024 | Blog Posts
The truth, well told, can speed progress toward change. The Ohio River Valley Institute (ORVI), an independent nonprofit providing research and solutions for a more sustainable, equitable, democratic, and prosperous Appalachia, is hiring for the newly created position...
by Eric Dixon | Mar 27, 2024 | Blog Posts
After the 2022 flood in southeast Kentucky, the Ohio River Valley Institute worked with the Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center to do an initial estimate of the cost to rebuild housing damaged by the flood and found that the cost far exceeded the funds that had been...
by Ted Boettner | Mar 25, 2024 | Blog Posts, Orphaned Oil & Gas Wells
Pennsylvania, like several other oil and gas producing states, has a broken system when it comes to preventing orphaned and abandoned wells. Its inadequate bonding and regulatory systems incentivize the indefinite delay of plugging responsibilities and the orphaning...
by Sean O'Leary | Mar 21, 2024 | Blog Posts, Hydrogen & Carbon Capture
Do you know a bad deal when you see it? Possibly not, if the deal has to do with something as arcane as leasing underground pore space to an oil and gas company that wants to dispose of carbon dioxide. But that’s the kind of deal property owners and elected officials...
