by Ben Hunkler | May 10, 2022 | Blog Posts, Shared Prosperity, Shared Prosperity and Clean Energy
For generations, Appalachia has powered the nation’s industrial growth with our region’s bountiful reserves of coal, gas, and oil. Today, our communities are suffering the effects of that legacy of extraction—air and water pollution, rampant greenhouse gas emissions,...
by Eric de Place | Apr 15, 2022 | Blog Posts, Petrochemicals & Plastics
The plastics industry is facing a triple threat. Product bans, public opinion, and corporate pledges all conspire to curtail future profits and undercut expansion plans. This trio helps explain why the ballyhooed petrochemical buildout in Appalachia has never...
by Eric de Place | Apr 4, 2022 | Blog Posts, Petrochemicals & Plastics
Last week, Ohio lieutenant governor John Husted spoke the unvarnished truth about the Ohio Valley’s long planned petrochemicals buildout. Responding to news about the perennially delayed project in Belmont County, he said, “The industry itself is not growing....
by Ted Boettner | Mar 30, 2022 | Blog Posts, Orphaned Oil & Gas Wells, Repairing the Damage, Shared Prosperity and Clean Energy
Earlier this month, we provided an explainer of the $4.7 billion federal orphaned well program that was included in the federal infrastructure legislation (the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021) and what that meant for states in the Ohio River Valley. To...
by Sean O'Leary | Mar 18, 2022 | Blog Posts, Hydrogen & Carbon Capture
Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) torpedoed the Build Back Better bill because, he said, it is too costly. But the fleet of hydrogen hub projects he is now promoting for locations around the nation, one of them in the Ohio River Valley, may cost nearly as much, they will...
by Ben Hunkler | Mar 11, 2022 | Blog Posts, Shared Prosperity and Clean Energy
(Source: Yale Climate Connections) Senior Researcher Sean O’Leary joins Dr. Anthony Lieserowitz and Yale Climate Connections to discuss the remarkable economic turnaround taking place in Centralia, Washington. For years, Centralia and surrounding...
by Ted Boettner | Mar 8, 2022 | Blog Posts, Orphaned Oil & Gas Wells, Repairing the Damage, Shared Prosperity and Clean Energy
At the end of January, the Biden administration and the US Department of Interior (DOI) announced the first round of $1.15 billion in funding from a new federal orphaned well program to plug, remediate, and reclaim oil and gas wells. As part of the 2021...
by Eric Dixon | Feb 24, 2022 | Blog Posts
In 2021, Emily Jones Hudson founded the Southeast Kentucky African American Museum and Cultural Center, which seeks to share the stories of African Americans in east Kentucky left untold in popular understandings of Kentucky history. In an interview with ORVI, which...
by Ben Hunkler | Feb 14, 2022 | Blog Posts, Clean Energy, Hydrogen & Carbon Capture, Shared Prosperity
The newly announced initiative to develop a carbon capture and hydrogen hub in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia is a gamble in the guise of opportunity. The project, announced last week by a partnership of major oil and gas companies, would deploy costly,...
by Eric Dixon | Feb 7, 2022 | Abandoned Mine Lands, Blog Posts, Repairing the Damage
Congress made an historic investment in coal abandoned mine land (AML) cleanup with the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA). In the coming months, the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSMRE) will issue the official guidance...
