Watch the press conference we held at the Governor’s office in Raleigh on June 15, 2017 featuring Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, then-president of the NC NAACP, as part of our Emergency Methane Action campaign.
Methane is Top Climate Problem
Scientific evidence is mounting that methane leakage from the natural gas industry — and from fracking in particular — is the top driver of climate change. The press release accompanying the UN’s Global Methane Assessment states that “cutting methane is the strongest lever we have to slow climate change.” Duke University’s Dr. Drew Shindell, lead author of the UN assessment, said, “One thing the report calls for very strongly is not building any more of this fossil fuel infrastructure. When you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.” Dr. Shindell has joined us in making the same argument to Gov. Roy Cooper, appealing to him to stop Duke Energy’s massive gas expansion. More info below and on our Duke Energy Gas Expansion page.
All News Categories
Please Tell the People: Global Heat Wave Continues in 2017; Methane from Fracking is Major Cause – Note to News Editors from NC WARN
The nation’s largest carbon-polluting utility is trying to build up to 20 fracked gas-fired power plants in the Carolinas alone, plus the $5.6 billion Atlantic Coast Pipeline to supply those plants with fracked gas. Thus Duke Energy is responsible for much of the methane emissions that are now driving the climate crisis.
Charge Toward Natural Gas — WUNC
Two WUNC stories on natural gas, the threat of methane to the climate and doubts about future natural gas supply projections.
How Reliable Is Natural Gas? — WUNC
Last year Duke Energy acquired Piedmont Natural Gas … a marker of the energy industry’s shift toward using natural gas to produce electricity. Supporters of natural gas say it is cheaper and burns cleaner than coal. But critics argue that methane leaks during storage and transportation, which can accelerate global warming.
Young People’s Burden: Requirement of Negative CO2 Emissions — Earth System Dynamics
By James Hansen. Continued high fossil fuel emissions unarguably sentences young people to either a massive, possibly implausible cleanup or growing deleterious climate impacts or both, scenarios that should provide both incentive and obligation for governments to alter energy policies without further delay.
Natural gas vs coal: It’s all in the leak rate — The News & Observer
Op-ed by William Schlesinger. Leakage of natural gas, which is predominately methane, has another drawback. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas that exerts about 86 times the global warming potential in the atmosphere compared with CO2 during the first 20 years after emission. Leakage from oil and gas fields makes a significant contribution to the annual emissions of methane to the atmosphere.
Duke’s climate-damaging future — News & Observer
Letter to the Editor from Dr. Harvard Ayers of The Climate Times. We believe that Duke Energy’s attempts to ignore our concerns have been the epitome of an anti-democratic power play to deny the public the right to object to a monopoly business that is clearly putting corporate profit ahead of customer well- being.
Future of Natural Gas Hinges on Stanching Methane Leaks — The New York Times
In the energy business, natural gas is supposed to be one of the good guys — the cleaner-burning fossil fuel that can help wean the world from dirty coal during the transition to a low-carbon future.
NC WARN Letter to Duke Energy CEO on Methane Leakage
NC WARN asks Duke Energy CEO Lynn Good to join our call for investigation of methane leakage scandal and to join us in getting methane emissions under control.
The most important mystery about U.S. climate change policy — The Washington Post
Environmentalists have charged for some time that the fracking boom — the rise in unconventional natural gas that is the key driver of all of this — has a dark underbelly. Natural gas’s principal component is methane, which is also a greenhouse gas. And if it gets to the atmosphere unburned, it has a much larger warming effect than carbon dioxide does, over a period of about 10 years.