Above Photo: Activists demand that the COP20 government delegates approve measures to foment investment in renewable energies and eliminate their huge subsidies for fossil fuels. Credit: Joshua Wiese/IPS
Activists from Beyond Extreme Energy interrupted the Virginia Energy Policy Forum in Hampton today to dramatize forcefully our conviction that current policies of the U.S. government, the Department of Energy, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Dominion Resources and others represented at the event are wrong-headed and dangerous.
As U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz was addressing the forum, BXEers Steve Norris and Lee Stewart walked in front of the stage carrying a banner that said: “NO LNG EXPORTS.” and “Guys, we ain’t asking … Clean Energy Now.”
“We are here to say ‘NO to LNG exports,’ ” Norris called out. “No to fracked gas. No to the climate change that they will produce. We are here to save Cove Point, which has one of the largest LNG facilities in the East Coast [and] is being built by Dominion Resources. We are sorry to interrupt you, Secretary Moniz, but this is a message that does not seem to be being heard well here.”
As they were led out, others shouted “No fracked gas, Save Cove Point. Renewable Energy now.”
In a fliers distributed outside the forum, BXE also said:
These government agencies and private corporations are uprooting, damaging and endangering numerous communities in Virginia where fracked-gas pipelines, compressor stations and an LNG export terminal are being built. At the same time, they are threatening the planet and all human civilization and animal life through the release of greenhouse gases that could cause runaway climate change.
We are here to demand now that, as caretakers for Virginia’s climate and environment, DOE, FERC and Dominion immediately: ban liquefied fracked-gas exports from Cove Point and elsewhere; stop the permitting and build-out of fracked-gas infrastructure; and adopt policies consistent with the immediate installation of clean, renewable energy infrastructure, including wind, solar and energy efficiency. Only through policies such as these can the United States and Virginia meet their obligations under the 2015 Climate Conference in Paris.
DOE, FERC and Dominion have embraced the misguided notion that fracked gas is a bridge fuel to renewables because it burns cleaner than coal and emits less carbon dioxide. Yet during extraction, transport, and liquefaction, fracked gas leaks by design or by accident huge amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide. Even though the United States has recently seen a drop in carbon dioxide emissions, a more potent greenhouse gas, methane, has been increasing dramatically, as fracked gas has become much more readily available.
Fracked gas is not a bridge fuel. It is a gangplank to catastrophe.
Clean, renewable energy must be adopted now, in Virginia, the United States and around the world.
NO LNG EXPORTS
CLEAN RENEWABLE ENERGY NOW