Bharat Rakshak

The project met with active public opposition when it was first announced.[187]

Bill McKibben, environmental and global warming activist and founder of 350.org, the group that organized the 2009 international protests—described by CNN as "the most widespread day of political action in the planet's history"—led the opposition to the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.[188]

In the year before the 2012 United States presidential election, McKibben and other activists mounted pressure on then-President Obama, who was running for re-election. Obama had included a call to "be the generation that finally frees America from the tyranny of oil" in his 2008 United States presidential election.[189] A broad coalition of protesters, including Phil Radford, Daryl Hannah,[190] Dave Heineman, Ben Nelson, Mike Johanns and Susie Tompkins Buell challenged him to keep that promise.[189][191][141]

By August 11, there were over 1000 nonviolent arrests at the White House.[190]

On November 6, 2011, several thousand formed a human chain around the White House to convince Obama to block the Keystone XL project. Organizer Bill McKibben said, "this has become not only the biggest environmental flash point in many, many years, but maybe the issue in recent times in the Obama administration when he's been most directly confronted by people in the street. In this case, people willing, hopeful, almost dying for him to be the Barack Obama of 2008."[192]

In August 2012, the Tar Sands Blockade launched an indefinite tree sit in East Texas;[193] Naomi Klein credits these blockades and direct action against the pipeline in general with popularizing the global anti-extractivist Blockadia movement.[194][195] On September 27, 2012, protesters began tree sitting in the path of the Keystone pipeline near Winnsboro, Texas. Eight people stood on tree platforms just ahead of where crews were cutting down trees to make way for the pipeline.[196] On October 31, 2012, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein was arrested in Texas for criminal trespass after trying to deliver food and supplies to the Keystone XL protesters.[197][198]


An estimated crowd of 35,000–50,000 gathers near the Washington Monument in February 2013 to protest the Keystone XL pipeline and support action on climate change
On February 17, 2013, approximately 35,000 to 50,000 protesters attended a rally in Washington, D.C. organized by the Sierra Club, 350.org, and the Hip Hop Caucus, in what Bill McKibben described as "the biggest climate rally by far, by far, by far, in U.S. history".[199][200] The event featured Lennox Yearwood; Chief Jacqueline Thomas, immediate past chief of the Saik'uz First Nation; Van Jones; Crystal Lameman, of Beaver Lake Cree Nation; Michael Brune, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), and others as invited speakers.[201] Simultaneous 'solidarity' protests were also organized in several other cities across the United States, Europe, and Canada.[202] Protesters called on President Obama to reject the planned pipeline extension when deciding the fate of the pipeline after Secretary of State John Kerry completes a review of the project.[203]

On March 2, 2014, approximately 1000–1200 protesters marched from Georgetown University to the White House to stage a protest against the Keystone Pipeline. 398 arrests were made of people tying themselves to the White House fence with zip-ties and lying on a black tarp in front of the fence. The tarp represented an oil spill, and many protesters dressed in white jumpsuits covered in black ink, symbolizing oil-covered hazmat suits, laid down upon the tarp.

There is a long history of opposition to colonialism by indigenous people. In the instance of the Keystone XL pipeline, there have been many protests and actions taken against the construction of the pipeline. In may of 2019, the Sioux Nation held their own public hearing for native, and non-native people to voice their concerns about the Keystone Pipeline. In a public announcement[204] from the Rosebud Sioux Tribe they state, “The Rosebud Sioux Tribe, along with other tribal nations, recently filed a lawsuit against the Trump Administration for numerous violations of the law in the Keystone XL pipeline permitting process. The Tribes are asking the court to rescind the illegal issuance of the Keystone XL pipeline presidential permit.”[204]

United States

Protest near construction work for the Keystone XL pipeline in Winnsboro, Texas
Public opinion polls taken by independent national polling organizations near the beginning of the dispute showed majority support for the proposed pipeline in the U.S. A September 2013 poll by the Pew Center found 65% favored the project and 30% opposed. The same poll found the pipeline favored by majorities of men (69%), women (61%), Democrats (51%), Republicans (82%), independents (64%), as well as by those in every division of age, education, economic status, and geographic region. The only group identified by the Pew poll as opposing the pipeline were Democrats who identified themselves as liberal (41% in favor versus 54% opposed).[269]

The results of polls about the Keystone XL pipeline taken by independent national polling organizations from 2012 to 2014 varied:

Gallup (March 2012): 57% government should approve, 29% government should not approve[270]
Pew Center (September 2013): 65% favor, 30% oppose[269]
Rasmussen (January 2014): 57% favor, 28% oppose (of likely voters)[271]
USA Today (January 2014): 56% favor, 41% oppose[272]
Washington Post–ABC News (April 2014): 65% government should approve, 22% government should not approve[273]
CBS News – Roper (May 2014): 56% favor, 28% oppose[274]
In contrast, Pew's February 2017 poll showed that support for the pipeline had fallen to 42%, with 48% of polled respondents opposing the pipeline, a 17 percentage point drop in support since 2014, with the majority of the shift due to a sharp decline in support among Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents. At the time of the poll, only 17% of Democrats favored the pipeline. Support among Republicans had also fallen (to 76%) but not as steeply as among Democrats.[275]

Canada
An Angus Reid Institute poll, published on March 9, 2017, showed that 48% of respondents across Canada supported the Keystone XL revival, while 33% opposed it, and 20% were uncertain. In Alberta, support was at 77%, and in Quebec at 36%.

Lawsuits
In September 2009, independent refiner CVR sued TransCanada for Keystone Pipeline tolls seeking $250 million damage compensation or release from transportation agreements. CVR alleged that the final tolls for the Canadian segment of the pipeline were 146% higher than initially presented, while the tolls for the U.S. segment were 92% higher.[288] In April 2010, three smaller refineries sued TransCanada to break Keystone transportation contracts, saying the new pipeline has been beset with cost overruns.[173]

In October 2009, a suit was filed by the Natural Resources Defense Council that challenged the pipeline on the grounds that its permit was based on a deficient environmental impact statement. The suit was thrown out by a federal judge on procedural grounds, ruling that the NRDC lacked the authority to bring it.[289]

In June 2012, Sierra Club, Clean Energy Future Oklahoma, and the East Texas Sub Regional Planning Commission filed a joint complaint in the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma seeking injunctive relief and petitioning for a review of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' action in issuing Nationwide Permit 12 permits for the Cushing, Oklahoma, to the Gulf Coast portion of the pipeline. The suit alleges that, contrary to the federal Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. § 701 et. seq., the Corps' issuance of the permits was arbitrary and capricious and an abuse of discretion.[290]

In early January 2016, TransCanada announced it would initiate an ISDS claim under NAFTA against the United States, seeking $15 billion in damages and calling the denial of a permit for Keystone XL "arbitrary and unjustified".[291]

Phase 4 (canceled)
The proposed Keystone XL pipeline would start from the same area in Alberta, Canada, as the Phase 1 pipeline.[27] The Canadian section would consist of 526 kilometres (327 mi) of new pipeline.[40] It would enter the United States at Morgan, Montana, and travel through Baker, Montana, where American-produced oil would be added to the pipeline; then it would travel through South Dakota and Nebraska, where it would join the existing Keystone pipelines at Steele City, Nebraska.[111] This phase generated the greatest controversy because of its routing over the Sandhills in Nebraska.[112][113][114]

In 2015, President Barack Obama blocked the project, causing TC Energy to instigate a US$15 billion lawsuit under NAFTA.[115]

On January 24, 2017, President Donald Trump took action intended to permit the pipeline's completion, whereupon TC Energy suspended their NAFTA Chapter 11 action.[115]


On January 18, 2018, TransCanada announced they had secured commitments to ship 500,000 barrels (79,000 m3) per day for 20 years.[116]

On January 20, 2021, President Joe Biden revoked the permit for the pipeline on his first day in office.[117] On June 9, 2021, the project was abandoned by TC Energy.[21][22]

Abundant clean electricity
Solar and wind power will be the backbone of the future electricity system, supported by storage and other forms of flexibility, as well as generation from hydro, nuclear, geothermal and others.

Electrified and modernised
Abundant clean electricity will allow other sectors to electrify, modernising transport, heat and industry.

Affordable energy for all
An energy system based on clean power will bring down costs and create the conditions for everyone in the world to have access to affordable clean energy.

More efficient and secure
Electrification is a major driver of efficiency gains, as electric heating, transport and cooking are many times more efficient than the fossil fuel alternatives. And most fossil imports will be replaced by homegrown wind and solar power.

Our mission
Data into action
We create targeted data and policy insights that accelerate the transition to a clean, electrified energy future.

Action
We use our data-driven insights to shift the conversation towards high-impact policies and empower other advocates to do the same.

Our people
Global and diverse
We’re a diverse team based across six continents, bringing together energy analysts, data scientists, communicators and team-builders.

We started out in 2008 as Sandbag, aiming to reform the EU carbon market and advance the European coal phase-out.

In 2020 we re-launched as Ember, marking a new global focus on the electricity transition.

Now our mission has evolved to focus on accelerating the transition to a clean, electrified energy system for all, and limiting the often-overlooked effect of coal mine methane emissions.

Throughout our history, we’ve embraced an evidence-led and solutions-oriented approach, aiming to secure an energy system that brings benefits to all.

Our funders
Supporting independent research
Ember is an independent, not-for-profit think tank. We gratefully acknowledge the organisations that have funded us.
(donate button) (Ed: All buttons are in Green color )

Quadrature Climate Foundation
European Climate Foundation
The Sunrise Project
Climateworks Foundation
Boundless
Sequoia Climate Foundation

Phil MacDonald
Managing Director
Phil works to support and empower the team’s work around the world, and lead the team to new wins on energy and climate policy.

On the energy transition, Phil’s analysis supported the UK Conservative commitment to clean power by 2035, and the Labour commitment to clean power by 2030. Other analysis areas have included EU and UK carbon pricing, as well as industrial CCS and BECCS (biomass with carbon capture and storage).

Phil founded Ember with Charles Moore and Dave Jones in 2020 – and is a founding director of the climate non-profit accelerator Subak.

His previous roles have included campaigning with the Liberal Democrats in the UK and the Democrats in the US.

Phil’s training is in biological sciences, and he holds an MSc. in Evolution, Ecology & Conservation from Imperial College.

Chelsea Bruce-Lockhart
Head of Digital Communications and Visual Storytelling
Chelsea leads the digital communications team at Ember and is responsible for the organisation’s data visualisation strategy. Chelsea previously worked as a data journalist at the Financial Times. Earlier in her career, after graduating with an Economics degree, she spent four years doing project management for commodity supply chains – specialising in traceability and sustainability within the cocoa industry. But her chocolate addiction eventually waned and she switched her focus to telling stories with data.

Kingsmill Bond
Director
Kingsmill Bond, CFA is an energy strategist for Ember. He has worked as a financial market analyst and strategist for over 30 years, including for Deutsche Bank and Citibank in London, Hong Kong and Moscow.

He believes that the electrotech revolution is the most important driver of financial markets and geopolitics in the modern era. He joined Ember from RMI in 2025 to write analysis on the impact of the energy transition on financial markets, with a focus on the exponential growth of electrotech and the disruption to the fossil fuel sector.

Richard Black
Director of Policy and Strategy
Richard is Director of Policy and Strategy at Ember, working across the four policy teams.

Richard spent his early working life in journalism, as a science and environment correspondent for BBC World Service radio and then BBC News. Later he founded the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), a UK-based non-profit, and was its Director for seven years before stepping down and moving to Berlin. He remains a Senior Associate at ECIU and is an Honorary Research Fellow at Imperial College London.

In 2018 he wrote ‘Denied: The Rise and Fall of Climate Contrarianism’, the only book about the UK’s climate contrarian elite, its influence and its retreat. Outside work he likes to make music, play and watch sports and read novels.

Mort Walker wrote: ↑18 Apr 2025 08:28 Vayu-ji,

The Ember Energy group is one massive collection of Dhruv Rathee type people. Which is only appropriate for BRF's Dhruv Rathee.
[img...]https://cruciformstuff.com/wp-content/u ... eading.jpg[/img]

Even the most basic plastic products can yield profound benefits. In Africa, for example, the introduction of a simple plastic bucket relieves substantial hardships for some of the world’s poorest people. Stephen Fenichell in Plastic: The Making of a Synthetic Century, explains:

You cannot survive in the tropics without water; the shortages are always acute. And so water has to be carried long distances, frequently dozens of kilometers. Before the invention of the plastic bucket, water was carried in heavy vats made of clay or stone. The wheel—and vehicles that use it—was not a familiar aspect of African culture; everything was carried on the head including the heavy vats of water. In the division of household labor it was the woman’s task to fetch water. A child would have been unable to lift a vat. Acute poverty meant that few households could afford more than one vat.

The appearance of plastic buckets was a miracle. To start with, it is relatively cheap (although in some households it is the only possession of value), costing around two dollars. And it is light. And it comes in different sizes: Even a small child can carry a few liters. Now it’s the child’s job to fetch water. Flocks of children playing and bantering on the way to a distant well are common. What a relief for the overworked African woman!

[8]
...
Plastics Are Essential to Modern Medicine. The number of plastic products on which medical professionals rely is vast. Without them, medicine would be less advanced, more expensive, and less accessible to many people. Other materials, including various metals, also play a role, but plastics have become indispensable to medicine. Plastics’ light weight and durable attributes make them particularly valuable for home health applications that rely on portable equipment.[9]

Specifically, plastics compose, or are part of, many vital medical products, including:

Machinery such as magnetic resonance imaging scanners, mammography machines, and X-ray equipment;
Devices used inside or connected to the human body such as pacemakers, stents, and prosthetic limbs; and
Basic yet essential items like tubing, IVs, blood bags, gloves, masks, hospital gowns, catheters, and much more.

Plastics are also critical to many medical breakthroughs, such as 3-D printers that now make it possible for medical institutions to meet essential needs on demand, including the manufacture of custom prosthetics. In his book, Plastics, Norman Finkelstein highlights many other such inventions. He notes, for example, how blood-clotting plastic bandages quickly halt bleeding in an emergency. These are particularly valuable for soldiers because, in the past, “about 50 percent of those who died on the battlefield” would bleed to death in a matter of minutes. “Today, new blood-clotting plastic bandages save battlefield lives,” he notes.[10] Finkelstein also highlights a product known as the Plasti-Bone that can replace and help regenerate bones lost to injury. It is a porous material through which the attached bone will grow and eat through, until a new natural bone takes the Plasti-Bone’s place.[11]

Plastics also help make medicine more affordable and accessible to a larger share of the population by allowing for considerable cost savings. And plastics, thanks to their flexible nature, allow for innovation in product design and manufacturing. They can be easily and affordably molded into many complex instruments, devices, and components of medical equipment. As Bayer Materials Engineering Manager Mark Yeager explains in Design News:

Injection molding can economically produce millions of identical parts with complex geometries. For this reason, plastics have already displaced metal in a wide array of applications in which the high cost of metal fabrication is prohibitive.[12]

Yet, environmental activists continue to push for regulations and advocate the elimination of many medical-related plastic products. Worse, they routinely second-guess the expertise of medical professionals regarding the value of such products, claiming that plastics use is excessive, and they target single-use plastics in particular.

For example, just a few months before the world learned about COVID-19, activist Gary Cohen downplayed the value of sanitary single-use medical supplies. Cohen, the president of Green Practice Health, a left-of-center group designed to pressure medical facilities to reduce the use of plastics, once called the trend toward single-use devices an “overreaction” to the AIDS crisis.[13]

Patients whose lives are at risk from hospital-acquired infections might not consider it excessive to rely on some single-use sanitary products as part of their treatment. Hospitals are chock full of infectious agents because, after all, they are places where sick people congregate. “If you’re sick, then the hospital is often the last place you want to be,” notes reporter Jon Evans in Plastics Engineering. Disposable products are a critically important tool in reducing the spread of such infections.[14]

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): “On any given day, about one in 31 hospital patients has at least one healthcare-associated infection.”[15] Similarly, the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control estimates that 25,000 people die annually in Europe as a result of hospital acquired infections, while 100,000 Americans die from such infections in the United States.[16]

The risks of hospital-acquired infections may also substantially contribute to deaths during pandemics because of higher admissions, overworked staff, and supply shortages. One research report published in April 2021 found a high number of intensive care unit-acquired infections among a large sample of critically ill COVID-19 patients in Italy. The authors noted:

The incidence of infectious complications was very high, with almost half of the patients experiencing at least one infectious episode during the ICU stay. Specifically, 14 days after ICU admission, the probability of having an infection was more than 40%.[17]

In addition, COVID itself became a hospital-acquired infection for patients admitted with other ailments. The scope of the problem in the United States is not clear because the CDC has not released data related to hospital-acquired COVID infections, and U.S. nursing facilities are not required to report such data.[18] However, there are indicators that the problem is substantial. Medical researchers estimated in January 2021 that reports from several different hospitals, around the world and in the United States, indicated that “the hospital-acquired SARS-CoV-2 infection rate is 12–15%.”[19] According to data from Britain’s National Health Service, as reported in The Guardian, 40,000 people contracted COVID in British hospitals during just the months between August 1, 2020 and February 21, 2021.[20]
...
Similarly, “conservation strategies”—such as reuse of personal protective equipment because of supply shortages during the COVID-19 outbreak—may have contributed to the doubling of Candia auris infections in Southern California hospitals during May and June of 2020.[26]

Despite these realities, activists actually use the pandemic as an excuse to advocate elimination of single-use plastics in hospitals because of increased waste related to masks and other single-use products. They ignore the value that such single-use materials provide, and they second-guess the decisions of medical professionals who are closer to the situation and have a better understanding of the implications. The fact that shortages—and inappropriate reuse of certain supplies—contributed to COVID transmission underscores the reality that single-use products are essential to reducing the hospital-acquired infections.

For example, something as simple as a single-use syringe has proven critically important to public health, which is why the CDC says syringes should never be reused.[27] Cases where misguided medical professionals have reused syringes have transmitted deadly diseases like Hepatitis C[28] and AIDS,[29] as well as other illnesses. As USA Today reported in 2012:

Since 2001, more than 150,000 patients nationwide have been victims of unsafe injection practices, and two-thirds of those risky shots were administered in just the past four years, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The errors led to at least 49 disease outbreaks, a USA TODAY examination shows, and a trail of victims suffering with potentially life-threatening bacterial infections, such as MRSA, and sometimes fatal viruses, such as hepatitis.[30]

Those 150,000 cases could have been avoided had medical personnel used a new syringe every time. While few people might openly advocate for reusable syringes, the all-out assault on plastics could eventually undermine the availability and affordability of disposable syringes. In fact, provisions of the proposed Break Free from Plastics Act could shut down U.S. plastics facilities and produce serious medical supply shortages that would force hospitals to reuse syringes.[31] Disposable syringes also underscore the value that disposable products play in preventing unnecessary illnesses in hospitals.

Rather than curb the use of plastics, particularly single-use ones, medical institutions should seek to expand their use. “Growing concerns about hospital-acquired infections make single-use instruments increasingly attractive,” notes a materials science expert with Bayer. “When you consider the high cost of treating infections, switching from reusable metal instruments to pre-sterilized plastic versions can actually reduce costs by eliminating one potential source of cross-infections,” he notes.[32]

Something as simple as more frequent use of plastic sheeting to cover certain instruments can help make them safer. For example, in 2015 a metal endoscope exposed 200 patients to an antibiotic-resistant bug, leaving two people dead, yet a simple disposable plastic sheath could have been used to prevent those infections.[33]

Similarly, infection risks can be reduced by increased reliance on single-use tourniquets—the plastic bands that wrap around a patient’s arm to make veins more visible for taking blood or administering intravenous medicines. A 2012 study sampled reusable hospital tourniquets and found that 36 percent were contaminated with Staphylococcus aureusand 12 percent contained MRSA. They concluded: “The introduction of disposable tourniquets to clinical practice should be an adjunct to current measures for MRSA prevention.”[34]

Even component parts of reusable equipment can be outfitted with disposable elements to help reduce disease transmission. One study points out that the lead wires that are attached to patients during electrocardiograms cannot be sufficiently sterilized. The authors recommend disposable wires to “eliminate risk of infection through these pathways” and “decrease infection rates in acute health care facilities.”[35]

Blue wrap—another product activists advocate replacing with reusables—offers another example of single-use plastics’ valuable role in medicine.[36] Blue wrap is a plastic wrap that keeps medical tools and equipment sterile during transportation and storage that has proven to be highly effective at preventing dangerous contamination. One study comparing rigid, reusable containers and blue wrap found that blue wrap performs substantially better at controlling pathogenic contamination. It notes:

Of 111 rigid containers tested, 97 (87%) demonstrated bacterial ingress into the container. Of 161 wrapped trays, 0 (0%) demonstrated bacterial ingress into the tray. Contamination rates of rigid containers increased significantly with increasing duration of use. … In this study using a dynamic bacterial aerosol challenge, sterilized wrapped trays demonstrated significantly greater protection than sterilized rigid containers against the ingress of airborne bacteria.[37]

Phillip Van Gorp, a sterile processing manager for the Clinics and Surgery Center at the University of Minnesota Medical Center, explained additional difficulties associated with the reusable equipment storage containers. They take up much more space and they create a “decontamination backlog” because medical staff must disassemble and sterilize them between uses. Then staff must reassemble and inspect the containers before they can store instruments. After all that effort, “the better part of an hour has gone by,” while the wrap takes three or so minutes to wrap instruments. But in the final analysis, he notes, “the real argument is one of safety.”[38]

In addition, some single-use and reusable plastics are now being made with antimicrobial attributes that resist the spread of diseases.[39] For example, one company has developed a plastic coating for medical instruments that eliminates microorganisms that come into contact with the instrument before they can infect a patient.[40]

Clearly, plastics are essential to modern medicine. Environmental activists’ attempts to ban or limit their use present a serious threat to public health. Pandemic-related shortages were bad enough; the reckless elimination of such single-use and other plastic products for political reasons would actively facilitate the spread of deadly hospital-acquired infections.

Packaging and Public Health. Decades ago, the chemical company DuPont published an ad that touted: “Cellophane protects you from dirt’s danger. It is on the job, protecting your health and your pocketbook.”[41] Today, the fact that plastics protect our food supply seems obvious, yet such realities are overlooked as people campaign to rid the world of plastics without regard to the impacts.

Plastics are essential part to protecting our food supply—and our health—from dangerous pathogens. And by extending shelf life, plastic food packaging also makes it more affordable to feed the world’s growing population, while leaving excess land for wildlife.[42]

In fact, it is hard to overestimate the contribution of plastic packaging toward preserving and maintaining the safety of the world’s food supply. Food packaging:

- Enables us to safely transport food long distances;
- Allows many different individuals to handle the food during shipping and in supermarkets without adding dangerous pathogens;
- Provides protection from UV light, oxygen, and chemicals that reduce shelf life; and
- Limits physical damage that would ruin or shorten product life.

Reducing food waste with plastic packaging means we can farm less land, leaving more for wildlife. That also means less energy and water for farming and reduced use of pesticides. As the American Chemistry Council’s Steve Russell points out, growing and distributing food requires 10 times more resources than are used for making the packaging we use to protect it. “So when we waste a food item, we’re wasting 10 times the resources that were used to make its protective packaging,” he explains.[43]

Plastic packaging in particular allows food to reach markets in better condition and allows for longer shelf life at home. For example, studies show that plastic packaging extended the life of bananas from 15 days to 36, beef from four days to 30, bell peppers from four days to 20, and cucumbers from three days to 14.[44] Other studies found that switching from paper bags to plastic reduced bread waste from 11 percent to 0.8 percent and cheese spoilage waste from 5 percent to 0.14 percent, and that bagging grapes in plastic rather than selling them loose reduced in-store waste by 20 percent.[45]

Plastics Europe points out that Europe loses only 3 percent of all its produce to waste, while less developed nations, where more food is sold unpackaged, lose 40 percent. Much of that food waste, the trade group points out, results from “the lack of appropriate packaging and transportation solutions to maintain its quality and freshness on the journey from farm to fork.”[46]
...
(read all of it there in the article. There is a lot of references and studies)

Hydrogen is an inefficient use of clean electricity
It is always more efficient to use renewable power directly than to convert renewable energy to hydrogen for use as an energy source. This is true across sectors and end uses. Using renewables to produce hydrogen is about 20 to 40 percent less efficient than using renewable energy directly, when direct use is feasible. For this reason, the Sierra Club would always prefer to use renewable electricity directly where possible. Potential uses for green hydrogen should be limited to cases in which the renewable energy cannot be used directly or stored effectively.

Hydrogen’s climate benefits are limited
Green hydrogen does not produce greenhouse gases, so if it is used to displace other sources of energy that do, it can have a climate benefit. The potential climate benefit of a green hydrogen solution must be assessed against other reasonable alternatives. For example, injecting a small amount of green hydrogen into a methane gas stream reduces a small amount of the methane that would otherwise be burned, and the subsequent climate impact of that methane. However, replacing that methane gas stream with an electrification of end uses (i.e., electrified buildings) would do far more to reduce planet-warming emissions.

The gas industry touts “blue hydrogen” as a climate-friendly solution because theoretically, carbon dioxide is removed and stored during the hydrogen production process. However, recent research indicates that producing blue hydrogen does not actually reduce climate emissions compared to using methane gas. In fact, using hydrogen made from gas with or without CCS at a power plant actually produces more emissions than burning gas alone at that power plant, due to the emissions intensity of creating blue or gray hydrogen. Even if leakage is reduced to 1.5 percent (an optimistic assumption), one study found that using blue hydrogen still created more emissions than using gas. This means that as a power plant uses increasing amounts of blue hydrogen mixed with gas, its lifecycle emissions will actually increase.

Hydrogen does not produce carbon emissions when burned at end use. If hydrogen is blended with methane gas at a power plant, the carbon emissions from that power plant will be lower. However, hydrogen has a lower energy density than gas, meaning it takes a larger volume of blended hydrogen and methane to provide the same energy input as an equal volume of gas. Because of this, a blend of 30 percent hydrogen and 70 percent gas by volume only results in a 13-percent decrease in carbon emissions at end-use.

Additionally, any hydrogen leakage could undermine the benefits of green hydrogen and increase the lifecycle emissions of other types of hydrogen because hydrogen is an indirect greenhouse gas—meaning it combines with other compounds in the atmosphere to cause warming—that is five times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 100-year timeframe.

Hydrogen produces pollution
When hydrogen is combusted, it does not produce carbon emissions, but it does produce NOx emissions up to six times worse than those released by methane combustion. NOx can cause serious health effects, including asthma and increased chance of respiratory infections; NOx is also a precursor to particulate matter and ozone, which harm the respiratory system. While there are methods of controlling NOx emissions at gas power plants, those technologies are only effective at controlling NOx at a blend of 30 percent hydrogen or less.

Hydrogen used in fuel cells does not result in carbon emissions, only electricity, water, and heat. The production of hydrogen through steam methane reforming (SMR) produces emissions that are known to be harmful, including NOx, particulate matter, carbon monoxide, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

How is hydrogen stored and transported?
Pipelines: About 96 percent of existing gas transmission pipelines in the US are steel. Steel is susceptible to “hydrogen embrittlement,” which is the loss of strength of the metal due to hydrogen entering into tiny spaces in the metal, causing the pipe to crack. This makes nearly all of the current transmission pipelines in the US unsafe for transporting hydrogen in high volumes. Researchers estimate that hydrogen can only comprise about 20 percent by volume, or 7 percent of energy content, before it creates safety hazards in unmodified pipelines. Safe transportation of hydrogen requires either plastic pipelines with a coating to prevent hydrogen leakage or substantial modification of steel pipes. Today, plastic pipelines comprise a very small portion of the existing transmission pipeline system, but over half of distribution pipelines are plastic. There are currently 1,600 miles of hydrogen pipelines in the US (primarily along the Gulf Coast); for comparison, there are 3 million miles of methane gas pipelines. Replacing existing pipelines with new infrastructure that is safe for hydrogen would be very expensive. Additionally, current leak detection systems are designed for gas, not hydrogen, and would have to be upgraded to detect hydrogen, a colorless, tasteless, odorless gas.

Storage: Hydrogen is less dense than gas, which makes it particularly hard to store. Hydrogen can be stored in bulk in salt caverns, which are limited to a few locations in the U.S. For long-term storage, hydrogen must be converted to a liquid, a process which can be more expensive than producing the hydrogen itself. Storing hydrogen as a gas requires high-pressure tanks, and storing it as a liquid requires maintaining cryogenic (very cold) temperatures. If hydrogen were to replace gas in the global economy, it would require 3 to 4 times more storage infrastructure, at a cost of $637 billion by 2050, to provide the same level of energy security as the world would have with gas.

Some projects propose converting hydrogen to liquid ammonia for storage and transportation, then converting the ammonia back to hydrogen at the site of power generation. The energy for this process is about equal to that of cooling and liquefying hydrogen, but far more infrastructure exists for safely handling, transporting, and storing ammonia.

Other Infrastructure: Since hydrogen is less dense than gas, adding hydrogen to gas requires larger total volumes to produce the same amount of energy. Additional volume means additional compressor stations to move comparable amounts of energy through the pipeline system, resulting in a host of environmental justice, health, and climate issues. Hydrogen blending would also impose the cost of creating different metering systems at the city gate and residential levels.

How much water does hydrogen use?
Generating 1 kilogram (kg) of hydrogen through electrolysis uses 9 kg of water. For context, supplying hydrogen for a 288-megawatt power plant using 100-percent hydrogen would require the equivalent of an Olympic-size swimming pool of water every 12 hours. The power plant would need additional water for cooling, which would increase the total water usage to 15 to 20 kg of water per kg of hydrogen. While this is a large amount of water, and could be problematic for water-scarce areas, hydrogen’s water requirements are much less than the amount of water required for the extraction and processing of fossil fuels today.

Land Use and Mining

Wind turbines do not produce any direct carbon dioxide emissions during operation; however, they do produce a variety of negative environmental impacts.

Land use is a major sticking point for the growth of industrial wind facilities in the United States, with local governments resisting encroachment in rural areas throughout the country. [3] Although individual towers have a relatively small footprint, studies suggest the total land use and environmental impact of wind farms throughout the county is considerable.

The amount of space required to produce 1,000 megawatts (MW) from an industrial wind facility can exceed 133 square miles of land, compared to just 1.3 square miles needed for an equivalent nuclear power plant. Wind turbines also require enormous amounts of rare earth elements like neodymium magnets, around 377 pounds of neodymium per MW capacity. The mining for these resources destroys huge amounts of land and requires heavy machinery that do emit copious amounts of carbon dioxide emissions as well as traditional pollutants. The land required for new transmission lines is also substantial at about 10.4 acres per MW. [4]

Replacing current electricity generation with wind power may require covering 1/3 of the American land mass with wind turbines, and electrifying all transportation would increase that number to 1/2.[5] The environmental and ecological impacts of developing that much land with wind turbines would be catastrophic. Replacing current electricity with wind turbines may also raise net temperatures in the United States through the end of the century. [6]

Wind turbine blades cannot be recycled, and therefore most end up in landfills. Industrial wind facilities could produce 43 million tons of blade waste throughout the world by 2050. [7

The most viable locations, where winds blow relatively constantly at desired speeds, are filling up fast, meaning future wind projects will be less efficient. Larger wind projects with more turbines will be required to generate the same amount of power as existing facilities. Also, the power output of wind facilities that are downwind neighbors of other large turbine fields can decrease by 20 percent or more due to reduced wind flow between turbines. [8]

Effects on Humans and Wildlife

In the United States, as long as certain requirements are followed, the federal government has granted wind companies special permission to kill Bald eagles, Golden eagles, and other raptors, which are normally protected under various federal laws. [9] In February of 2022, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service increased the number of eagles the wind industry can kill by more than four times the original allotment. [10]

In 2012, when there were thousands fewer turbines than today, wind turbines killed an estimated 573,000 birds in the United States, with 83,000 being raptors. [11] Every year, for example, a single industrial wind facility in California kills between 75 and 110 Golden eagles. [12] Wind facilities especially threaten migratory birds because the best sites for power generation coincide with migration routes.

Wind facilities also kill up to 888,000 bats each year. [13] The Hoary bat alone may lose 90 percent of its population over the next 50 years due to wind turbine impacts. [14]

In terms of human health effects, the constant infrasound and low frequency noise produced by wind turbines, while not always audible, can cause health issues including sleeplessness and even heart problems, if appropriate setbacks are not maintained. [15] Infrasound likely has a similar effect on animals living too close to turbines. This is also a problem for migrating whales where offshore wind facilities exist, are under construction, or being planned. [16, 17]

“Any apples-to-apples comparison of solar energy to alternative sources of power must account for all environmental impacts, not just carbon dioxide emissions at the point of generation.”

Quick Bullets

- Solar energy does not emit air pollution or greenhouse gases at the point of generation.

- Solar power requires three times as much land per megawatt of electricity produced than coal, natural gas, or nuclear.[1]

- Solar panels create 300 times as much toxic waste per unit of energy produced as nuclear.[2]

- Solar panels and associated battery infrastructure usually contain toxic materials like lead and cadmium in quantities much higher than other energy sources.
...
...