“Frack no! Gas has got to go!”
These were the words I and several other protestors chanted as we marched through the streets of Hartford on an unseasonably warm November afternoon. We had gathered at the Capitol to protest “Project Maple,” a proposed expansion of the Algonquin Gas Transmission line, a fracked gas pipeline owned by the Canadian company Enbridge that runs through five Northeast states, including Connecticut.
According to a notice issued by Enbridge in September, “Project Maple will provide New England with an opportunity to secure a cost effective, regionally produced, environmentally responsible source of clean-burning natural gas to support the current and future demand for energy.”
“Natural” gas has long been touted as a superior alternative to oil and coal, a “bridge fuel” to a cleaner future. The term “natural” in itself implies a certain degree of cleanness, a falsehood that fossil fuel industries have capitalized on to mislead the public into believing that fracked gas is much greener than it actually is.
Fracked gas is sourced through hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a process that releases large amounts of methane into the air. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas with a heat-trapping ability 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide during the first 20 years it’s in the atmosphere. To meet the 1.5 degrees Celsius target and avoid catastrophic levels of warming, methane emissions must fall between 30 to 60 percent by 2030. As it currently stands, they are expected to rise by 13 percent, in part due to the growing fracked gas sector.
Furthermore, fracked gas pipelines are prone to hazardous leaks; not only does this release even more methane; the leaked gas is highly flammable and can cause fires and explosions. A 2022 study found that between 2010 and 2021, almost 2,600 pipeline incidents occurred in the United States, the equivalent of one every 40 hours — and that figure only takes into account the leaks that were serious enough to require reporting.
Pipeline leaks disproportionately occur in poor communities of color, where pipeline upkeep is significantly more lacking than in wealthy, white areas; more so, pipeline repairs following a leak are comparatively slower. Perhaps not coincidentally, in Connecticut, a large portion of the Algonquin Gas Transmission line runs through low-income, high-density areas, and most of the compressor stations are located in those areas as well.
Four years ago, the business entity Iroquois Gas Transmission System, L.P. generated controversy when it proposed expanding two compressor stations in Connecticut, one of which was less than 2,000 feet from Whisconier Middle School in Brookfield. As with pipelines, there are a host of safety issues with compressor stations, among which include dangerous levels of toxic air pollutants and fire and explosion risk. (Iroquois Gas Transmission System’s “Enhancement by Compression,” or ExC Project, received Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approval in 2022, though activists and concerned citizens are continuing to oppose it.)
Enbridge also claims that Project Maple would “stabilize energy prices in the region.” Connecticut has some of the highest energy costs in the country, especially during the winter months, where inadequate energy supply has at times made us vulnerable to rolling blackouts. But more fracked gas is not the answer; our over-reliance on fracked gas to heat our homes has created competition between power plant owners and home heating distributors, and as the price for the former has risen, so have our energy bills.
The fossil fuel industry is also vulnerable to extreme weather events, and subsequent supply disruptions can cause prices in oil and gas to soar. Ironically, the continued extraction of fossil fuels is driving more frequent heatwaves and natural disasters, in turn leading to volatile price swings among the products we currently depend on to power our lives. As geological stores of methane dwindle and it becomes increasingly difficult and costly to drill, prices are likely to rise even further.
Clean energy, meanwhile, is becoming more affordable all the time; in many states, the costs of building solar grids and wind farms are now comparable to or cheaper than that of fracked gas infrastructure. Not to mention that switching to renewables would save significant amounts of money in the long term. A 2021 report found that clean energy would lower household energy costs by $500 annually. Furthermore, a renewable economy would experience far fewer natural disasters and less air and water pollution, thus saving our country billions of dollars on disaster relief and healthcare.
There is nothing “environmentally responsible” about expanding fossil fuel infrastructure in the midst of a climate crisis. Approving Project Maple would be a major step in the wrong direction for Connecticut, setting us even further back from meeting our goal of a 45 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and putting us instead on a dangerous path toward locked-in warming and climate instability.
There are far superior alternatives that would meet our energy demands without destroying the environment and our health, and these we must get behind. We must encourage our policymakers to invest in renewable infrastructure and fast-track a transition from a gas-dependent economy to an all-electric one. We must say no to fossil fuels and yes to energy that is legitimately clean if we are to safeguard our communities and our planet.
Julia Tannenbaum of West Hartford is an author and climate activist.