Gabby Brown, gabby.brown@sierraclub.org
Charlotte, NC -- This weekend, Piedmont Natural Gas announced plans to construct and operate a new liquefied natural gas (LNG) storage facility. The massive facility would cover 50 acres in Robeson County, North Carolina and store 1 billion cubic feet of fracked gas.
Piedmont is a subsidiary of Duke Energy, a main utility behind the proposed 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP). The company claims the fracked gas stored in the proposed facility will be used at power plants around the state during times of high demand, despite the evidence showing that overall energy demand is not growing in North Carolina.
Robeson County, where almost 30 percent of the community live at or below the federal poverty level and 75 percent of residents are people of color, is already vulnerable to environmental justice concerns from the proposed ACP and other fossil fuel infrastructure.
“At a time when clean, renewable energy is cheaper and more available than ever, the last thing we should be doing is locking in decades of dirty fossil fuel production by building more fracked gas infrastructure,” said Kelly Martin, director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Dirty Fuels campaign. “This proposed facility would drive increased fracking -- and the air and water pollution that comes with it -- as well as putting North Carolina’s communities and waterways at risk of fracked gas leaks and spills. The people of North Carolina shouldn’t have to pay that price for the sake of a fossil fuel company’s profits. We are currently reviewing all options to stop this dirty fracked gas project.”
“Fracked, carbon-based, methane gas is the most harmful and dangerous of all fossil fuels for our people, environment, and the climate,” said Rev. Mac Legerton of Pembroke. “The economic future of Robeson County and all of rural North Carolina is in the expanding renewable energy economy and tax base, not development such as pipelines and industries that harm our people, places we live, and the earth we love and are responsible to take care of.”
About the Sierra Club
The Sierra Club is America’s largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization, with more than 3 million members and supporters. In addition to helping people from all backgrounds explore nature and our outdoor heritage, the Sierra Club works to promote clean energy, safeguard the health of our communities, protect wildlife, and preserve our remaining wild places through grassroots activism, public education, lobbying, and legal action. For more information, visit www.sierraclub.org.