Power Past Fracked Gas is working to support the Fossil Free Eugene campaign and other communities across the Pacific Northwest who are leading bold initiatives to hold their cities accountable in reducing their reliance on fracked gas. These communities are demanding that their city and county officials mandate 100% electric construction, transition utilities to renewable energy, and place a fee on polluting corporations to create a fund to transition low income and historically marginalized communities from gas to electric appliances. 

Not only are these steps necessary to prevent the worst impacts of the climate crisis, but they will greatly reduce the risks to health and safety posed to our community by fracked gas and other fossil fuels, while helping to provide reliable and low-cost heating and cooling to communities.

As the electric grids in Oregon and Washington continue to get cleaner and less reliant on greenhouse gases, Power Past Fracked Gas members are supporting a just transition to fossil-free buildings powered by renewable energy in communities throughout the Pacific Northwest.

In Washington, efforts to get dirty energy off the grid are threatened with plans for new fracked gas power plants. We need clean energy fueling our electrical grid, not more fossil fuels. Puget Sound Energy and Avista collectively proposed to build roughly 1,000 megawatts of new fracked gas power plants by 2026. The move to build new fracked gas power plants takes our electricity grid in the wrong direction. Washington State’s blueprint to meet our climate goals clearly show that we need to shift away from both coal and gas-fired power plants. The first order of climate business should be to not make the problem any worse. But the latest plans from Puget Sound Energy and Avista reveal their preference to dig in with dirty fracked gas power plants instead of clean energy.

Puget Sound Energy (PSE) is building a massive fracked gas facility on the Tacoma Tideflats, in Medicine Creek Treaty Territory. If completed, this facility would lock us into decades of fossil fuel use, threaten local health and safety, and place a huge financial burden on PSE residential customers who will only see a fraction of the benefit.

Leading the fight to protect our communities and the Salish Sea is the Puyallup Tribe (taking legal action as a sovereign government), individual tribal members, and groups like the Water Warrior Movement who perform ceremonies, host community gatherings, apply pressure on decision-makers, and remind us all to stay prayerful.

Standing with the Puyallup, local tribes have signed a letter opposing the LNG project and its lack of meaningful consultation, over 80 environmental and social justice organizations have signed letters of opposition, and tens of thousands of individuals have signed petitions or submitted public comments.

Construction of Puget Sound Energy’s LNG facility began several years ago, despite not having all the necessary permits and despite the lack of legally mandated tribal consultation. Puget Sound Energy has engaged in the practice of “build first, ask questions later” while the City of Tacoma, the board of the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency, and Governor Inslee, have ignored formal Stop Work Requests by the Puyallup Tribe, a sovereign nation, and massive public outcry for more oversight.

Legal appeals have been filed by both the Puyallup Tribe and by Earthjustice, representing environmental and health organizations, challenging the permit approved in December 2019 by the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency. The Agency’s decision has received widespread criticism for its lack of consultation with the Puyallup Tribe, use of outdated science and scenarios that the Washington Attorney General called “fictional”. This type of controversy has been present in every step of the permit process.

Puget Sound Energy would be allowed to start using the facility as soon as construction is complete. This fight is not over — join us in the fight to stop the Tacoma LNG facility.

For over a decade, southern Oregon has been threatened by the proposed Jordan Cove liquified natural gas (LNG) export terminal and Pacific Connector fracked gas pipeline. This 229-mile pipeline and export project would trample the rights of landowners through use of eminent domain, disturb tribal territories and burial grounds, impact 485 waterways (including 12 public drinking sources), put existing jobs in fishing, tourism and other sectors at risk, drive up energy prices, and become the largest source of climate pollution in Oregon. Additionally, the export terminal would be in a tsunami zone, putting 16,000 Coos Bay residents in harm’s way, while the fracked gas pipeline would cross some of Oregon’s most fire-prone forests. Even under the Trump administration, the State of Oregon has the authority stop this project for good.

Northwest Innovation Works wants to build the world’s biggest refinery to create methanol from fracked gas in Kalama, WA. It would use more fracked gas each day than all of the power plants in Washington combined, and ship the methanol overseas to be burned as fuel or to make plastics. At any given time, up to 72 million gallons of the highly flammable liquid would be stored on-site in an earthquake liquefaction zone. The refinery would emit more than 1 million tons of greenhouse gases from the smokestacks alone—and emit up to 7 million tons when “upstream” methane leakage is considered.