FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – July 31, 2024

Contact: Karen Feridun, Better Path Coalition, 610-678-7726, betterpathpa@gmail.com

Leaping Before Looking Trend Continues with ARCH2 Hydrogen Hub Funding Announcement

Statement by the No False Solutions PA Coalition

Pennsylvania: Today, the U.S. Department of Energy announced that $30 million dollars would be awarded to projects under the umbrella of the proposed ARCH2 Hydrogen Hub, one of the two that include Pennsylvania.

The announcement comes just weeks after Governor Josh Shapiro signed Senator Gene Yaw’s Carbon Capture and Storage bill into law without any hearings or discussion and without a review by the House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee. 

The award announced today comes without the kind of robust community outreach the hub teams were required to conduct according to the agency in written and verbal statements made by the DOE’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED). Affected communities know little about the proposed projects and their impacts.  Nevertheless, millions of dollars are being awarded to projects that will surely impact our health and environment BEFORE affected communities have had a chance to weigh in.   OCED indicated that it would release factsheets when the announcement is made. No False Solutions PA members plan to issue another statement after they have had an opportunity to review them.

Government at every level has a responsibility to put the best interests of the people first. This disturbing trend of leaping into unproven, some would even say of Carbon Capture and Storage disproven, technologies without looking at the science, at the impacts to communities, or at what the costs to taxpayers will be harkens back to the Rendell administration’s foolish rush to frack.

The climate crisis is accelerating in real time now. We do not have time and money to waste on false solutions.

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