On June 20, the national Food & Water Watch issued a special report with a comprehensive list of 48 new, planned or under construction natural gas-fired power plants in Pennsylvania as of December 2017.
The report-- Pernicious Placement of Pennsylvania Power Plants: Natural Gas-Fired Power Plant Boom Reinforces Environmental Justice-- outlines the group’s concerns about plants being located in areas that impact communities of color and economically disadvantaged areas.
First, the study compared the demographics of the population living under the three-mile radius surrounding power plants to the overall Pennsylvania population.
Second, it analyzed the communities (based on census tracts) that were predominantly covered by the power plants’ three-mile footprints and compared the census tracts (by demographic traits) covered by the power plants’ footprints to their statewide distribution.
Finally, the study examined the proportion of census tracts (by demographic trait) that were within three miles of one or more plants — essentially, the chance that any type of neighborhood might be near a power plant.
A copy of the report is available online. The list of power plants starts on page 22.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration in May projected 5.2 gigawatts of new natural gas-fired power generation capacity will come online in Pennsylvania during 2018 alone. (A gigawatt is 1,000 megawatts.)
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