Methanol has been getting a lot of attention in the Pacific Northwest lately, and with good reason. Three methanol plants proposed along the Columbia River and Puget Sound could make our region the country’s top methanol producer and exporter, while heavily taxing our iconic water systems and upping our air and carbon pollution loads.
Sightline pulled together a quick cheat sheet on the projects to help the public get the facts about methanol in Cascadia. You are welcome to and encouraged to download, share, and print our infographic (it looks great even in grayscale).
Editor’s note: A previous version of this graphic misstated several figures. We corrected them and updated our graphic at 3:45 PM Wednesday, February 10.
Thanks for this. Would you consider doing something for the proposed Ethanol Plants similar to your 7 Ways to Talk About Climate Change?
Hi, Sharon. I’m glad you found this intro helpful. The “7 ways to talk about climate change,” though (another story in today’s Sightline Daily edition), was a Grist article, based on this book.
A lot more details about methanol here:
https://redlinetacoma.org/
https://redlinetacoma.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/RLT_Org-Flyer_020516.pdf
Please sign the petition here, over 11,600 already have:
https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/say-no-to-the-huge-methanol
How do the net greenhouse gas emissions of this process compare with the net ghg emissions of the existing technology?
Northwest Innovation Works told Governor Inslee, this process had a lower net carbon footprint than if they build more facilities to make methanol out of coal.
That is true. However, the fracking process to obtain the natural gas is very damaging. And the methanol being produced isn’t going to run any plants, it’s being shipped to China to make more plastic items.
When we were looking at LPG, and told it was for plastic, not fuel, a Wikipedia article said that the conversion of LPG to the plastics had as great a carbon footprint as if they had burned it. Is this similar?
Great display of this important information. I wonder if you could tag on Annie Leonard’s ” Story of Stuff ” video to show the circle with cheap disposable plastic junk
being the end product of our risking exposure ?
There will be jobs created…more people hospitalized !
Any numbers on pollution? The “Air pollution” section looks a lot like my VW TDI diesel.
Please send link to rabrown@uw.edu
Thank you for this! This is the first time i am seeing specific emissions/air pollutants mentioned, sulfur dioxide and particulate matter would certainly aggravate our already poor air quality. I would really like to bring this up at the scoping hearing and to help HB 2980 get passed/win more sponsors…could you please email me or post your sources? Thanks again! Teodora