For Immediate Release: June 1, 2022
Media Contacts:
Emily Moore, Sightline Institute, Senior Researcher
206-447-1880 x128, emily@sightline.org
Steph Routh, Sightline Institute, Strategic Communications Manager
971-506-8385, steph@sightline.org
SEATTLE, WA – Over the past decade, fossil fuel interests proposed dozens of coal, oil, and gas export facilities for the coasts of Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia. Though the hydrocarbon industry whiteboarded a total of 55 fossil fuel export projects in Cascadia, they’ve now scrapped a whopping 73 percent of those projects thanks to a combination of local opposition, see-sawing energy prices, and regulatory hurdles. In what is the first quantitative estimate of the carbon pollution of the past decade’s projects, the report finds that Cascadia has averted 1,717 million metric tons of annual greenhouse gas emissions.
“Had they been built, these projects would have collectively produced roughly 30 percent of the entire annual greenhouse gas emissions of the United States,” said Emily Moore, head of Sightline Institute’s fossil fuels transition program and author of the report, A Decade of Successes Against Fossil Fuel Export Projects in Cascadia. “The dedicated work over the past decade by local communities, Tribes, and environmental advocates to fight these projects has been critical in protecting local health and safety and advancing our climate goals.”
But the region cannot claim victory just yet. Nine projects are not yet canceled, eight of them in British Columbia. Of the remaining projects, expanding the Trans Mountain oil pipeline would be the single largest greenhouse gas emitter. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stands steadfastly behind the project despite ballooning costs, local opposition, and his own administration’s climate commitments. And while Premier John Horgan’s BC provincial government opposes the Trans Mountain pipeline, it remains friendly to projects that will liquify fracked gas from northeastern British Columbia and export it from the coast. Completing the five liquified natural gas (LNG) export facilities currently proposed in British Columbia would make it all but impossible to meet the province’s own climate commitments.
Report author Emily Moore is a senior researcher with Sightline Institute and head of its fossil fuels transition program.
View the full report at sightline.org/decade, including free-use graphics and a map of the remaining projects. Any use of statements within the report must be properly attributed and, if online, linked. Use of Sightline-produced graphics is permitted, with proper attribution and without alteration.
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Sightline Institute is an independent, nonprofit think tank providing leading original analysis of housing, democracy, and energy policy in the Pacific Northwest and beyond.
