The Latest On Gas Pipelines Proposed In NC

Duke, Dominion, and the pipeline companies are doing everything in their power to trap North Carolina into long-term dependence on fossil gas. So they’ve proposed more pipelines. If they succeed, our climate and our families will pay the price.

Most recently, Dominion Energy North Carolina announced its plan to build a 46-mile pipeline from Eden on the west to Roxboro on the east, designed to connect the contested MVP Southgate pipeline to Duke Energy’s proposed new fossil gas power plants. 

According to estimates by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, fossil gas combustion already accounted for 38% of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from the energy sector in 2021. Experts expect that percentage to grow enormously with the major efforts underway to build out gas infrastructure before any regulators can be persuaded to turn it down. “To be clear, it’s not just the greenhouse gasses released from the production and transmission of gas that make it bad for our planet,” says Amanda Levin, a policy analyst for Natural Resources Defense Council. “The combustion of gas for energy has a high carbon footprint as well.”

Pipelines Target Communities

Duke and Dominion are targeting Person County, the eastern terminus of this proposed pipeline, as a hub of future fossil fuel activity. Duke wants to build two large new gas-powered turbines there, while Dominion wants to build two new liquified gas facilities in the county as well.  Duke’s plans call for placing their two new 1,360 MW combined-cycle gas turbines at the site of their coal power plant in Roxboro. 

Earlier in February, the Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Company announced plans to build what would be the largest fossil gas pipeline project on the East Coast in a decade. Transcontinental calls the proposal their “Southeast Supply Enhancement” project. Running from Virginia to Alabama (including through the heart of North Carolina), the pipeline would move up to 1.5 billion cubic feet of gas per day. That’s enough to power five or six large new gas power plants. 

“The gas-fired fever dream gripping the South is completely at odds with the need to decarbonize how we get our energy,” said Greg Buppert, senior attorney and leader of the Southern Environmental Law Center’s (SELC) regional gas team. “Natural gas—methane—isn’t some climate elixir. It’s just another dirty fossil fuel that pollutes communities and heats up the planet.”

Meanwhile, the destructive Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) continues to lurch along, behind schedule and over budget. The MVP company announced that the price of the MVP had gone up again, now to $7.63 billion. That’s more than double the cost estimate of $3.7 billion given in 2018. 

Evidence keeps piling up that neither our embattled climate nor our hard-pressed ratepaying families can afford these fossil gas “pipe dreams.”