SACE's new fossil gas hub houses resources for communities and decision-makers across the Southeast. The hub features our own research and analysis as well as great resources developed by experts and partners.

The fossil gas industry is sitting on a massive supply of shale gas in the Appalachian Basin, represented by the large red circle over West Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania labeled “Appalachian Basin” on the map below.

Source: US Geological Survey https://certmapper.cr.usgs.gov/data/apps/noga-summary/

At the same time, liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals are expanding rapidly along the Gulf of Mexico. And in between are Duke, Dominion, Georgia Power, and Santee Cooper – utilities that see an opportunity to build expensive gas plants to serve load growth fueled by speculative data centers and uncertain manufacturing projects. This creates a very convenient profit opportunity for utilities, gas companies, and gas pipeline developers – paid for by captive utility ratepayers.

SACE is working to track, analyze, and daylight these projects, starting with a new paper that looks at the relationship between abundant gas supply in the Appalachian basin, multiple new interstate pipeline expansion projects enabled by firm transportation contracts with utilities, grid decarbonization, the ability for utilities to sell unused pipeline capacity in the third-party market, and physical pipeline access to LNG export facilities.

2025: A Year of Decisions that Could Lock in Carbon and Higher Power Bills

Legislators and regulators such as FERC and state utility commissioners will be making many decisions in 2025 – whether to approve pipelines, power plants, or integrated resource plans – that have the potential to lock Southeastern ratepayers into expensive and unnecessary infrastructure. These decisions could also lock us into more than 106 million metric tons of downstream CO2e per year.

SACE’s New Hub

SACE’s new Fossil Gas Resource Hub provides quick access to our blogs, analyses, and resources on these topics. We also highlight resources developed by other experts and partners, including:

• An interactive map of gas plants, pipelines, and export terminals developed by the Sierra Club
• Landing pages for the grassroots efforts to oppose the Williams Transco Southeast Supply Enhancement Project, EQT’s Mountain Valley Pipeline Southgate, and the Enbridge T15 Reliability Project
• A map of Transco, MVP Southgate, the T15, compressor stations, power plants, and schools created by the Southern Coalition for Social Justice
• Our own whitepaper outlining fossil gas pipeline safety issues will be added soon.

We hope you find these resources useful as we work to transition the Southeast to clean, reliable, renewable energy.

Check Out SACE’s Fossil Gas Resource Hub