The dirty facts on fossil fuels: They’re not ‘green energy’

Talk about greenwashing! With a stroke of Gov. Mike Dewine’s pen, Ohio has a new, green, clean energy source! Methane (“natural”) gas.

It’s the same old, “homegrown” fossil fuel formed over the last several hundred million years that produces black soot when burned, but now it’s green.

Plants and some plankton synthesize energy-rich sugar molecules with sunlight energy. Those sugars and molecules produced from them can transform into fossil fuels over millions of years. When we mine and burn those fossil fuels, we release their stored sunlight energy — and soot.

Incomplete burning of fossil fuels releases carbon-based soot particles. Some of them are smaller than 2.5 microns, 1/30th the diameter of a human hair. That particulate matter 2.5 (PM2.5) can enter our lungs. It can then enter into the blood stream and tissues because of its tiny size and can cause diseases like asthma and cancer.

The Harvard Six Cities study drew initial attention to the detrimental health effects of PM2.5 caused by burning fossil fuels in 1993. Of the six Midwestern cities monitored in the study, Steubenville, Ohio, had the highest levels of PM2.5 and negative health effects.

Those insights led to limitations of allowable atmospheric PM2.5 levels. Limits on PM2.5 started at an annual average of 15 micrograms per cubic meter of air. The current limit is 12 micrograms.

The Health Effects Institute reported recently that lowering that limit more would reduce American deaths by 143,000 over a decade.

Last month, the EPA proposed reducing the limit to 9-10 (or maybe 8-11) micrograms. The American Lung Association advocates a limit of 8 micrograms.

Meanwhile, back in Ohio, we now have the green and clean fossil fuel — an oxymoron if there ever was one — of methane gas.

The final, signed version of the legislation, HB507, “Revise number of poultry chicks that may be sold in lots” (remember that adage about making sausages and laws?) declares that “‘Green energy’ means any energy generated by using an energy resource that … (i)s more sustainable and reliable relative to some fossil fuels.”

In other words, burning methane gas to generate electricity emits less of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide than does burning coal. Methane gas is, therefore, green. Problem solved.

But what was the problem? Dewine’s office determined that greenwashing methane gas did not impact any Ohio regulation or funding for “green fuels.”

A report last month by the Washington Post sheds some sunlight on the question. The greenwashing of methane gas could help Ohio gas companies dodge environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing standards. One legislative aide instrumental in passing the bill stated, it is an “anti ESG move that will help Gas users in our state.”

Proponents of the legislation claimed theirs was a “grassroots” effort. The Post report suggests otherwise.

The American Legislative Council and The Empowerment Alliance (TEA) developed and promoted a model version of HB 507, “The chicken bill.” Both are nonprofit “dark money” organizations not required to disclose their donors.

According to the Post, the leaders of TEA are executives at a company that manufactures gas compressors, and the group spent more than a $1 million supporting Republicans in last year’s Ohio elections.

That ain’t chicken scratch.

Steve Rissing is professor emeritus in the Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology at Ohio State University.

steverissing@hotmail.com