July 5, Washington D.C. – In response to Dominion and Duke Energy canceling their six-year, $8-billion dollar bid to build the massive fracked gas Atlantic Coast Pipeline, Greenpeace USA Climate Director Janet Redman said:
“People living along the proposed path of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline have said from the beginning that it would be a disaster, and now Dominion and Duke have had to admit their opponents were right. Luckily, today’s news is only a disaster for those fossil fuel executives hoping to squeeze their last millions out of catastrophic climate change, not for people invested in a livable future.
“Duke and Dominion had hoped to carve up beautiful mountains, ignore catastrophic climate change, and delay a just transition to renewable energy to build this pipeline, but, thanks to the courageous activists who stood up to them, they have failed. Their epic failure should be a warning to other fossil fuel companies hoping to double down on dirty pipelines — the future does not belong to you.
“Instead of investing in renewable energy, Dominion had justified their attempt to build this massive fracked gas pipeline based on data center growth in Virginia. They claimed major data centers like Amazon’s ‘needed’ fracked gas, but opponents knew a fracked gas pipeline would only lock us into a long-term reliance on a dangerous fuel at the exact moment we need to be urgently transitioning our electricity grid to renewables. Dominion and Duke tried to squeeze the last bit of profit out of the fossil fuel era — but today we see they failed.
“This is a victory for all the brave activists, residents, and communities who stood up to these fossil fuel companies to protect their land, their water, and their futures.”
For more information on the connection between the ACP and Virginia’s data centers, see Greenpeace’s 2019 “Clicking Clean Virginia” report: https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/reports/click-clean-virginia/
Contact: Travis Nichols, [email protected]
