Some of the largest companies in the world — including Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft — are looking to secure electricity for their energy-intensive operations. Their quests for power to supply their growing “data centers” are super-charging a growing national market for electricity service that pits regional utilities against each other. In this paper, we investigate one aspect of this competition: how utilities can fund discounts to Big Tech by socializing their costs through electricity prices charged to the public. Hiding subsidies for trillion-dollar companies in power prices increases utility profits by raising costs for American consumers.

Data Centers Aren’t the Future of American Prosperity

The race to expand Appalachian natural gas production in anticipation of new power demand for AI data centers and increased export capacity of liquified natural gas (LNG) is unlikely to generate long-term job growth or local prosperity.

“For over a decade, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia have premised their economic futures on the ability of natural gas and its downstream industries, from petrochemicals and hydrogen to rising LNG exports and data center-driven power demand growth, to deliver jobs and prosperity,” report author Sean O’Leary, Senior Researcher with the Ohio River Valley Institute, explains. “But these industries have proven structurally incapable of delivering almost any real, measurable economic benefit to the region.”

Since the dawn of the Appalachian fracking boom in 2008, the thirty largest gas-producing counties in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia have logged robust growth in economic output but concerning declines in key measures of economic wellbeing:

• Jobs have fallen by 1% despite 14% growth nationally,
• Population has dropped by 3% and the number of employed persons has fallen by 4% while the nation’s population grew by 10%,
• Income has grown at just three-quarters the rate of national growth.

Three Rivers Waterkeeper (3RWK) was founded in 2009. Our mission is to protect the water quality of
the Monongahela, Allegheny, and Ohio Rivers, and their respective watersheds. We work to protect the
water quality for 5 million people and the abundant plants and animals that reside in and around our rivers
and tributaries with an ultimate vision of drinkable, swimmable, and fishable waters. A key component of
our work is monitoring and patrolling for pollution and documenting the baseline water quality of our
waterways.

The burden of petrochemical pollution on communities of Color is well established, but the corresponding distribution of economic benefits is unclear. We evaluated employment equity in chemical manufacturing (NAICS 325) and petroleum/coal products manufacturing (NAICS 324) among U.S. states and core-based statistical areas (CBSAs) relative to racial education gaps, using data from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Census Bureau. As a case study, we also examined local-level employment disparities and industrial tax incentives in Louisiana. People of Color were consistently underrepresented among the highest-paying jobs and overrepresented among the lowest-paying jobs in both subsectors. Disparities persisted on a local scale, including in Louisiana parishes providing large tax subsidies for job creation. For both subsectors, the strongest predictor of disparities in better-paying jobs was population diversity. Education gaps were not significantly correlated with observed disparities in either subsector. Collectively, our findings reveal systemic inequality in the United States’ petrochemical workforce. The observed disparities appear to reflect institutional racism and are not solely due to the racial education gap, as some have suggested. Regulators should consider that current approaches to industrial permitting, which typically ignore the distribution of economic benefits, are likely to perpetuate this pattern of racial injustice.

Integrating Uncertainty, Costs, and Localized Solutions in Fine Particulate Matter Standards

Pennsylvania ranks 49th in the nation for percentage growth in total solar, wind and geothermal generation over the past decade, according to new data released on May 7, 2025 by PennEnvironment.

Debates over the importance of “lifestyle” versus “environment” contributions to cancer have been going on for over 40 years. While it is clear that cigarette smoking is the most significant cancer risk factor, the contributions of occupational and environmental carcinogens in air, water and food remain controversial. In practice, most cancer prevention messaging focuses on reducing cigarette smoking and changing other personal behaviors with little mention of environmental chemicals, despite widespread exposure to many known carcinogens. To inform decision-making on cancer prevention priorities, we evaluated the potential impact of smoking cessation on cancer rates.

Below is a summary of key findings from the second quarterly report on data collected from five Aeroqual AQM-65 air monitors in Beaver County, PA from March 2025 through June 2025. The Environmental Health Project (EHP) collected this data with the Beaver County Marcellus Awareness Community (BCMAC) as a part of the AirSense Community Monitoring Project funded by Shell penalty dollars from the Environmental Mitigation Community Fund. These results reflect a 91 day monitoring period of air quality in Beaver County.

People exposed to higher levels of air pollution may be more likely to develop meningioma, a typically noncancerous brain tumor, according to a large study published July 9, 2025, in Neurology^®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. This common type of brain tumor forms in the lining of the brain and spinal cord. The findings do not prove that air pollution causes meningioma; they only show a link between the two.