environmental justice

Published by Responsible Alpha: The Chemical Coast, along the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana, is where 84% of U.S. plastics production, across the sector’s supply chain, is located. Each state has policies that both support using industrial revenue bonds and limit property taxes on petrochemical facilities, which produce the chemicals used in plastics manufacturing, that use fossil fuel energy with fossil fuel feedstocks to make the plastics we use, despite significant risks to local communities’ health.

Published by Responsible Alpha: The Chemical Coast, along the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana, is where 84% of U.S. plastics production, across the sector’s supply chain, is located. Each state has policies that both support using industrial revenue bonds and limit property taxes on petrochemical facilities, which produce the chemicals used in plastics manufacturing, that use fossil fuel energy with fossil fuel feedstocks to make the plastics we use, despite significant risks to local communities’ health.

Responsible Alpha developed the business, economic, and investment analysis used by 123 environmental, indigenous rights, and racial justice organizations in their letter to the Honorable Gary Gensler, Chair, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on the proposed rule "The Enhancement and Standardization of Climate-Related Disclosures for Investors."

Published by Responsible Alpha: In 2022 Duke Energy Corporation had $84 billion in market capitalization, $62 billion in fixed income securities, and 27,000 employees, as an energy company located primarily in the Americas that owned an integrated network of energy assets and it is one of the largest U.S. utilities. ​ In 2020, Duke reported Scope 1 emissions of 75 million mtCO2e, 24.5 thousand metric tons SO2, 39 thousand metric tons NOx, and 142.4 thousand metric tons methane emissions with coal generating 20.9% total electricity. ​ For years, Duke has stored coal ash in landfills and ponds that often leak toxins into waterways. A leak in 2014 at a Duke North Carolina coal ash pond site left coal ash coating 70 miles of the Dan River. In 2015, Duke pled guilty and agreed to $102 million in fines and restitution due to federal environmental crimes because the company acknowledged it coal ash dumps at five power plants to leak toxic waste into water supplies.

Published by Responsible Alpha: As of 2022, Dominion Energy was the lead investor in the Atlantic Coast Pipeline joint venture was a 604-mile-long natural gas pipeline with a capacity of 1.5 billion cubic feet of gas daily to alleviate a bottleneck to gas produced from the Marcellus Shale in Appalachia reaching growing markets in Virginia and North Carolina. Environmental risks, community risks, and climate risks killed the $8 billion Atlantic Coast Pipeline, forcing multibillion-dollar writeoffs at Dominion and Duke.

Published by Responsible Alpha: Marathon Petroleum Corporation, $52 billion in market capitalization, $31.6 billion in fixed income securities, 17,700 employees, Ohio-based crude oil refining company. Marathon refines, supplies, markets, and transports petroleum products. The company serves customers in the United States.