How you can help?
Everyone deserves basic health and safety. We need to inform our neighbors about the dangers of hydrogen gas, and we need to press the decision makers to stop this disaster in-the-making. You can help: some things you can do from home, and some you do with others. Together we can stop MACH2.
Sign up to stay connected: https://actionnetwork.org/forms/stay-involved-to-stop-mach2
Steps you can take
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Despite the fact that the project is already underway, many key decisions are still to be made. Approvals, permits, and funding have still not been secured. Look up your local and federal elected officials and tell them “Say NO to MACH2”. You can find them easily at the links below:
Pennsylvania: https://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/home/findyourlegislator/
New Jersey: https://www.njleg.state.nj.us/#findLegislator
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Join the stop MACH2 campaign. We have created an Action Network platform where you can easily find information and upcoming opportunities. If you sign up to stay involved, you will receive email updates whenever there is a rally, petition, or action you can take. The more voices standing up against this, the more power we have to stop this false climate solution.
Sign up here: https://actionnetwork.org/forms/stay-involved-to-stop-mach2
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Many people aren’t even aware what is happening in their neighborhood or what the dangers are. That’s where you come in. Simply by reading this webpage you have taken the first step in becoming an informed citizen. Share with friends, family, and colleagues to help educate others to stand up against MACH2.
Know who wants MACH2
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The incentives to build the hydrogen hubs come from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law signed by President Joe Biden in 2021. The projects are overseen by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED). The Governors of Pennsylvania, and Delaware, and New Jersey are also supporting these projects and have staff to help coordinate the businesses and usher them through the process. The Governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, for example, backed MACH2 when he appeared at an event at a union hall to give a speech supporting the hydrogen hub.
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The overwhelming scientific consensus is that people must end fossil fuel use as rapidly as possible, yet the fossil fuel industry is trying their best to ensure the long-term profitability of their vast holdings to avoid stranding their assets. Hydrogen hubs are just one attempt to continue fossil fuel use and their own relevance. The MACH2 hydrogen hub membership includes many in the fossil fuel industry. Certain unions, such as steamfitters, are on board for the funds for training and the jobs the projects will provide.
Know who doesn’t want MACH2
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With prolonged fossil fuel use and combustion of hydrogen gas producing NOx and posing other dangers, the consensus of scientists and healthcare professionals is that hydrogen production and use should be limited to only a few hard-to-decarbonize industries—but that hydrogen must be made from truly green energy. We will not need or be able to use the vast amount of hydrogen gas produced by MACH2, let alone seven proposed hydrogen hubs around the country.
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Like so many extractive and polluting industries, certain communities—those with historically the least political clout and power—will be further used as “sacrifice zones” and receive the direct impacts to people’s health and safety created by MACH2. By law, these communities must be engaged for the MACH2 funding to be released, however, only bad-faith efforts have been made, saying that conversations will happen only once the projects are “shovel ready.” That’s far too late.
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The top concerns of environmental groups are how hydrogen production and use would prolong the extraction and use of fossil fuels, particularly methane/natural gas/LNG, as well as the health and safety risks to many communities, those near production facilities as well as those through which pipelines run. The dangers of hydrogen and carbon dioxide are enormous and vastly downplayed by hydrogen’s advocates: politicians and industries who stand to gain. Environmental groups point to the need for electrification of as many sectors of the economy as possible, increasing the opportunities for truly green jobs and businesses, keeping fossil fuels in the ground, and prioritizing people’s health and safety above profits.