Cracking Appalachia: A Political-Industrial Ecology Perspective

Dr. Jennifer Baka, an associate professor of geography and an associate at the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute at Penn State University, will speak at the first spring 2024 installment of the Environmental Institutions Seminar Series presented by the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability and the University Program in Environmental Policy (UPEP). Students, faculty, and staff at Duke and other Triangle-area universities are invited to attend this in-person event (no virtual viewing option).

Abstract

This paper presents a political-industrial ecology analysis of an emerging petrochemical corridor in Appalachia. Political-industrial ecology is a nascent field of geography that embeds resource metabolisms within their broader political economic contexts. Baka advances the field by evaluating how resource metabolisms and governance processes interconnect to shape nature-society relations.

Within Appalachia, various ethane “cracker” plants are under construction, or are being permitted, to transform ethane byproducts from hydraulically fractured shale gas in the Marcellus and Utica shales into plastics. The political-industrial ecology analysis links these developments in the former steel belt to the growing environmental burdens of plastics, highlighting how record state subsidies are facilitating these linkages.

Further, the systems perspective afforded by a political-industrial ecology view reveals three notable findings. First, the footprint of the corridor extends well beyond the Ohio River Valley to Canada, the US Gulf Coast, and international markets in Europe and Asia. Second, the corridor is a significant step toward establishing more globally integrated markets for ethane and natural gas. Third, the analysis illustrates the myriad of environmental systems and communities interlinked through the corridor, which can serve as a roadmap for facilitating cumulative impact analysis, a key gap in environmental impact and justice scholarship.

The Environmental Institutions Seminar Series is presented by the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability and the University Program in Environmental Policy, a doctoral degree program jointly offered by the Nicholas School of the Environment and Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University.

Dr. Jennifer Baka is an associate professor of geography and an associate at the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute at Penn State University. She conducts interdisciplinary research on how energy systems impact human-environment relationships and environmental governance. Since 2020, she has been a member of the Environmental Justice Advisory Board for the PA Department of Environmental Protection. Prior to joining Penn State, she was an assistant professor of geography and environment at the London School of Economics from 2013-16. She earned a PhD in environmental studies from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and a master's in public policy from UC Berkeley. Prior to graduate school, Dr. Baka worked in the energy industry for numerous years, first as an economic consultant in Washington, DC, and second as a consultant for the United Nations Environment Programme in Paris, France.