Unveiling 💸 the Green Grift of 🤥 National Grid
The company is capitalizing on public infrastructure and resources while reaping all the financial rewards.
Gas utilities don’t care about the climate. But they know their customers do, so they like to tout their eco-friendly initiatives. National Grid, for instance, boasts about its renewable natural gas (RNG) project on Newtown Creek in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, claiming the giant shiny digester eggs are a game-changer for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from sewage and food waste. But don’t be fooled by the smoke and mirrors! Beneath the veneer of sustainability lies a cunning scheme that benefits National Grid at the expense of taxpayers, consumers, and the environment.
Sane Energy caught on to this at a recent joint meeting of Community Board 1’s Parks and Waterfront and Environmental Protection Committees in Brooklyn, where we heard from representatives from National Grid and the Department of Environmental Protection. Here’s how, under questioning from the community, they explained how their scheme works.
Profiting from Public Resources
National Grid's renewable natural gas (RNG) project gets the material from which biogas is produced for free from city sewers and Department of Sanitation trucks. The company is capitalizing on public infrastructure and resources while reaping all the financial rewards.
Billing the Taxpayers
The Department of Environmental Protection covers the giant eggs’ anaerobic digestion costs. New York City taxpayers are paying for the production of biogas, the methane-rich product of decomposing organics and sewage.
Free Methane, Anyone?
National Grid then receives that biogas methane free of charge from the Department of Environmental Protection.
Selling Sustainability
National Grid is financially responsible only for the last stage: purifying the gas. It can then distribute it through its pipelines to sell to the very customers whose food scraps, excrement, and tax dollars produced it.
Cashing in on Credits
National Grid rakes in approximately $750,000 annually for Renewable Energy Credits from this process, further lining their pockets at the expense of the public.
Methane Misinformation
National Grid claims that renewable natural gas (RNG) is not a fossil fuel, so it doesn't contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. But there’s a better way to manage organic waste: aerobic composting mixes oxygen into the decomposing material and sequesters greenhouse gasses. Aerobic composting reduces methane emissions, while anaerobic digestion releases methane. The flammable, explosive, toxic renewable gas introduced into National Grid's leaky pipes harms both people and the environment.
Those Eggs are Fried
National Grid and the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) have been trying to get the Newtown Creek facility to produce renewable natural gas since 2012! For over a decade, 60% of the methane produced has been used to heat the digester eggs, and the rest was flared, releasing CO2 into the atmosphere. They finally got the waste-to-renewable natural gas (RNG) process working in March 2023, but after only four months, the system broke down. While it is occasionally online, most of the gas is being flared again.
We Want Our Compost!
Mayor Eric Adams’ administration has defunded most of the beloved non-profit community composting organizations that converted our food waste into nutrient-rich compost that enriched soils and sequestered methane. The city is now collecting this resource in the ubiquitous brown and orange bins to benefit the gas utility.
Unveiling the Green Grift
It's time to strip away the façade of sustainability and confront National Grid's deceptive practices. By exploiting public resources, passing on costs to taxpayers, selling back to customers what they received from New York City residents at no cost, and capitalizing on credits meant for renewable energy projects, National Grid is not a champion of sustainability but a master of manipulation.
National Grid's renewable natural gas project is greenwashing at its most cynical, and DEP’s complicity in this grift is shameful. As taxpayers and consumers, we must expose the truth behind false solutions like renewable natural gas and demand accountability and transparency from both city agencies and energy utilities.
We want real solutions that prioritize the planet and people over profit.
Jeanne Bergman is Senior Advisor on Policy and Sustainability for Sane Energy.