A quantitative approach towards recognizing and addressing Environmental Justice concerns in the U.S. Natural Gas System: Applied to data from local distribution companies

Natural gas (NG) infrastructure spans across the United States and its communities. An expansive system of transmission pipelines (midstream level infrastructure) connects development and extraction sites (upstream level infrastructure) with local distribution systems (downstream level infrastructure). NG releases occur across the upstream, midstream, and downstream levels of the supply chain as a combination of operational and fugitive emissions or leaks (i.e. intentional and unintentional releases, respectively). Given its Methane (CH4) composition, NG release across the supply chain poses a significant climate concern. This has prompted increasingly robust characterizations of intentional and unintentional releases across the NG supply chain. Meanwhile, there exists a growing appreciation for the localized environmental burdens associated with the location and management of NG infrastructure, and the ways in which these burdens are inequitably distributed across communities in the US.

Many states in the U.S. are beginning to impose data collection and reporting mandates on their NG companies, leaving research groups with rich data sets that can be used for Environmental Justice analyses to further characterize equity concerns as they exist across the U.S. NG system. Here, we present the results of our Environmental Justice focused analyses of leak report data provided to us by four local distribution companies. We discuss concerning patterns found in the data set, and we contextualize our approach and findings within a larger data driven framework that aims to create relationships that sustain data collection and reporting, and that centers the role of communities and environmental advocacy groups in the process of data collection and communication of results. In doing so, we hope to demonstrate an example of how a quantitative approach may be informed by and used to address issues of Social and Environmental Justice.