Pittsburgh is a city on the upswing, rebounding this century from its rustbelt past by developing more innovative sectors such as health care, education, and technology.
Pittsburgh is a city on the upswing, rebounding this century from its rustbelt past by developing more innovative sectors such as health care, education, and technology. Uber is testing its self-driving cars in Pittsburgh. Carnegie Mellon University is home to a world-renowned Robotics Institute. And the city made an aggressive bid for Amazon’s HQ2, which the mayor viewed as key to moving the Steel City beyond its roots in heavy industry.
Progress toward a cleaner, post-industrial future is not linear, however. Although the air in Pittsburgh has dramatically improved from the days when it was one of America’s most polluted cities, it still contains high levels of hazardous pollutants, in large part because of several major steel foundries and coke works still in operation, according to the Clean Air Council. The rise of hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas, now more than a decade old, has exacerbated regional air quality problems. Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is located, is out of compliance with federal air quality standards on fine particulate matter (PM 2.5) and sulfur dioxide. In 2018, the region barely met the federal ozone standard after falling short in years past.
Now, Pittsburgh and the surrounding area are embracing a new wave of industry tied to the fracking boom in western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio. Nothing better embodies this surge than a massive, $6 billion ethane cracker currently being built 30 miles northwest of Pittsburgh by Shell Chemical Appalachia, a subsidiary of the oil giant Royal Dutch Shell. The facility will process huge quantities of natural gas and natural gas liquids from the prolific Marcellus and Utica shales and turn them into the building blocks of plastic. The plastic pellets produced by “cracking” ethane molecules will then be sold to manufacturers producing consumer and industrial products such as plastic bags, packaging, automotive parts, and furniture.
Read more at Yale Environment 360
Image: Construction of Shell Chemical Appalachia's ethane cracker facility in Monaca, Pennsylvania in February. (Credit: NICK CUNNINGHAM / YALE E360)
