John Kendall

I am a postdoctoral researcher with Dr. Jennifer Baka. Together, we are pursuing three different projects focused on how the Appalachian gas industry is responding to the so-called 'energy transition'.  The first project utilizes contributions of the emerging field of political-industrial ecology to visualize the flows and stocks of materials running into and out of Appalachian gas infrastructure and, in turn, the cumulative impacts that heightened extraction activities have had on local communities and ecologies. The second project focuses on a specific, major anchor of this infrastructure, the Shell Polymers Monaca plant in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, and community-led efforts to challenge its on-site air permit renewal given its repeated and unabated violations of the latter. Finally, a third project examines how the natural gas industry is taking advantage of federally allocated funds in order to entrench and expand the extraction of natural gas as the primary feedstock for a new regional hydrogen economy.