The current Easton Compressor Station is located on Klein Road in Forks Township, Northampton County, PA. It is owned by Columbia Gas Company, a subsidiary of NiSource. A compressor station is a facility that pressurizes natural gas to allow the gas to move through large-scale transmission pipelines. According to Columbia’s application to the Department of Environmental Protection, the company plans to remove the existing 2,250 horsepower facility and replace it with a 19,500 horsepower facility, more than eight times its current capacity.

Pennsylvania has squandered its jobs in the wind industry. There used to be 4,000 wind jobs in Pennsylvania, but now, with the closure of the two Gamesa turbine manufacturing plants in Cambria and Bucks Counties in March, there are almost none. One big reason for these closures is the expiration of the production tax credit (PTC) for wind energy, giving the wind farm 2.3 cents per kilowatt hour of wind energy generated. This small subsidy helps create good jobs in renewable energy.

Residential and Commercial buildings consumed over 40% of Pennsylvania’s energy in 2011. In 2011, Governor Corbett and the Pennsylvania State Legislature made it harder to update building codes and chose to opt-out of automatic efficiency measure updates. Every three years, the International Code Council (ICC) publishes new standards aimed at making buildings more energy efficient. While the 2012 standards came and went, Pennsylvania is still relying on the 2009 recommendations.