Courtesy photos.
ERG alum, author, and independent journalist Jonathan Mingle’s 2024 book Gaslight: The Atlantic Coast Pipeline and the Fight for America’s Energy Future was highlighted in the recent fall issue of UCB’s Breakthroughs Magazine, and was recently named one of the New York Public Library’s Best Books of 2024, making it the only nonfiction title on the list related to climate and energy!
Gaslight tells the story of the epic six-year battle over Dominion Energy’s proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which would have run through thousands of properties in Virginia. In 2014, residents received letters informing them that surveyors would soon arrive with plans to build a massive pipeline through their property, as the pipeline was deemed a project in the “public interest” to carry natural gas—a fossil fuel marketed as a cleaner “bridge fuel” to renewable energy. The residents and many others fiercely opposed the pipeline, taking on a powerful energy giant with vast political and financial influence. The struggle ultimately reached the Supreme Court. This David and Goliath narrative explores the broader stakes: whether natural gas can truly be part of a sustainable energy future, or if it is, in fact, a climate-damaging fossil fuel, exacerbating global warming. Gaslight highlights this pivotal fight and its importance in shaping America’s energy future and climate policy.
Be sure to also check out some of the lessons from Mingle’s reporting for Gaslight regarding utilities’ incentives in his article We Can Get the Electricity We Need Without Frying the Planet (or Our Pocketbooks) published in the New York Times last spring!