CNX launches vision for Appalachia region

Pittsburgh-based natural gas company CNX Resources Corp. announced it was launching its new initiative, Appalachia First, which would reimage the region’s future as an energy, technology, and engineering hub.

CNX said its initiative would draw on the company’s leadership, core operational strengths, and innovative business model to catalyze regional growth opportunities by leveraging the company’s decarbonization technologies and low-cost, lower emissions assets.

“The nation and world are waking up to stark energy realities: energy scarcity, deterioration of our power grid, and energy inflation stoking wider inflation, CNX President and CEO Nick Deluliis said. “Policy often relies too heavily on applications such as wind, solar, and electric vehicles that can present large life cycle carbon footprints, require supply chains stretching thousands of miles, are costly, and face serious challenges when scaling in regions like Appalachia. If we don’t get energy and climate policies right, our economic competitiveness will be stifled, the environment will be worse off, and we will end up enabling our adversaries to wage war and forcing leaders to negotiate energy supplies from dictators and despots.”

Appalachia First would leverage the company and the region’s natural gas opportunities and develop and deploy new technologies by using natural gas product derivatives for vertical market growth, the company said. Additionally, the initiative would work to replace higher carbon fuels in the aviation, plastics, rail, cargo, mass transit, trucking, and fleet and passenger vehicle sectors with locally produced natural gas.

“There is a better, simpler, and more logical way,” Deluliis said. “Appalachia can be the launchpad to a more efficient and sustainable future catalyzed by lower carbon intensity natural gas. This proud region and its people should be the solution to deliver reliable and affordable energy – our region’s abundant energy resources can and must be used more effectively to prioritize the improvement of the human condition, the environment, the nation, and the world.”