Billion-dollar Mitsubishi chemical plant economically questionable, energy group says
An energy group says a $1.3 billion chemical production facility to be built in Louisiana by Japanese conglomerate Mitsubishi Chemical Group is economically questionable and unnecessarily increases greenhouse gas emissions
NEW ORLEANS — A $1.3 billion chemical production facility to be built in Louisiana by Japanese conglomerate Mitsubishi is economically questionable and unnecessarily increases greenhouse gas emissions, according to an energy think tank report released Monday.
The proposed Mitsubishi plant is “the wrong project, at the wrong place and time, with the wrong financial scenario,” said the report from the Institute of Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, or IEEFA, an Ohio-based nonprofit.
Mitsubishi Chemical Group would be capable of annually producing 350,000 tons of methyl methacrylate, or MMA, a chemical component found in cement, adhesives, textiles and plastics.
The facility would also be among the state's top 50 greenhouse gas emitters, according to data from the Environmental Protection Agency. And it is being constructed in Ascension Parish, along a stretch of the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans known as “ cancer alley ” for its heavy industrial pollution.
The facility would release more than 780,000 tons of carbon dioxide annually even though an alternative production process less reliant on fossil fuels exists, the IEEFA report notes.
Mitsubishi stated in 2022 that its proposed facility in Louisiana “achieves the lowest possible carbon footprint for MMA production.” The proposed facility’s natural gas-based production process is also intended to help the industry shift away from the dominant method of cyanide-based production.
But IEEFA said Mitsubishi does not need to
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