Construction at an ethene cracker plant on the Ohio River for making the building blocks of plastics. Credit: James Bruggers Democrats are mounting a challenge on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives against what they call a raid by the natural gas and plastics industries on a pot of federal money created to help finance innovations that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The fight is over a proposed $1.9 billion government-backed loan guarantee from a program that has primarily been used to back wind power, solar and other types of clean energy. The Energy Department is now considering using that program to support a large-scale underground storage project for ethane, a fossil fuel byproduct used to make plastics. If the loan guarantee goes through, that government backing could help spur funding for a major new petrochemical and plastics industry in the upper Ohio River Valley, spanning West Virginia, […]