'Permit to Kill': LNG Buildout Would Boost Premature Deaths, Health Costs

Permitted emissions from both currently operating and planned liquefied natural gas terminals in the United States "have a major price tag for communities' public health," with existing facilities already estimated to cause scores of premature deaths and nearly a billion dollars in damage each year, according to an analysis published Wednesday.

The report— Permit to Kill—was published by Greenpeace USA and the Sierra Club, which said the analysis "adds to the mounting body of evidence showing that LNG exports are not in the public interest."

Greenpeace USA senior research specialist and report co-author Andres Chang said in a statement that "this study shows that any discussion of LNG exports that ignores the deadly air pollution from LNG terminals is missing the boat."

"The bizarre rush to overbuild methane gas export capacity is not only a climate and an economic mistake—it is also a public health disaster," Chang added. "Our research shows that air pollution from continuing the LNG buildout would hit fenceline communities the hardest, but would also be carried downwind to further away cities like Dallas and New Orleans, causing childhood asthma onset, lost work and school days, and premature death."

Among the report's key findings:

• Direct air pollution from currently operating LNG export terminals is estimated to cause 60 premature deaths and $957 million in total health costs per year;
• If all the planned terminals and expansion projects are built, these numbers would increase to 149 premature deaths and $2.33 billion in health costs per year;
• By 2050, the same permitted air pollutants from currently operating LNG export terminals alone are expected to yield 2,020 premature deaths and $28.7 billion in total health costs;
• There is a strong overlap between areas that are already experiencing climate harms and the areas slated to suffer the worst air pollution impacts;
• At the national level, Black and Hispanic Americans would respectively experience air pollution from LNG terminals at 151–170% and 110–129% the rate of white Americans, if all projects slated for 2030 are built; and
• If the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) halts approvals of new LNG export applications, it would save an estimated 707 to 1,110 lives and avoid $9.88 billion to $15.1 billion in health costs through 2050, compared with a scenario in which all proposed LNG projects are built.

"This briefing provides a new compelling and distressing data point in the long list of reasons to stop approving LNG export applications," said Sierra Club energy campaigns analyst and report co-author Johanna Heureaux-Torres. "It is shocking that regulators do not already consider deadly pollution impacts in their environmental analyses of gas export projects and related infrastructure."

"DOE and other federal agencies should listen to the science and frontline communities, and develop more robust controls on the cumulative impacts of air pollution from these high-polluting projects," Heureaux-Torres added. "The health of communities and the climate depends on the folks in charge to stand up and do the right thing based on the facts of the situation on the ground."

Climate defenders applauded U.S. President Joe Biden's January pause on LNG export permit applications pending a review of their environmental and economic impacts.

However, the Biden administration has also presided over what climate campaigners have called a "staggering" LNG expansion, including Venture Global's Calcasieu Pass 2 export terminal in Cameron Parish, Louisiana and more than a dozen other projects that, if all completed, would make U.S. exported LNG emissions higher than all of Europe's combined greenhouse gas footprint, according to climate campaigner Bill McKibben.

"It's time for DOE to stop using permitted emissions from operating and planned LNG export terminals as a license to pollute our most vulnerable people and places."

Numerous other studies have highlighted the public health harms of LNG, including a 2023 study by the University of Pittsburgh and the Pennsylvania Department of Health that found children who live near fracking operations are roughly five to seven times more likely to develop lymphoma than those whose homes are at least five miles away from drilling sites.

"The Permit to Kill report underscores what residents in frontline communities have been saying for decades—it's time for DOE to stop using permitted emissions from operating and planned LNG export terminals as a license to pollute our most vulnerable people and places," said Robert D. Bullard, director of the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice and distinguished professor of urban planning and environmental policy at Texas Southern University.

"DOE now has the opportunity and moral responsibility to correct its flawed approach, methodology, thinking, and assumptions that follow the dominant pattern and allow Black, Hispanic, and low-income residents to be overburdened with health-threatening air pollution," he added. "Our communities matter."