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department of energy
Don't Pull the Trigger: Say, 'No!' to New Plutonium Pits
The rush to increase production at 80 pits per year by 2030 unnecessarily increases the risk to workers and sidelines necessary environmental cleanup at the sites that already have ongoing release of radioactive waste into the air, water, and soil from legacy activities.
Jul 15, 2026
Plutonium pits are the radioactive core “trigger” of every US nuclear weapon. On detonation, the plutonium sets off a nuclear chain reaction initiating a nuclear explosion. The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration, or NNSA, plutonium pit production Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement, or PEIS, public comment period ends this Friday, July 16. Our input regarding this major component of today’s nuclear arms race is critical.
Paradoxically, on that same day, 81 years prior in 1945, the nuclear arms race began when the United States bombed New Mexico with the Trinity test. The PEIS released in April this year provides an incomplete and non-comprehensive environmental review of this accelerated race to develop new plutonium pits by 2030. The justification put forth stems from a Cold War mentality of Congress from 2014 requiring the United States to develop the capacity to produce 80 plutonium pits per year by 2030, subsequently bolstered by the 2018 Trump administration's Nuclear Posture Review requiring the US to produce 80 pits per year by 2030; 30 at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and 50 at the Savannah River Site.
As background, the majority of current plutonium pits completed production at the contaminated Rocky Flats plant outside of Boulder, Colorado by 1989. Therefore most plutonium pits are roughly 30-40 years old. Currently there are over 15,000 plutonium pits in reserve at the Pantex Plant near Amarillo, Texas, and over 5,000 which are suitable for use in strategic reserve. These large grapefruit size pits have at their core the incredibly hazardous radionuclide plutonium 239, which has a half life of 24,000 years.
Concerns over the aging of the current stockpile have been the impetus for building new pits. That concern was largely put to rest with the congressionally mandated 2006 JASON study, which confirmed that plutonium pits would last at least 100 years, and a subsequent 2012 Lawrence Livermore National Lab study found “...no unexpected aging issues are appearing in plutonium pits artificially aged to 150 years of age…” and they “...performed as designed.” This scientific evidence deemed as inconvenient was ignored. A subsequent new JASON Study was completed in 2025, and the NNSA has refused to release the results despite congressional demands and watchdog agency lawsuits, presumably due to the inconvenient results threatening their multibillion dollar windfall.
Historically the only thing that can be guaranteed in this proposed increased plutonium pit production plan is that it will be significantly delayed and far over budget.
As noted, this current race to rapidly expand pit production will occur at the existing, and already contaminated, sites at Savannah River in South Carolina, and the Los Alamos National Lab in New Mexico. It’s as though these communities are expendable.
The current draft PEIS only gives lip service to addressing the environmental impacts, failing to adequately take into account the dangers posed by the production of these pits to surrounding communities. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, while the PEIS “clearly highlights an increased risk of radiation in the environment and across communities near facilities and workers it dismisses them as negligible continuing the most harmful and risky option of continued multi-site operations…. with only passing acknowledgement of the increased impacts at other sites, including nationwide transportation and impending waste management bottlenecks.”
According to a peer reviewed study published last week in the journal Science and Global Security, the Department of Energy has underestimated the potential deadly consequences if plutonium were to escape the Los Alamos National Laboratory. In the most serious case, if more than one kilogram of plutonium was to escape, the town of Los Alamos could become unlivable, and radioactive particles could spread across state lines. As many as 3,200 people could eventually get cancer with an estimated 1,000 deaths. Under certain circumstances, particles could travel as far north as Central Colorado and as far south as Southern New Mexico.
The draft PEIS fails to address the “no action“ option of not producing plutonium pits, thus dismissing it outright, presuming that production moving forward is a foregone conclusion. The rush to increase production at 80 pits per year by 2030 unnecessarily increases the risk to workers and sidelines necessary environmental cleanup at the sites that already have ongoing release of radioactive waste into the air, water, and soil from legacy activities on site. In addition, most reviews have concluded that this deadline is not realistic.
In addition, the proposed production will add fuel to the current ongoing arms race and proliferation disregarding the purported mission of the NNSA to “promote international nuclear safety and non-proliferation, and reduce global danger from weapons of mass destruction.” This will further erode confidence in the sincerity of the United States and its legal obligation under Article VI of the 1970 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, NPT, to work in good faith with other nations to abolish nuclear weapons.
Historically the only thing that can be guaranteed in this proposed increased plutonium pit production plan is that it will be significantly delayed and far over budget.
Imagine the international capital that could be gained by placing the entire plan on hold. Our national security would not be compromised. And there would be massive financial savings to be realized.
We must demand a more complete and transparent PEIS that addresses the entire environmental, economic, and health impacts to the communities directly at risk, as well as our entire nation and world. Absent that, we are not dealing with science, but rather opinion, conjecture, and fearmongering. Use your voice today by submitting your comments via email to PitPEIS@nnsa.doe.gov, being sure to reference Doc: DOE/EIS-0573.
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How to Make Sure People and the Planet Don’t Pay for the Data Center Buildout
Decision-makers must do their due diligence to prioritize the needs of a community before the needs of a data center.
Jul 24, 2025
Data centers—the places used to host servers and computers that are needed to process various IT tasks like AI queries—are booming. And the corporations that build them want a lot more land and a lot more power to make them run. These plans continue to grow in scale, and there are no signs of a slow-down.
So, how much energy will data centers need in the future? Nobody is 100% sure, but some experts estimate it could nearly triple in just 5 years, with data centers representing up to 12% of total U.S. electricity consumption in 2028, up from 4.4% in 2023.
Greed Is Fueling Short-Sighted Policies
U.S. President Donald Trump’s Department of Energy has put forth its own forecasts in a recently-published report on resource adequacy and grid reliance, which looked at multiple sources to arrive at a midpoint estimate of around 50 gigawatts (GW) of new load additions needed to meet data center energy demand. Unfortunately, the report uses flawed assumptions that greatly exaggerate projected load growth and retirements of existing fossil plants, while significantly underestimating plans to add new cleaner generation to address potential reliability concerns. This type of misleading, fossil-fuel-friendly narrative is not new for Donald Trump and his administration. This past Independence Day, he signed the reconciliation bill into law, followed by an executive order that promise devastating impacts for the future of clean and affordable energy.
Politics matter here because they set the rules of the game. Without regard for our climate or health at the highest levels of government, data center developers are happily jumping at the chance to meet the energy needs of their facilities with new gas, nuclear, or even proposing to bypass utilities altogether in order to quickly connect to the grid. Despite claims that fossil fuels are needed to keep the lights on, our analysis has shown that it’s actually renewables that support a more resilient grid.
Utilities play a role in this too, of course. In states like Wisconsin, where various data centers have been proposed, utilities are throwing new gas plants at the problem in a poorly planned attempt to keep up with energy demand predictions. They have failed to understand the paradigm shift that load growth from data centers represents, and are instead attempting to solve new problems with old tools.
So much of this reliance on methane gas hinges on corporations following through on their data center plans (which seems antithetical to maintaining commitments to reducing greenhouse gas emissions that many of these companies still hold). But who pays for all this gas infrastructure? And what other risks and costs can we expect if plans fall apart as quickly as they came together?
Ratepayers Bear the True Risk of Fossil Fuel-Powered Data Centers
Utilities are allowed to recover costs and rake in profit via customers’ bills when building new infrastructure like gas-fired generation facilities. This puts ratepayers on the line financially for utilities’ short-sighted decisions, which are often lacking in transparency.
A report from Harvard Law experts recently identified subtle ways in which the costs of data centers are shifted to ratepayers through mechanisms like special contracts, which are offered to big customers by utilities in the form of unique and negotiated rates, but which risk cost recovery shortfalls that all other ratepayers have to later subsidize via higher bills. In other words, utilities cut deals for data centers which increase everyone else’s bills.
Additionally, when data center growth triggers the need for investment in the transmission system, those costs may also get passed down to ratepayers unless state regulators intervene.
The problem isn’t just data centers—it’s what’s powering them, and that dirty power is costly in so many ways.
In short, there are a number of ways in which our current approach to regulating energy systems is not structured to protect ratepayers in the face of this fast-paced tech boom. Profit-driven policies that benefit the already rich, along with little to no transparency into the weedy details of who pays for what, make for a dense and unforgiving mountain of obstacles in the way of an equitable energy future.
But the problem isn’t just data centers—it’s what’s powering them, and that dirty power is costly in so many ways.
A Wisconsin utility got approval to build two gas-fired plants, priced at $1.2 billion and $280 million, which will be repaid through charges added to customers’ electricity bills for the lifetime of the plants. Beyond this upfront cost lies a set of costs that doesn’t often get factored in. RMI, a non-profit focusing on energy systems, argues that the increased reliance on fossil gas brings additional cost risks from bottlenecks in supply of both gas and equipment that are borne by consumers. If these plants turn out to be obsolescent (due to overestimates of load growth or cheaper wind and solar power, for example), the utility’s customers will still have to pay all the utility’s stranded costs.
In addition to this are environmental costs of data centers and the huge health impact costs that come as a result of gas plant pollution.
A massive construction price tag, the costly risks of stranded assets, and the health-related expenses associated with just this one example in Wisconsin should give us pause.
Make Data Centers Pay Their Fair Share
In many places we’re seeing the ways in which policy and regulation is attempting to keep up with ‘Big Data Center’ plans. There is wide recognition that the solutions must include ratepayer protections. Namely, implementing policies that direct large electricity users like data centers to pay for any incremental grid infrastructure and operating costs needed to meet their power demand.
Policymakers and regulators, as well as utilities themselves, have proposed plans to create unique electricity rate structures, or tariffs, for large users. What that means is a big electricity user such as a data center would be subject to rates, terms, and conditions that are more appropriate to how they use energy and their impact on the grid. Even when utilities do initiate a plan like this, stakeholder engagement is crucial to ensuring that protections for ratepayers are well thought out. Requests for contested cases at the regulatory level, such as this one from the Citizens Utility Board of Wisconsin (CUB), allow for a more transparent process that keeps utilities accountable to their customers.
In Oregon, the state legislature passed a bill called the POWER Act, which shifts the infrastructure and service costs associated with rapid load growth to large users. It also includes language requiring data centers to sign long-term payment contracts with their respective electric utilities in order to decrease the risk of data center project developers ducking out early, creating stranded assets, and forcing others to foot the bill of new investments that ultimately aren’t needed.
These democratic processes play an important role in achieving fair and just rules, especially when we remember that this rapid growth in large data centers is unprecedented, speculative, and that the uncertain future of this technology puts those responsible for planning around their energy needs in a complicated position. Utility costs have long been assigned to the customers that cause those costs, at least in theory.
Say ‘No’ to Dirty Data
This trend in planning for proactive rates and contracts for new data center demand is encouraging because it acknowledges that most energy customers are not massive corporations seeking to ride the next big tech breakthrough to profits. Utilities and regulators must also provide stakeholders with transparent information on data center energy and water usage so that ratepayer advocacy can be informed by the most accurate and up-to-date information.
And let’s not forget that at the crux of this conversation lies a critical issue that we previously discussed: the steep cost of using fossil fuels, like gas and coal, to power data centers. There are certain costs that most tariffs don’t cover, including damage to our health due to polluted air, continued overreliance on unreliable sources of energy, and a price too high to conceive at the expense of our planet and future generations.
Ratepayers should not bear the burden of hosting dirty gas plants that put their health at risk, nor should they be responsible for paying higher energy costs to meet data center demand.
In Michigan, stakeholder groups are petitioning for regulations (using the contested case mechanism that I mentioned earlier) that would direct utilities to give priority within data center interconnection requests to those with clean energy plans. Other recommendations from stakeholders include transparent reporting and guidelines for keeping these data centers accountable for their clean energy promises. For a more detailed explanation of these efforts in Michigan, check out this blog from my colleague, Lee Shaver.
Minnesota, meanwhile, passed a bill last month that resulted in mixed feelings for many. The legislature extended tax breaks to 2,042 for data centers in the state, which would benefit big developers and likely bring more projects to the state. However, the bill also revoked a tax exemption on electricity bills, making data centers more accountable for their energy use. Utilities will also be prevented from passing on these costs to their other customers or avoiding the state’s 100% clean electricity mandate. Not only that, but a new data center fee was introduced that would direct funding toward weatherization programs for low-income residents to make energy-efficient upgrades. The bill did fall short on robust commitments to issues like natural resource protections.
People-First Solutions
There doesn’t seem to be a singular right way through these challenges (see Elon Musk’s xAI project in Memphis for an example of the wrong way), but some guiding principles might help:
- Decision-makers must do their due diligence to prioritize the needs of a community before the needs of a data center. The benefits of economic growth should be distributed through equitable and just channels.
- Ratepayers should not bear the burden of hosting dirty gas plants that put their health at risk, nor should they be responsible for paying higher energy costs to meet data center demand.
- Utilities must prioritize the use of renewables, efficiency, energy storage, and other grid-supporting technologies to meet new demand, relying on viable and adaptable long-term planning rather than an arbitrary urgency that risks further overreliance on fossil fuels.
- Utility plans and data center information should be made accessible and transparent to the public, including any grid impacts resulting from data center energy demand.
The cost of doing business with dirty fossil fuels isn’t worth it. The fight to put people over profits always is.
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Why Did DOE Axe $3.7 Billion in Clean Energy Projects Days After a Global Climate Alert?
This is not simply a policy mistake. It’s a calculated abdication of leadership for a fleeting political win.
Jun 02, 2025
On Friday, the U.S. Department of Energy announced the cancellation of 24 clean energy and industrial decarbonization projects. The agency claimed this move would save taxpayers $3.6 billion. But the real cost—economic, environmental, and geopolitical—will be far greater.
The decision came just days after the World Meteorological Organization warned that the planet has a chance of breaching 2°C of warming within five years. Around the same time, Norway’s $1.8 trillion sovereign wealth fund—the largest in the world—projected that climate risk could erase 20% of its U.S. equity holdings. While other nations mobilize to confront escalating threats, the United States—the largest economy on Earth—is retreating. This is not simply a policy mistake. It’s a calculated abdication of leadership for a fleeting political win.
We’ve seen this pattern before. From “beautiful, clean coal” to climate denial in congressional hearings to billions in fossil fuel donations, the Republican Party has long treated climate action as a culture war wedge. Clean energy is no longer debated on the merits—it’s dismissed as “woke,” undermined not out of ideological consistency, but political convenience. Market-based climate solutions could align with core conservative values: competition, energy independence, national security. Instead, Congress continues to treat policy as performance—enabling headlines over outcomes, symbolism over strategy.
The consequences are immediate, and they are devastating.
We didn’t just cancel 24 projects. We canceled momentum. We canceled trust. We canceled a framework that had finally begun to reconnect federal capacity with local ambition.
Tens of thousands of potential jobs vanished overnight. The canceled projects spanned over a dozen states—from Alabama and Texas to California and Massachusetts. Cities like Birmingham, Baytown, Toledo, Zanesville, Modesto, and Holyoke had been preparing for long-overdue industrial upgrades: electrified glass furnaces, carbon-captured cement kilns, regional hydrogen hubs. These weren’t theoretical moonshots. They were shovel-ready projects with partners in place. Economic development agencies were mobilized. Union halls were staffing up. Community colleges had launched clean workforce programs. Then came the call: It’s over.
DOE’s rationale? These projects didn’t offer sufficient return on investment. But no cost-benefit analysis has been released. What we do know: The canceled projects would have reduced over 9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually—the equivalent of taking 2 million cars off the road. These weren’t speculative technologies. They targeted sectors like steel, cement, chemicals, and paper—industries where emissions can be reduced, but not without public investment.
This wasn’t just climate policy. These were air quality improvements in neighborhoods with decades of industrial pollution. These were middle-class jobs, modernized infrastructure, and new revenue streams for local governments. They signaled that decarbonization could drive renewal—not austerity. That message mattered, especially in regions where federal support has long felt abstract or nonexistent.
So why cancel them?
Because it made for good optics. Many of the projects were located in red or swing districts. Cutting them allowed Republicans to posture against “wasteful” spending and energize their base. It transformed serious infrastructure investments into political theater. And Congress went along—not out of principle, but out of paralysis.
DOE now says it will redirect resources to long-horizon technologies: fusion, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence. These are important pursuits. But they won’t cut emissions at a cement plant in 2028. They won’t lower energy costs at a food processing facility next year. And they won’t create jobs in Modesto or Toledo.
There’s nothing wrong with moonshots—unless they come at the expense of shovel-ready progress.
Because these projects weren’t paper proposals. Local governments had hired staff. Contractors were preparing bids. Manufacturers were retooling supply chains. Students had enrolled in new clean industry training programs. With no warning, that entire ecosystem has been upended.
That decision undermines more than climate credibility. It erodes trust in governance itself. How can communities build long-term economic development strategies if federal support can be revoked without explanation? Why would private investors stay at the table when the public sector walks away midstream?
Meanwhile, other nations are surging forward. The European Union is investing in clean steel and cement. Canada is building out low-carbon supply chains. Norway is doubling down on green industry. And China is scaling solar, electric vehicles, and hydrogen at unprecedented speed—cementing not only energy dominance but geopolitical power.
For an administration that brands itself “America First,” this is anything but. It is a strategic withdrawal—from economic competitiveness, global leadership, and the industrial future itself. We are ceding the next era of manufacturing—not just to allies, but to adversaries.
And none of this should be surprising. The Trump administration has been explicit about its intent: Strip climate out of agency missions, dismantle regulatory capacity, and discredit climate science. But the deeper failure lies in what Congress has allowed. The legislative branch is no longer functioning as a check on executive excess. It has become a bystander to the dismantling of public purpose.
We didn’t just cancel 24 projects. We canceled momentum. We canceled trust. We canceled a framework that had finally begun to reconnect federal capacity with local ambition. We walked away from thousands of jobs, millions of tons in emissions cuts, billions in co-investment—and a fragile sense of possibility.
And we did it for a press cycle. To placate donors. Fully aware of the consequences.
The cost won’t just be measured in carbon. It will be measured in time lost, in broken partnerships, in shuttered training programs and shelved contracts. And in the widening distance between the future we could build—and the one we keep choosing instead.
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Trump Cares More About Growing Fossil Fuel Profits Than Shrinking Your Energy Bill
Many things the Trump administration does are simply designed to waste energy, because that is good for the incumbent producers, i.e. Big Oil.
May 20, 2025
It would be tempting to dismiss U.S. President Donald Trump’s many functionaries as idiots, because many of them are. Here, for instance, is a transcript of leaked audio from a recent staff meeting led by acting Federal Emergency Management Agency director David Richardson, a man with no experience in disaster management (but who did write what the reliable Kate Aronoff described as a bad autobiographical novel with the inspired title War Story). Anyway, put yourself in the place of the FEMA staff hearing this highly relatable anecdote:
The other day I was chatting with my girlfriend, she's from Texas. She's got like huge red hair. Like, she's from Texas. And I said something and she said, well, you know, oh, I know what it was. I said, how come it takes so long to drive 10 hours from Galveston to Amarillo? And she said, well, you know, Texas is bigger than Spain. I didn't know that. So I looked at the map. Texas is huge! I mean, if you put it in the middle of Europe, it takes up most of Europe up. However, they do disaster recovery very, very well, and so does Florida, okay. So, we should be able to take some lessons learned on how Florida and Texas do their disaster recovery, we’ve got to spread that around and get other folks do it some way. And there should be some budgeting things that they have, I bet. I bet Gov. [Greg] Abbott has a rainy day fund for fires and tornadoes and disasters such as hurricanes, and he doesn't spend it on something else.
But if there’s endless idiocy at work (some of it as cover—if I was taking flak for my $400 million flying bribe I’d start tweeting about Taylor Swift and Bruce Springsteen too), there’s also a kind of underlying feral cunning. All the stupid stuff heads in the same direction.
For example, the administration announced earlier this month it would get rid of the Energy Star program, which rates various appliances by their efficiency so that consumers (and landlords and building owners) can make wise choices.
“The Energy Star program and all the other climate work, outside of what’s required by statute, is being de-prioritized and eliminated,” Paul Gunning, the director of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Office of Atmospheric Protection, told employees during the meeting, according to the recording obtained by The New York Times. Mr. Gunning’s office itself is also slated for elimination.
This is a program begun by Republicans—former EPA administrator William K. Reilly wrote a fond reminiscence yesterday for The Washington Post, who pointed out that if you were actually worried about, say, waste, then this would be the last program to cut:
The program costs $32 million in annual federal outlays to administer but has saved consumers $200 billion in utility bills since 1992—$14 billion in 2024 alone. The averted air pollution, which was the EPA’s initial objective, has been considerable, equivalent to the emissions of hundreds of thousands of cars removed from the road.
But what if you wanted to burn more fossil fuel? What if you wanted to stretch out the transition to cheap, clean renewable energy? Well then it would make a lot of sense.
Or take last week’s news, from EPA administrator Lee Zeldin, who vowed that he would eliminate the “start-stop” technology in cars because “everyone hates it.” This feature keeps your car from idling at stoplights—when you tap the accelerator the car turns back on. It’s not mandatory for carmakers, and drivers can turn it off with a button. But, as Fox News points out,
The feature can improve fuel economy by between 4% and 5%, previous EPA estimates showed. It also eliminated nearly 10 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year as of 2023.
Meanwhile, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, according to excellent reporting in Heatmap News Friday, is taking federal money designed to convert a steel plant to electricity and hydrogen and instead using it to convert the steel plant to… the fossil fuel it’s already using. The company, its CEO explained, is working with the Department of Energy (DOE) to “explore changes in scope to better align with the administration’s energy priorities,” and those priorities, of course, are to use more energy.
Occam’s Razor, I think, would lead us to say that many things the Trump administration does are simply designed to waste energy, because that is good for the incumbent producers, i.e. Big Oil. That’s not a particularly sophisticated rule for understanding their actions, but remember: Trump was bankrolled by the fossil fuel industry, and that industry has always wanted us to waste energy. Remember all that endless Trump nonsense about low-flow shower heads? They cut the use of hot water by about 40%. Ditto incandescent bulbs, which use 75-90% more energy, and which Trump is trying to bring back. It’s strange to be pro-waste, but there you are. This administration is garbage in every way.
That all of this costs consumers money is obvious—but we don’t really pretend to care about consumers any more. Remember: two dolls and five pencils apiece. No, the ultimate customer for the Trump administration is the oil industry. And really for the GOP as a whole: It became increasingly clear this week that the Republican congressional majority is all too willing to gut the Inflation Reduction Act, even though that will come at a big price to consumers, in its effort to help Big Oil.
And Big Oil is in trouble. Power demand in New England hit an all time low in late April, because so many homes now have solar panels on top. In, um, Saudi Arabia solar arrays are springing up left and right. Bloomberg’s David Fickling chronicles the “relentless” switch toward spending on clean energy, albeit too slowly to hit the most important climate targets. A new global poll of business executives found that 97% were eager to make the switch to renewable energy for their companies, on the grounds that
Electricity is the most efficient form of energy, and renewables-generated electricity a value-add to businesses and economies. In many countries, fossil fuels, with their exposure to imports and volatility to geopolitical shocks, are a liability. For business, this isn’t just inconvenient. It’s dangerous. Volatility drives up costs, turns strategic planning into guesswork, and delays investment.
That’s how sensible people with sensible goals—like making their businesses work, think. But it’s exactly the opposite of how our government now imagines its role. The DOE put their strategy pretty plainly in a filing to the Federal Register last week: Their goal, they said, was “bolstering American energy dominance by increasing exports and subsequently the reliance of foreign nations on American energy.” If you’re a foreign government, that about sums it up: Either you can rely on the sun and wind which shine on your country, or you can rely on the incredibly unreliable U.S. China, meanwhile, is essentially exporting energy security, in the form of clean energy tech.
So the goal for the rest of us, as we resist Trump and resist climate change, is pretty clear: Do everything we can to speed up this transition to clean energy, here and everywhere. Solar works, solar is cheap, and solar is liberating.
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How Louisiana Advocates Are Continuing to Fight the Trump-Backed LNG Boom
"We always have had to take matters into our own hands, and we have protected ourselves against enormous companies," one local campaigner said.
Apr 30, 2025
Louisiana advocates and their allies are not giving up in their fight to stop the liquefied natural gas buildout that threatens the health and well-being of Gulf Coast communities—not to mention the stability of the global climate—even as the Trump administration doubles down on its commitment to expanding LNG infrastructure.
In a briefing on Tuesday, community members, local advocates, and international campaigners shared how they would continue to push back against Venture Global, an LNG company that has amassed a record of ecosystem destruction and air pollution violations at its currently operating Calcasieu Pass export terminal in Cameron Parish, Louisiana. Despite this, the Trump administration's Department of Energy granted conditional approval for the company’s nearby Calcasieu Pass 2 (CP2), undoing the pause that the outgoing Biden administration had placed on it and other LNG approvals as it considered the public interest ramifications of LNG exports.
Yet Gulf Coast campaigners, who are used to dealing with a lax regulatory environment at the state level, were not defeated.
"Anybody who reports here in Louisiana regularly understands that we've never been protected by our regulatory environment. Never," Anne Rolfes, who directs the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, told reporters. "And so we always have had to take matters into our own hands, and we have protected ourselves against enormous companies."
Misadventure Global
One key strategy that the Louisiana Bucket Brigade and others have used to get around the regulatory rubber stamping of bad actors is to raise public awareness of how the companies turning coastal Louisiana into a sacrifice zone really operate.
Case in point is Venture Global. Rolfe and John Allaire—a 40-year veteran of the oil and gas industry who lives next door to the Calcasieu Pass terminal—laid out its short but extensive record of environmental violations and unethical business practices.
Even before the original Calcasieu Pass began exporting, in January 2022, it had to clear a space for tankers to access the facility.
"It's understood that this is a volatile fuel to lock into, that you don't want to rely on a fuel that Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump control."
"They pumped hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of black viscous sludge from their marine berth out into the front of the Gulf of Mexico," Allaire said. "And that was the first indication of what was to come with Venture Global."
Since it began operating, the company has added air, noise, and light pollution to the water pollution that has devastated local fisheries.
Allaire has taken hundreds of videos and photos of flaring incidents.
"The light pollution is unbelievable," he said. "At night, I can literally read a book when the flares are going, and I'm over a mile away from their flare stacks."
Allaire's observations are backed up by the official record. In June 2023, the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality sent Venture Global a compliance order detailing over 2,000 air permit violations from its first 10 months of operation, Allaire said. The company has yet to resolve the complaint, and the state sent them a warning letter in March covering their 2024 and 2025 rule-breaking.
The company also has a history of failing to report its flares and other excess emissions to the Department of Environmental Quality as required by the Clean Air Act.
If they reported and then investigated their violations, "that would enable them to really understand what's happening at their facility so that they could prevent future problems," Rolfe said. "They absolutely aren't doing that."
In March, the Louisiana Bucket Brigade and the Habitat Recovery Project notified Venture Global of intent to sue the company over Clean Air Act violations at its Calcasieu Pass facility.
But the environmental groups aren't the only ones suing Venture Global. The company stretched its commissioning phase—during which it is considered still in the process of establishing itself and can sell its products to the highest bidder rather than honoring its contracts—for three years and three months, beginning normal operations just this April.
"This is absolutely off from the industry norm," Rolfe said.
Now, other major fossil fuel companies, including Shell and BP, are pursuing arbitration claims against Venture Global for breach of contract. Investors have joined a class-action lawsuit against it, saying it violated federal securities law by misrepresenting its prospects.
Yet Venture Global has huge ambitions for the region. In addition to Calcasieu Pass and CP2, it wants to build three other export terminals in coastal Louisiana and more than triple its capacity from 30 million tons per annum (MTPA) of liquid gas—already over a quarter of the 88 MTPA exported by the U.S. exports in 2024—to 104 MTPA.
"As a review, they're flouting the Clean Air Act. They've manipulated the commissioning phase. They're being sued by everybody they've done business with. Is this a company that our country and our state should put such faith in?" Rolfe asked.
She answered her own question: "Of course, our answer is no."
Stall Tactics
Another strategy the Louisiana Bucket Brigade and their allies seek to employ is to delay Venture Global's ambitions long enough for the economic reality of the LNG boom to catch up with it.
In addition to the approval of CP2, Australian company Woodside announced on Monday that it had approved a Louisiana LNG project worth $17.5 billion. Yet the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis concluded in April that the massive growth in LNG capacity would exceed dwindling demand within two years.
"It's understood that this is a volatile fuel to lock into, that you don't want to rely on a fuel that Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump control. So people are trying to get off of gas," Rolfe said.
"The economics are going to catch up with them. I just want it to be before they destroy the coast of Louisiana."
This means that LNG companies like Woodside and Venture Global are behaving "like a kid in a candy store," Rolfe continued. "That kid, unchecked, will eat so much, they'll throw up. I think the same is true with this industry. Unchecked, it will do itself harm."
The key is therefore to stall the buildout long enough that many projects become infeasible. This tactic has worked for frontline communities during the first Trump administration, Rolfe said. Through a combination of public pressure, records requests, and legal action, community advocates were able to delay the construction of a plastic plant proposed by the Chinese company Wanhua Chemical U.S. Operation, LLC, which would have released the World War 1-era nerve gas phosgene into the already pollution-burdened St. James Parish.
The economic outlook for the plant had always been "dubious" Rolfe said, and eventually the company gave up on trying to build it.
"They could have gotten approval and gotten on their way within a month. But our suit and then our constant presence and making them table things and so forth, drew it out and let the economics catch up with them," Rolfe said.
Rolfe added that the gas industry has similarly gotten ahead of itself.
"They're greedy, right? They want to grab all the candy they can, and the economics are going to catch up with them. I just want it to be before they destroy the coast of Louisiana."
Very Risk Business
Another strategy to slow down the building of new LNG facilities like CP2 is to target the one thing, in addition to permits and funds, that they can't move forward without: insurance.
Insurance is one sector in which the economic impact of the climate crisis is already being felt, as Ethan Nuss, senior energy finance campaigner at Rainforest Action Network, explained.
For example, major insurer Chubb earns $1.5 billion a year in premiums from the fossil fuel industry, which was already canceled out early this year with the $1.5 billion in pre-tax losses they took from the Los Angeles wildfires. On a local level, some insurers have pulled out of Louisiana all together to avoid insuring against climate-fueled extreme weather events.
"Once they are really educated about the permit violations and the legal risks and the true risk landscape that they're facing by taking on this client, many of them are very concerned."
"This is not a time to build something like CP2 that would deepen the climate crisis," Nuss said.
Because insurers are on the books for both fossil fuel projects and the damage for climate disasters, and because many of them have climate and human rights policies, they are vulnerable to growing pressure from the climate movement to drop the oil and gas clients costing them so much money.
RAN in February published the names of the major insurers for Venture Global's Calcasieu Pass, which it obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request. These included Chubb subsidiary ACE American Insurance Company, AIG subsidiary National Union Fire Insurance Co., Allianz, Swiss Re, AXA, and Tokio Marine subsidiary Houston Casualty Company.
"That has kicked off a global effort to reach out to those insurers and begin to educate them about what is happening in Southwest Louisiana, the impacts from Calcasieu Pass, and what associated risks they're facing," Nuss said.
As a result of these efforts, Swiss Re has agreed to meet with the fishing community of Southwest Louisiana, to talk about the "devastating impacts on their livelihoods" from Calcasieu Pass' operations.
"Often with these global financial institutions, they aren't fully aware of what's really happening on the ground. That client is maybe just another line on the spreadsheet. But once they really start hearing the stories, once they are really educated about the permit violations and the legal risks and the true risk landscape that they're facing by taking on this client, many of them are very concerned," Nuss said.
Nuss hopes that, once fully informed, insurers would decide any project of Venture Global's is a "very risky business that they don't want to be involved in."
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Gas Export Terminals Are Making Texas and Louisiana Sick: We Must Stop It
Now is the time to make our voices heard before the haze, smog, and soot choke the sky for good and while there is still time remaining for the Biden administration to reject the many LNG export applications in the queue.
Jan 18, 2025
No one likes bad air days. Days when the air smells wrong; the sky is choked with haze, smog, soot; and the weather report has to invent new shades of purple to warn us to stay inside. But what people might not know is that bad air is literally killing us and making us less healthy.
And the build out of liquefied “natural” gas (LNG) export terminals along the Texas and Louisiana coast is making it worse.
A large percentage of U.S. “natural” gas production, which is just fracked methane gas, isn’t used here at home, but now gets shipped directly overseas. The terminals where this gas is turned into a liquid and loaded onto massive tankers emit all sorts of harmful air pollution. These facilities have a permit to pollute, but a recent report shows that just because the government signs off on something doesn’t mean it won’t kill you.
Maybe the most frustrating part of this whole story is that Texas and Louisiana taxpayers are footing the bill for all this suffering.
Seven of the currently operating LNG export terminals are estimated to cause 60 premature deaths every year due to flaring and other emissions. And there are many, many more such terminals in the planning stages looking to become operational within the decade, potentially upping that number to almost 150 premature deaths per year. The “soot” and “smog” that form from the resulting particulate matter and ozone also cause a range of other health problems, including asthma, and lead to people having to miss school and work, and cost us health impacts worth billions of dollars.
These LNG terminals plan to operate for decades to come, and if you add up the health impacts over time it amounts to over 4,000 deaths by 2050. The coastal communities that live in the shadow of these massive facilities face the highest per capita health impacts, but particulate matter and ozone don’t stay confined near their source. They are regional pollutants that can travel hundreds of miles and still cause harm.
As we speak, Harris County, Texas, home to Houston; and Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana are estimated to suffer the most deaths due to LNG terminal air pollution. Dallas County is No. 3, even though it is 250 miles from the nearest LNG terminal.
This report only looks at LNG terminals, but the dirty secret is that many places in Texas and Louisiana are already over-polluted. Oil refineries, petrochemical plants, coal plants, and more are already contributing to air pollution and health harms in the region. This frenzy to export methane gas is only pouring new pollution on top of old.
In Southwest Louisiana, decades of toxic emissions from refineries and petrochemical plants have polluted the air and contaminated the upper Calcasieu River, leading to a seafood advisory, limiting the amount of fish locals can eat. LNG export facilities have expanded this industrial air pollution to communities that had never faced these issues before. Now, residents frequently hear warning alarms and witness massive flares spewing black smoke into the sky. Many in the community report symptoms such as frequent headaches and worsening respiratory problems, clear signs of the harmful impact this pollution is having on their health.
For generations, fishermen in Cameron Parish, Louisiana have depended on the bounty of the estuaries and wetlands, providing for their families and communities. These waters were once an integral part of the local culture and economy, passed down from father to son. After rebuilding through storm after storm, these same families now face a new challenge—being displaced by a multi-billion-dollar industry that not only pollutes their environment but jeopardizes their ability to sustain themselves from it. The risks that coastal communities face like coastal erosion and extreme weather are worsened by the climate crisis, which the LNG industry ironically helps fuel.
Maybe the most frustrating part of this whole story is that Texas and Louisiana taxpayers are footing the bill for all this suffering. Another report from late last year showed how several of these LNG companies have received tax handouts in the billions of dollars, taking money away from needed resources like health and safety services. All this on the promise of good paying jobs to local folks that never materialize. And what’s more, every tanker of LNG that gets shipped overseas raises energy prices here at home.
Talk about a raw deal.
But after nearly a decade of rubber stamping these terminals, the federal government just took a closer look.The U.S. Department of Energy, who authorizes LNG for export, just updated its studies used to determine whether LNG exports actually serve the public interest. The studies conclude that LNG exports raise energy prices, inflame climate change, sabotage the clean energy transition, and cause harm to our local communities.
The incoming presidential administration may try to ignore the evidence. To expect them to choose what’s right for Texas and Louisiana—let’s just say, unfortunately, we won’t be holding our breath.
Now is the time to make our voices heard before the haze, smog, and soot choke the sky for good and while there are still a few days remaining that the Biden administration can reject the many LNG export applications in the queue. We all need to act now to protect the air in Louisiana and Texas, and everyone from the worst of the climate crisis.
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Jimmy Carter: The First Neoliberal Democrat and the Last Boy Scout
The most meaningful measure we can make of Jimmy Carter is whether we would prefer an imperfect, yet noble man like him at the helm of the country, today. I would.
Jan 08, 2025
Virtually everybody with an opinion judges Jimmy Carter to have been a decent man. He was certainly as good an ex-president as we’ve ever had. But what about his legacy as a then-president? That assessment is murkier.
A common refrain holds that Carter was a good man but a weak president, that he was not wise to the ways of Washington, that he was naïve in his belief that pure motives could win over champions of impure schemes.
It is impossible to fairly weigh Carter’s success or failure without understanding the context in which he served. That context was some of the greatest institutional tumult the U.S. has ever seen.
First, was Vietnam. The U.S. had just limped, still bleeding, out of the Vietnam War. It was the first war America had ever lost. The trauma of that loss (to say nothing of the trauma of having tried to prevent it) cannot be overstated.
Carter was the first elected president to have to deal with the shock, the disbelief, the grief, the shame, and the anger from the loss. There wasn’t a person in America who knew how to deal with that rat’s nest of conflicting, disorienting emotions and make the country whole again.
After Vietnam (and, especially, immediately after) the U.S. was not the swaggering hegemon it had been for the 30 years since 1945. But what could it be? That Delphic divination was only the first of Carter’s monumental challenges. There was equal upheaval, economically.
In 1971, Richard Nixon had removed the dollar’s coupling to gold. That left Arab oil sheikdoms receiving paper for their once-ever patrimony. They responded by tripling the price of oil, sending both inflationary and recessionary shocks through the world’s economy.
Theory held that stagnation and inflation couldn’t exist at the same time. But there it was: stagflation. The remedy for stagnation was to lower interest rates and increase the money supply. The remedy for inflation was to raise interest rates and reduce the money supply.
Clearly, you couldn’t do both at the same time. The Keynesian framework for managing the economy, operative since the Great Depression, no longer worked. So, in 1979, Carter hired Paul Volcker to try to fix it.
Volcker jacked up interest rates to record levels, inducing an immediate recession. It was the right thing to do, but it killed Carter’s chances in the 1980 election, as he knew it would. It gave Ronald Reagan his now-famous question: “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?”
Finally, on top of the ferocious ferment roiling international and economic affairs, there was Watergate. Richard Nixon was caught trying to break into the offices of whistleblower Daniel Elsberg’s psychiatrist and also the Democratic National Committee headquarters. The crime seems petty today, especially compared to launching a mob on the Capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power, but it was monumental, then.
Probably no event in modern history had so shattered the public’s faith in the integrity of its national institutions and actors. Nixon resigned in disgrace. All political acts—and all political actors—were suddenly suspected of being nefarious and self-dealing.
Carter was both, but he was also neither. That is, yes, he was a politician, carrying out political acts. But he was neither nefarious nor self-dealing. He was as honest and selfless a politician as we’ve ever known. But, that was the tar with which all politics, and politicians, were smeared by Nixon’s sordid bequest.
Simply put, the intellectual and institutional moorings that had anchored the country for the prior 40 years—from the New Deal consensus to the post-World War II international order—were coming unglued. That was the tectonically-shifting world that Carter inherited. Nobody had ever dealt with anything like it.
So, how did he do? In truth, he did pretty well. First, the negatives.
In 1979, Iranian revolutionaries overthrew their government and took 66 Americans hostage. They held them for 444 days, dealing a severe humiliation to the U.S. That was probably Carter’s greatest public defeat.
But the underlying grievance had started in 1953, when the U.S. overthrew the democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, and installed the brutal Shah Reza Pahlavi, a reliable U.S. sycophant but a ruthless enemy of his own people. The boil of that festering resentment popped in 1979, on Carter’s watch.
Also, the Reagan campaign had cut a back-door deal with the revolutionaries to not release the hostages until after the election, thereby depriving Carter of a win in the matter. It was one of the most perfidious deeds ever to degrade American politics. Most people didn’t know that then, and don’t know it, still, today, so mistakenly blame Carter for the entire ordeal.
Later in 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Carter had provoked the invasion. Six months before, he had begun supplying arms to the opponents of the Soviet-leaning Afghan government. The Soviets invaded to prop up their ally which was under attack by U.S.-supported terrorists, including the later-to-become-infamous Osama bin Laden.
Ironically, Afghanistan proved to be the Soviet Union’s Vietnam, draining it of treasure, manpower, and willpower. It is widely regarded to have been the single greatest cause of the Soviet collapse, in 1991. Carter’s critics who condemn his actions at the time always seem to forget that they eventuated in the defeat of the U.S.’ greatest adversary of the twentieth century.
Carter’s solutions to economic woes leaned conservative, or even further. It was he who began the Neoliberal regime we often associate with Ronald Reagan.
He deregulated the airline, trucking, and railroad industries. He reduced spending on welfare much more than either Nixon or Reagan ever did. Fearing inflation, he fought the United Mine Workers in their 1978 national coal strike, alienating one of his—and the Democratic party’s—most important bases.
But what of the good things that Carter delivered?
For all of the upheaval, he actually delivered better economic performance than did Ronald Reagan. That meant faster GDP growth and higher levels of business investment. He delivered the last balance of payments surplus the country has ever known. And he did this without the budget busting deficits that followed him.
When Carter left office, in January, 1981, the national debt—the cumulation of all federal borrowing over 204 years—stood at just under $1 trillion. Reagan tripled that debt in only eight years, an ominous portent of things to come. It is $36 trillion, today.
Carter placed more women and minorities in the federal judiciary—40 and 87, respectively—than all of his predecessors, combined. Ruth Bader Ginsburg attributed her decision to become a judge to Carter’s initiative. He literally actualized the centuries-long-delayed intent embodied in the Civil Rights revolution of the 1960s.
Carter established the Department of Energy, an essential move, given the way the country and the world were being whipsawed by Arab oil producers. It has been a huge contributor to the U.S.’ being one of the world’s top energy producers still, today.
He started the Department of Education. An educated work force is probably the most valuable social asset a society can produce. But before Carter, it was left to the scattered machinations of 50 different state bureaucracies, a guarantee for national failure.
Carter engineered the Camp David Accords, bringing Israel and Egypt together to bury at least part of the hostility that has afflicted the Middle East since Israel’s founding in 1948. He proved prescient on the Israelis, predicting that they would not honor their promises to cede greater autonomy to the Palestinians.
Finally, Carter introduced Human Rights into U.S. foreign policy considerations. Even if done badly, it signaled an aspiration for what the U.S. stood for in its desire to be “the leader of the free world.”
The sum of this amounts to as adroit (though not flawless) an adaptation to the challenges of the time as could be conceived.
Besides considering the context and weighing the balance on Carter, there is one more lens through which we can, and should, judge him. That is, “Who would you rather have at the helm, today, steering the country through waters that are at least as perilous as those Carter faced?”
The U.S. is going through similar—or even greater—dislocations, today, as it was in Carter’s time. Its status in the world is plummeting as it has done everything it possibly could to bolster Israel’s heinous genocide of the Palestinians, and as China has blown by it in manufacturing, commerce, and in many areas of technology.
It has suffered withering military defeats, in Iraq, Afghanistan, and, now, Ukraine. The majority of the world’s nations—led by Russia and China—are aligning against it as a Global South. Its economy, too, is much worse today than it was in Carter’s time.
In 1980, the U.S. had not begun hollowing out its economy with 40 years of de-industrialization. It had not begun the psychotic debt binge it has taken, borrowing $35 trillion dollars to try to mask the rot and keep the lights on. It was not hazarding the onset of actuarial bankruptcy, as it is, today.
These are not the signifiers of a healthy global leader. They are the signs of a wounded, faltering behemoth struggling to find a way to regain its once-heralded, even respected, primacy.
So, where does all of this leave us with Jimmy Carter?
Everybody agrees that Carter was an honest, decent, dignified, intelligent, hard-working, selfless public servant who never used his office for personal gain. It’s the things he wasn’t, though, that makes the things he was stand out in such dazzling, admirable, relief.
He wasn’t a pathological liar. He wasn’t a serial sexual abuser. He didn’t consort with porn stars and Playboy bunnies. In fact, he was married to the same woman for 77 years. His daddy didn’t leave him $413 million, so he wasn’t a phony put-up as a self-made man. He wasn’t a five-time draft dodger. He was a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis and served seven honorable years in active duty.
He wasn’t a tax cheat or a convicted felon—probably didn’t even have traffic tickets, he was such a Boy Scout. He didn’t use his office to boost his own personal wealth. He didn’t sell access to billionaires. He didn’t foment racial hatred for electoral gain. He wasn’t a bully. He didn’t threaten to send journalists and political foes to jail, in order to silence them. He didn’t steal state secrets on his way out of the presidency. And he certainly never tried to overthrow the government to keep himself in power.
It’s amazing how far our putative standards have fallen, and how we can so readily, fatuously, condemn a good man who, facing the greatest task of many decades, gave our country his very best, and, in fact, healed so many of the wounds of distrust and division that he and we had inherited.
Smug, supercilious condescension about Jimmy Carter is precisely the sign of our own inadequacy to judge him. We insist of him, even in his death, that he be some kind of incongruous super-human avatar: both chaste and worldly-wise; honest and wily; simple, but savvy; idealistic, yet pragmatic; compassionate, yet ruthless.
Would that we could apply such standards in our own time, to wildly, egregiously inferior human beings, repulsive, amoral self-dealers, setting out to loot the country for their own vanity and personal gain, again.
The most meaningful measure we can make of Jimmy Carter is whether we would prefer an imperfect, yet noble man like him at the helm of the country, today. I would. You? There you go.
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Biden Admin Confirms Dangers of LNG Exports But Won't Act to Block Them
"This study mirrors the Biden administration's entire four-year approach to advancing a clean energy future: weak and half-hearted," one advocate said.
Dec 17, 2024
Approving more liquefied natural gas exports would raise domestic energy prices, increase the pollution burden placed on local communities, and exacerbate the climate crisis, the Biden administration concluded in a long-awaited report released Tuesday.
However, the Department of Energy (DOE) stopped short of denying any pending or future approvals, passing the buck to the administration of President-elect Donald Trump, who has vocally supported the LNG boom.
"This study mirrors the Biden administration's entire four-year approach to advancing a clean energy future: weak and half-hearted," Food & Water Watch policy director Jim Walsh said in a statement. "Liquid natural gas exports systematically poison the most vulnerable frontline communities, pollute our air and water, and drive up domestic energy prices. We cannot continue to be victimized by the profit-driven agenda of fossil fuel corporations. President Biden must listen to the warnings of his own government by banning further LNG exports and rejecting pending LNG permits before he leaves office."
"DOE's long-awaited environmental and economic analyses demonstrate what environmental justice and frontline communities have been saying for years—liquefied natural gas export facilities are not in the public interest."
U.S. LNG exports have tripled in the last five years, making the country the leading gas exporter in the world. At the same time, the latest climate research has shown that—due to methane leaks across the LNG life cycle—the so-called "bridge fuel" is in fact worse for the climate than coal.
Following pressure from climate and environmental justice advocates, the Biden administration in January announced a pause on approving LNG exports to non-Free Trade Agreement countries while the DOE updated the studies it uses to determine whether or not gas exports are in the public interest, as Congress has authorized it to do under the Natural Gas Act.
Those updated studies were released Tuesday, along with a statement from Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm. Climate, consumer, and frontline advocates welcomed the findings themselves, which they said were largely consistent with their warnings and experience.
"DOE's long-awaited environmental and economic analyses demonstrate what environmental justice and frontline communities have been saying for years—liquefied natural gas export facilities are not in the public interest," Leslie Fields, the chief federal officer at WE ACT for Environmental Justice, said in a statement. "Not only do these projects compound public health and safety harms to communities, especially in the Gulf and for communities of color, but they also exacerbate the climate crisis and raise energy prices here at home."
Jamie Henn, the director of Fossil Free Media, said on social media that Granholm's statement was "even stronger than I expected."
In it, Granholm emphasized five key findings from the updated studies:
- LNG exports are booming, with the quantities already approved being sufficient to meet global demand for decades in 4 out of 5 scenarios.
- Increasing exports would boost the profits of export facility owners and generate jobs in the industry, but would raise gas prices for domestic industry and consumers overall. Within the U.S., "unfettered exports" would raise prices by more than 30% and add "well over" $100 to the average yearly household energy bill by 2050.
- LNG export facilities are concentrated in communities already exposed to fossil fuel industry pollution, with methane, volatile organic compounds, particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, and other contaminates raising mortality rates.
- Increased LNG exports would contribute to the climate crisis: They are more likely to supplant renewables than coal and add to global emissions in every scenario the DOE examined.
- Regulators should consider where LNG exports will be shipped. Demand in Europe is falling, while China is currently the leading importer and projected to remain so through 2050.
"Today's study makes clear that all pending export applications must be denied as being inconsistent with the public interest, and should result in a reassessment of existing exports to determine compatibility with the public interest," Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen's Energy Program, said in a statement. "Using LNG exports to provide energy abundance for China at the expense of higher utility bills for working Americans is not in the public interest."
Granholm stated clearly that "the effect of increased energy prices for domestic consumers combined with the negative impacts to local communities and the climate will continue to grow as exports increase."
Yet she also said the Biden administration would not act on the findings of the updated studies due to the timing of their release: The report's publication now triggers a 60-day comment period, and the inauguration is only a little more than a month away.
"Given that the comment period for the study will continue into the next administration—and that there are a limited number of applications that are concurrently ready for the DOE 'public interest' review—decisions about the future of LNG export levels will necessarily be made by future administrations," she said. "Our hope is that we can now assess the future of natural gas exports based on the facts and ensure authorizations are reviewed in a manner that truly advances the public interest of all the American people."
While the purpose of the DOE's updated studies had never been to deny or approve exports—rather to inform those decisions—advocates have been pushing the Biden administration to act on its findings. In particular, frontline Gulf groups are concerned about Calcasieu Pass 2 and Commonwealth LNG, two pending export facilities that are currently subject to supplemental environmental impact statements by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission due to concerns about their local impacts.
"We were hoping that this study would be released and with this study would come the denial of permits for these projects," frontline leader Roishetta Ozane of the Vessel Project of Louisiana said in a press briefing.
"It'll be hard for the Trump administration to completely ignore the finding that exports drive up costs for consumers. That's political dynamite."
Several groups responded to the study with renewed calls for permit denials.
"This study confirms that Donald Trump's plans to supercharge LNG exports will come at the expense of consumers and the climate," said Friends of the Earth senior energy campaigner Raena Garcia. "We cannot afford to prop up an industry that continues to threaten our people and the planet for profit. Over the next few weeks, it is not too late for the Biden administration to curb the deadly LNG export boom."
Walsh of Food & Water Watch said: "Secretary Granholm's admission that continuing LNG exports will drive up costs and harm vulnerable communities is a sad reflection on what we have been saying for the last decade. It is time for this administration to start matching its rhetoric with action, and reject new LNG exports while it still can."
But Henn told Common Dreams that this might be a losing battle.
"The administration has indicated it wants to follow the regular process and not jump ahead and deny permits before they leave office, only to have Trump reapprove them," Henn said. "We disagree and think denials would send a strong political signal and potentially strengthen legal challenges. It's unlikely we'll sway them with so little time left, but we're going to try."
Still, campaigners emphasized that the DOE's findings will strengthen the case of any community or group opposing LNG exports going forward.
"This report will serve as a tool for us in fighting against these projects," Ozane said.
This remains the case despite the Trump administration's pro-fossil fuel stance and history of running roughshod over rules and regulations.
"Trump will of course try and ignore the study, but it gives us new political, legal, and diplomatic arguments," Henn told Common Dreams. "Politically, it'll be hard for the Trump administration to completely ignore the finding that exports drive up costs for consumers. That's political dynamite. Legally, if Trump just ignores the findings of this report and rushes approval, that opens the door for challenges."
Natural Resources Defense Council senior attorney Gillian Giannetti pointed out in a press briefing that "because these studies are in the public record, the failure to properly consider them and their relevance would be unlawful under the Administrative Procedure Act."
Slocum of Public Citizen said that groups like his have legal intervention status and can ask a court to review any Trump decision.
"Any court is going to want to know—what does the administrative record say?" he noted. "And this report greatly strengthens the case that requested LNG exports are not consistent with the public interest. So a court can toss out a Trump admin approval."
"These studies show clearly that LNG exports are in gas executives' best interest and nobody else's."
Henn added that the findings could slow the LNG buildout both diplomatically and economically.
"Diplomatically, the climate data in this report makes it less likely that our allies, all of whom have signed the Paris agreement, will be as interested in importing dirty U.S. gas," he told Common Dreams.
"Finally," he concluded, "this report will cause tremors on Wall Street. This report and Secretary Granholm's strongly worded letter indicate that future Democratic administrations won't likely support new export facilities. Since these are long-term investment decisions, that uncertainty will slow down financing for new projects."
The report also undermines Trump's economic argument that more fossil fuel production is better for everyone, revealing it instead for another giveaway to the wealthy.
"Despite claims from the incoming Trump administration that it wants to lower prices, the truth is they are putting billionaire fossil fuel donors ahead of everyday Americans," Greenpeace USA deputy climate program director John Noël said in a statement. "The record is crystal clear: Increasing LNG exports will drive up costs for domestic businesses and consumers. Full stop. Any further investment in LNG will only exacerbate the cost-of-living crisis, while enriching gas industry CEOs who don't have to experience the fallout of living near an export terminal."
Lauren Parker, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity's Climate Law Institute, agreed, saying, "These studies show clearly that LNG exports are in gas executives' best interest and nobody else's."
Parker concluded, "If Trump wants to drive up dangerous gas exports, he's going to have to answer for causing more deadly storms, condemning the Rice's whale to extinction, and socking consumers with higher costs."
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The DOE Finally Admits That LNG Isn’t a Get-Out-of-Climate-Crisis Free Card
A new report and statement won’t necessarily bind anything, but they do something almost as important: Finally a Democratic administration has been straightforward and honest about natural gas.
Dec 17, 2024
Late Monday afternoon Politico, and then The New York Times, reported that the Department of Energy is ready to release the report of it’s nearly year-long study on LNG exports—a study mandated by a large-scale campaign (that very much included this newsletter) which persuaded U.S. President Joe Biden to halt new permits for new terminals along the Gulf of Mexico.
The report, and the equally important statement that came with it, won’t necessarily bind anything—it may complicate somewhat the Trump administration’s plans to approve new export terminals, but probably not fatally. But it does something almost as important. Finally a Democratic administration has been straightforward and honest about natural gas. That may actually matter, both in the short and long-term.
The continued growth of gas exports was “neither sustainable nor advisable,” Granholm said.
The background here is that, ever since the onset of fracking in the ‘oughts, Democrats have embraced the surge in natural gas. The GOP was still in love with coal, but climate change concerns were making that uncomfortable for anyone this side of Joe Manchin (D-Flammable Black Rocks). Along came the sudden surge in natural gas, which allowed the Obama administration both a path toward reviving the post-financial-crisis economy, and a way to cut carbon emissions. If you doubt me, read almost any of former President Barack Obama’s State of the Union addresses, which each contain a paragraph-long paean to the fracking boom.
In 2013, for instance, he enthused:
We produce more natural gas than ever before—and nearly everyone’s energy bill is lower because of it. And over the last four years, our emissions of the dangerous carbon pollution that threatens our planet have actually fallen…
The natural gas boom has led to cleaner power and greater energy independence. We need to encourage that. And that’s why my administration will keep cutting red tape and speeding up new oil and gas permits.
The shift from coal to gas-fired power plants, which was basically the sum of Obama’s climate policy, dropped carbon emissions, something he (and the fossil fuel industry) boasted about endlessly. But the problem was physics: As Cornell professor Bob Howarth started noisily pointing out, carbon dioxide isn’t the only greenhouse gas. CH4, or methane, traps heat even more effectively, and Howarth and others insisted it was escaping into the atmosphere from fracking fields and pipelines in large enough quantity to cancel out the progress on carbon.
They won the scientific battle—study after study has now demonstrated that indeed leak rates are very high. But the political struggle was much harder: No one wanted to give up the idea that there was a pain-free way out of the climate dilemma.
There was so much natural gas in the Permian Basin that America couldn’t soak it up, and in the Trump years we started to export it—that quickly grew to the point where America was the largest source of gas in the world. Both the Biden and Trump administrations approved one export terminal after another, over the outcry of local residents along the Louisiana and Texas coasts who had to deal with these monstrosities. It finally reached the point where environmentalists had to make a stand, and that’s what happened in the fall of 2023—after another Howarth study, this one demonstrating that so much methane leaked from the giant LNG carriers that it was worse than exporting coal.
Hence the pause, and hence the angry outcry from the oil industry (which worked harder than ever to elect a Republican in November), and hence today’s report. The language is truly strong: Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, in her letter that accompanies the report, stresses that it would be bad news for American consumers who still depend on gas (supply and demand being what it is). But the more important part is what she says about natural gas and climate. According to the Times, she says that any few facilities should face “rigorous question”
“especially in a world that needs to quickly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” Under a scenario in which more than the current level of gas exports was approved, the report finds that the additional emissions would be 1.5 gigatons per year by 2050. That’s about a quarter of annual emissions generated by the United States, the world’s second-biggest polluter.
The fossil fuel industry always insists that LNG exports will replace coal, but crucially Granholm and the report made clear that’s not true.
She noted that the study found increased LNG exports would displace more wind, solar, and other renewable energy than coal. The study modeled five scenarios, and in every one, global greenhouse gases were projected to rise, even when researchers assumed aggressive use of technologies to capture and store carbon emissions.
This, in turn, sends a signal to Malaysia and Vietnam and the other Asian countries that would be the main recipients of gas from new terminals. I am guardedly hopeful that the year’s delay—which allowed solar and windpower to drop in price and gain in momentum—may be enough to convince those nations that they don’t want to sign up for 40 years of dependency on imported gas. I sure hope so, in part because of the heroes that led this fight—people like Roishetta Ozane who are defending not just the whole planet but their particular part of it.
The continued growth of gas exports was “neither sustainable nor advisable,” Granholm said. That’s the closest that prominent American politicians have come to telling the truth about the most important component of the climate crisis. If Vice President Kamala Harris had won the election, this might have meant a real sea change. In our current reality it’s at least honest, and honesty is a lot better than its opposite.
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Nearly 300 Green Groups Urge Biden to Block LNG Expansion Ahead of Trump
"As we prepare to resist Donald Trump and his promises to unleash U.S. LNG on the world, you must use the remaining days of your presidency to lock in as much climate progress as possible," the groups wrote.
Nov 21, 2024
As the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan draws to a close and the second presidency of Donald Trump approaches, nearly 300 organizations from almost 40 countries are calling on the Biden administration to do everything in its power to stop the buildout of liquefied natural gas infrastructure.
The 282 groups, which included the Sunrise Movement, Oil Change International, the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, the Center for Biological Diversity, and several branches of 350.org and Friends of the Earth, sent a letter to U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday outlining several steps he and his administration could take to use "the time it has left" to scupper the LNG expansion ahead of Trump's second term.
"As we prepare to resist Donald Trump and his promises to unleash U.S. LNG on the world, you must use the remaining days of your presidency to lock in as much climate progress as possible," they wrote.
"Now is the time to safeguard communities and the climate against the threat of growing LNG exports, which the administration can do by putting a stop any more risky buildouts from Big Oil."
In particular, the letter writers outlined four main actions Biden could take:
- Finalize an ongoing review of the studies that the Department of Energy (DOE) will use to determine whether or not LNG exports are in the public interest, using the latest information on the climate risks of LNG as well as the harms it poses to frontline communities and U.S. consumers;
- Order the DOE to reject all six permits for new LNG facilities awaiting approval, including Venture Global's "carbon bomb" Calcasieu Pass 2, which is vocally opposed by local Louisiana communities;
- Reach an agreement with Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries to end export credit agencies' backing of fossil fuels abroad; and
- Cancel all U.S. government funding of foreign LNG infrastructure and revoke the more than $5 billion earmarked by the from the U.S. Export-Import Bank and U.S. International Development Finance Corporation for an LNG project in Mozambique.
"The Biden administration has mere weeks to protect the planet from the threat of more LNG infrastructure, and the growing LNG boom under his watch is something we cannot afford," Raena Garcia, senior energy campaigner at Friends of the Earth U.S., said in a statement. "Now is the time to safeguard communities and the climate against the threat of growing LNG exports, which the administration can do by putting a stop any more risky buildouts from Big Oil."
Under Biden, the U.S. became the world's leading exporter of LNG, even as new research shows that the fuel could be as bad as coal for the climate, or even worse.
"The explosion of LNG exports from the U.S. represents an extreme grab of the limited carbon budget remaining to constrain global temperature rise," the letter writers, who come from more than 37 countries, argued. "This is especially egregious considering that the United States has already consumed far more than its fair share of the remaining carbon budget."
Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the expansion in U.S. LNG exports was partly sold as a way for it to help its allies in Europe gain energy independence from Russia and survive an immediate wartime shortage of Russian gas. However, most of the new projects pushed by the industry in both the U.S. and Europe would not begin operating until 2026 and therefore were more about locking in reliance on gas than meeting an immediate need.
"The energy crisis in Europe is over," said Constantin Zerger, head of energy and climate protection at Deutsche Umwelthilfe. "There is no need for additional gas supplies from the United States for Europe. Instead of expanding already harmful fossil infrastructure, we need to turn the tide and accelerate the buildout of renewable energy. We must prioritize protecting climate targets and human rights over a second lifetime for a dirty industry."
The letter comes as Trump, whom the writers called "an impending nightmare for people and the planet," has promised to expand fossil fuel production and infrastructure and lift environmental regulations. His pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, Lee Zeldin, has pledged to work toward "U.S. energy dominance" and his choice to lead the DOE, Chris Wright, is a fracking CEO who claims that "there is no climate crisis."
The environmental groups urged Biden to do "damage control."
"The next four years will test the limits of global resistance against fossil fuels," they concluded. "The next two months should be spent doing all that we can to protect communities in the U.S., the Global South, and throughout the world. We implore you to not act as though your climate presidency ended on November 5."
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