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department of energy
'Permit to Kill': LNG Buildout Would Boost Premature Deaths, Health Costs
"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," said the report's co-author.
Aug 14, 2024
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."
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Feds to Vote on CP2 Project as Climate Campaigners Protest LNG Buildout
"FERC's approval of this massive new LNG export facility would cut through the heart of President Biden's LNG pause, realizing one of the largest fossil fuel export projects ever proposed in the United States," an expert said.
Jun 21, 2024
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission will formally consider issuing a permit for the Calcasieu Pass 2 export terminal, a major fossil fuel infrastructure project in Louisiana that environmental campaigners oppose, according to a notice the agency released Thursday.
It will come to a vote at the agency's June 27 meeting, E&E Newsreported.
Environmentalists campaigned against the project last year but quieted down after the Biden administration paused all liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports to non-Fair Trade Agreement countries in January.
The planned terminal, owned by Venture Global and often called CP2, has been noticeably absent from FERC meeting agendas since last July, when the agency published the environmental impact statement. Venture and other corporate interests have pressured the agency to move the project, which is located near the Gulf of Mexico in western Louisiana, up on the agenda—and finally gotten their wish.
Advocacy groups urged the federal agency to deny the permit.
"FERC's approval of this massive new LNG export facility would cut through the heart of President [Joe] Biden's LNG pause, realizing one of the largest fossil fuel export projects ever proposed in the United States," Food & Water Watch policy director Jim Walsh said in a statement.
"Biden claims to be concerned by the devastating climate and environmental impacts of continued LNG development, yet the country is on track to export more and more LNG for years to come—with or without his temporary partial pause," he added.
FERC announced it will vote on the CP2 LNG export facility next week. While the current LNG export pause is still a hurdle for the facility, Venture Global could start construction if they get FERC's approval. https://t.co/p7C25drePj
— Sara Sneath (@SaraSneath) June 21, 2024
CP2 is modeled on the existing Calcasieu Pass terminal (CP1), which began operations in January 2022 and has been the subject of scrutiny not just for its role in the distribution of fracked gas but also for a series of deviations from permitted activities, including alleged flaring that the company didn't report and the accidental release of 180,099 pounds of gas.
The planned site for CP2 is an area of wetlands next to CP1. Venture says that it's already started off-site construction and spent billions of dollars on CP2 and, with speedy government approval, would begin shipping LNG from the facility in 2026, according toLNGPrime.
If FERC were to approve the project, the U.S. Department of Energy would still have a statutory duty to approve future exports, but DOE is required to do so quickly, Walsh of Food & Water Watch told Common Dreams. Still, a key holdup for Venture would be the pause on exporting LNG to countries without free trade agreements—many of the company's contracts are with such countries, Walsh said.
FERC's slowness to place CP2 on its agenda was "welcomed," Walsh said, but "a real victory will be FERC rejecting this project, and failing that, President Biden's DOE denying their export license."
Walsh expressed concern that the U.S. "continues to ramp up export capacity even as we have a pause on new LNG export approvals."
Environmental and community groups have called on the Biden administration to ban LNG exports permanently, as Common Dreamsreported last month, and a key part of that effort is blocking CP2 and closing CP1, they contend.
The groups have allies at the national level who've tried to draw attention to a project whose importance has often been overlooked.
Environmental campaigner and journalist Bill McKibben, who wrote a piece about CP2 for The New Yorker last year, has called the project "an environmental justice train wreck." He wrote in Common Dreams that CP2 is like Keystone XL "but with perhaps even more at stake." He also said that it could end up creating more than 20 times the emissions of the controversial Willow project in Alaska.
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Energy Experts, Frontline Advocates Call On Biden to Stop LNG Exports for Good
"You cannot say that tripling or quadrupling the level of exports from today's record highs is not going to result in significant financial harm," one expert said.
May 21, 2024
Gulf Coast community advocates on Tuesday called for U.S. President Joe Biden to permanently ban the export of liquefied natural gas.
In January, Biden's Department of Energy (DOE) announced a pause on approvals for new LNG exports to non-Free Trade Agreement countries so it could develop a new metric for whether these exports are in the public interest. The new metric should consider factors such as energy prices and the climate emergency, the administration said. The move was widely welcomed by climate and environmental justice groups, but it earned instant backlash from the fossil fuel industry and their allies in Congress.
In a Tuesday press briefing, frontline Louisiana fisherman and founder of the group Fishermen Involved in Sustaining our Heritage (F.I.S.H.) Travis Dardar, Louisiana Bucket Brigade director Anne Rolfes, and energy policy expert Tyson Slocum spoke about the harm that the LNG export boom has already done to Gulf ecosystems, livelihoods, and communities and why permitting more would be disastrous for the region, the country, and the climate.
"We've seen the destruction that just one of these plants has, so to be in the public interest to build all these other ones would be… a ridiculous notion," Dardar told reporters. "I mean, this is literally destroying people's lives."
'We're Living This Nightmare'
Dardar described how life changed in Cameron Parish, Louisiana, after Venture Global built its first Calcasieu Pass terminal, which began operations in early 2022.
"We went from sitting on the porch at night, and you could hear the beach, to the roar of the plant, to the point where they would shoot, literally vibrate pictures off the walls and the flares would make nighttime seem like daytime," he said.
People began to get sick from cancer and other mysterious illnesses. Dardar was threatened with truancy charges because his children had missed so many school days due to ailments that doctors have failed to diagnose.
"It's awful to watch these people who are from Louisiana act as lobbyists, even when they're congresspeople, act as lobbyists for a company that is actually destroying our culture."
Dardar also detailed impacts to the fishing industry. LNG barges create large waves that have sunk and destroyed fishing boats, dredging has polluted the water with sediment, and the catches of fish and shrimp have "decreased dramatically."
"Cameron used to be No. 1 for shrimping, and now they call it No. 1 LNG capital of the world. You know, that leaves a bitter taste in my mouth," Dardar said.
Dardar and other fishers in the region are now mobilizing to stop Venture Global from building a second planned terminal, Calcasieu Pass 2 (CP2).
He noted that politicians and others who support Venture Global's plants either live in other parts of the state or moved out of Cameron Parish.
"They know better than to live there, but yet they're willing to sacrifice the people in the industry for, you know, money, greed," Dardar said.
But the people left behind are not seeing any benefits.
"We're living this nightmare," he said.
Fishing Communities v. Industry Lobbyists
Rolfes of Louisiana Bucket Brigade said that one reason Venture Global had been able to get away with operating in such a destructive way was because the state of Louisiana has long been "controlled by the petrochemical industry."
This makes it all the more important, Rolfes said, that the DOE rule the LNG export boom is not in the public interest.
"This is why we need intervention at the federal level," she said.
She also criticized current and former Louisiana politicians who put the oil and gas industry over the well-being of their own constituents. She highlighted a letter sent by House Majority Leader Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) and Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) to Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chair Willie Phillips on April 16, in which they urged FERC to approve CP2.
In the letter, they recycled debunked industry talking points, such as the argument that gas is a "clean-burning" fuel and that exports will help U.S. allies "transition away from Russian gas."
In fact, new science has shown that methane leaks make fossil gas at least as much of a climate pollutant as coal and Europe is moving quickly away from gas all together and toward renewable energy sources.
"At the highest levels of Congress, they are acting on behalf of Venture Global," Rolfes said.
She also pointed to the example of former Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), who now works at law firm Van Ness Feldman and posted on Facebook Monday that the firm was "proud" to represent Venture Global, which she called an "outstanding company"
"This is who is in the debate regarding the public interest," Rolfes said. "On our side, it's fishermen, fishing families, and people who are worried about the prices of energy. And on their side, it's a damn Venture Global lobbyist."
Rolfes added, "It's awful to watch these people who are from Louisiana act as lobbyists, even when they're congresspeople, act as lobbyists for a company that is actually destroying our culture."
Failing the Test
Slocum, who directs Public Citizen's energy program and works as a professor at University of Maryland Honors College, said that restoring LNG exports wouldn't just work against the interests of frontline communities in the Gulf.
"The record volumes of methane gas that we're currently exporting have extraordinary impacts on domestic energy markets that have exposed working families and businesses across the United States to higher prices," Slocum said.
He also gave the history of why the DOE must consider the public interest before it approves shipping gas abroad: It dates to the Natural Gas Act of 1938, which placed this condition on future exports.
"It is inconceivable that it is in the public interest to force the poorest American families to bear higher and more volatile energy burdens."
"The Biden administration's decision to pause pending reviews was required by the law," Slocum said, "because the standards developed to assess the public interest that were conducted during the Trump administration were irrelevant and based upon extraordinarily poor data and methodologies."
As to what the DOE will eventually determine, Slocum said it has historically relied on an overall cost-benefit analysis. In this case, it would consider jobs created and money made from export operations on one hand and higher prices and impacts on local communities and industries on the other. Slocum said that the planned LNG expansion could not be considered in the public interest "by any metric."
"You cannot say that tripling or quadrupling the level of exports from today's record highs is not going to result in significant financial harm," he said.
At the same time, the Biden administration has also mandated that regulatory agencies need to complete a "distributional analysis," meaning they most consider how policies will impact people depending on their income levels. In the case of LNG exports, any increase in prices will necessarily hit low-income families and individuals harder.
"It is inconceivable that it is in the public interest to force the poorest American families to bear higher and more volatile energy burdens, to prioritize bigger profits for commodity traders, LNG exporters, and foreign markets," Slocum said.
He concluded, "Any honest assessment would have to conclude that additional LNG exports fail the public interest test."
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