SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
greenwashing
Big Oil’s Latest Lie? Pushing Climate Models That Boost Methane and Dirty Hydrogen
We must cut greenhouse gas emissions quickly to avert a catastrophic future; the federal government must use modeling that reflects this scientific reality, not fossil fuel industry deception.
Aug 28, 2024
In January 2024, the Biden-Harris administration advanced a huge win for the climate movement. After pressure from scientists and advocates including Food & Water Watch, Biden paused permits for liquefied natural gas export terminals. He also started a process to reevaluate how the United States determines whether exporting fracked gas is in the public interest. However, some lawmakers are rushing to the LNG industry’s aid and attacking science to do so.
This August, the Chair of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, with various subcommittee members, penned a letter to the Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Jennifer Granholm. In it, they attack critical research from Food & Water Watch board member Dr. Robert Howarth of Cornell, who authored a groundbreaking study documenting that LNG’s climate impact is worse for the climate than coal.
These choices for modeling assumptions will determine if the federal government joins fossil fuel industry greenwashing or takes real climate action to restrict further development of fossil fuels for exports and hydrogen production.
The issue at hand is the assumptions underlying how the U.S. government models climate impact. This wonky and obscure math will have a huge influence on policies at this critical juncture in the climate crisis. If dirty energy companies have their way, DOE climate models will churn out bogus results showing that LNG is a benefit for the climate.
All this comes at a time when the climate science is clear and well-established: Time is of the essence. We must cut greenhouse gas emissions quickly to avert a catastrophic future. The federal government must use modeling that reflects this scientific reality, not fossil fuel industry deception.
Dirty Industries Are Pushing for Models That Benefit Them
Right now, the DOE is developing models to predict LNG’s climate impact in order to judge whether it’s in the “public interest” to allow more LNG exports. Science and common sense tell us we can’t expand fossil fuels and address the climate crisis. Nevertheless, fossil fuel industry has long argued, falsely, that gas is a clean fuel and an essential “bridge” in our transition to renewables. This fight over LNG exports is no different.
At the same time, the Treasury Department is developing models to determine the climate impacts of various types of hydrogen production. This will ultimately determine what—if any—tax credits hydrogen producers receive. Dirty energy companies are advocating for modeling assumptions that would allow hydrogen made with fracked gas, coal mine methane (gas extracted from coal beds), carbon capture, and even factory farm gas to qualify for lucrative subsidies that were meant for hydrogen produced exclusively with renewables.
These choices for modeling assumptions will determine if the federal government joins fossil fuel industry greenwashing or takes real climate action to restrict further development of fossil fuels for exports and hydrogen production. The major crux of the industry’s plan is to skew how we measure methane’s climate impact and analyze alternatives to methane. The federal government siding with industry would have disastrous impacts on our climate while showing climate benefits on paper.
Methane Is an Immediate Threat and Should Be Treated Like One
Methane, the main ingredient in so-called “natural” gas, is a potent climate pollutant that has 86 times the impact of carbon dioxide over 20 years. Its emissions are an immediate threat to our climate. They risk pushing us past thresholds that our climate can’t recover from. But a report from the Breakthrough Institute—cited by lawmakers in their letter to Secretary Granholm—ignores this reality.
Breakthrough’s criticism of Dr. Howarth’s LNG study emphasizes the time frame used to measure methane’s impact. While Dr. Howarth uses a 20-year timeframe, Breakthrough advocates for 100 years.
Incorporating a long view of methane into climate models shows a smaller impact since methane stays in the atmosphere for a shorter amount of time. (Its impact over a 100-year time frame is less than half of that over 20 years.) However, this treats methane and climate change as distant problems for a future generation—not incredibly urgent ones that must be addressed now.
Human-generated methane emissions cause over 500,000 deaths around the world every year.
Dirty industries support a long view because it gives the impression that methane is not as harmful. This would allow them to justify continuing to destroy our climate.
What’s also at play is how the U.S. government considers methane leakages. The industry is notoriously leaky throughout the supply chain, and the U.S. government routinely underestimates this leakage. Direct observations show these leaks are around three times as high as estimates from the Environmental Protection Agency.
The industry is also responsible for many super-emitters that bleed methane into the atmosphere at astonishing rates. Many of these have only recently been uncovered through new satellite imagery techniques. Federal climate models must incorporate this leakage at rates that truly account for their impact on the planet.
But dirty industries have tilted the debate by funding and consulting on research purporting to investigate methane leakage. For example, Breakthrough cites a paper on LNG’s climate footprint with an author who has extensive links to the fossil fuel industry and previously produced research funded by Cheniere (an LNG exporter).
Breakthrough also proposes that the answer to the leakage problem is just to plug the leaks—never mind that the industry has been promising to do so for years with little progress. And when it comes to climate benefits, merely plugging leaks pales in comparison to transitioning to renewables. Which brings us to the second issue:
Methane Fails to Compare to the Best Alternative—Renewables
Gas-based hydrogen and LNG companies are vying for favorable climate models based on the idea that they are better than alternatives. But they don’t dare compare themselves to the clear winner: renewables. While LNG and hydrogen argue they create less emissions or offset emissions, renewables create zero emissions when generating energy.
We don’t need an abundance of experimental technology or dirty infrastructure to transition to renewables, either. We know how to make them, and we know they are the best option for our climate.
Nevertheless, LNG and hydrogen companies are pushing for federal support based on bogus comparisons. For example, organizations like Breakthrough are still going to the mat for gas because they say “It’s better than coal!” (Reminder: This framing was and is still used by the oil and gas industry. The result has been continued gas production, which has caused more emissions and stalled our renewable energy transition.) The same rationale could be used to justify replacing old coal plants with new coal plants.
The true test for whether an industry is “climate-friendly” or “in the public interest” should be its strength compared to all the options, not just the ones Big Oil and Gas wants us to consider.
Moreover, any comparison must consider the lifetimes of new infrastructure, and new fracked gas infrastructure will last for decades. It could lock in at most minor emissions reductions well into the 2060s and further slow down our energy transition.
At the same time, some companies argue that by creating hydrogen by blending fracked gas with factory farm gas and methane leaked from the coal and gas industries, they are mitigating fracking’s harms to our climate. They say this makes their hydrogen a greener alternative to plain old gas, and so should qualify for “clean” hydrogen tax credits
But models should not be based on comparing energy sources to the worst and dirtiest option. That fails to account for the benefits of better alternatives like renewables. The true test for whether an industry is “climate-friendly” or “in the public interest” should be its strength compared to all the options, not just the ones Big Oil and Gas wants us to consider.
Additionally, these modeling assumptions falsely assume methane leakage is a foregone conclusion. They ignore that there are better ways of plugging leaks than letting polluters pretend they somehow offset fossil-based hydrogen’s harms to our climate.
In reality, subsidizing these gasses through faulty climate assumptions will increase the profitability of (and thus incentivize) fracking, coal mining, and factory farming. This will create new sources of methane that will invariably leak into the atmosphere.
LNG and Hydrogen Pose Harms Beyond Climate
Beyond climate, there are many reasons why supporting LNG and fossil fuel-based hydrogen are terrible ideas. The U.S. should consider all of these in its policy decisions. For one, methane emissions are hazardous to the climate and our health. Methane is a key ingredient in ground-level ozone, which poses potentially fatal risks to our lungs and hearts. Human-generated methane emissions cause over 500,000 deaths around the world every year.
LNG in particular would spur a dirty infrastructure boom in communities already suffering at the hands of the oil and gas industry. In the Gulf Coast, for example, majority-Black communities are facing sinking land due to climate change and devastating pollution. A buildout of more LNG terminals would compound these harms with more pollution and the risk of catastrophic explosions.
Dirty industries, their allies in Congress, and their mouthpieces are rejecting science to sell the lie of “clean” gas and hydrogen.
A growing LNG industry would also require more fracking and all its attendant harms to nearby communities. Those include mysterious illnesses, increased cancer rates, and poisoned water. The entire natural gas life cycle poses serious risks to the U.S.’s water resources. Extraction, pipelines, and related carbon capture and storage can impact water scarcity by growing demand for water in other sectors and in areas where supply is projected to decline.
Gas-based hydrogen would similarly prop up the fracking industry, and projects that use gas made from factory farm waste would prop up the harmful factory farm model. Hydrogen is also an incredibly thirsty power source, and many of the projects planned in the U.S. are proposed for areas that can’t afford to waste a drop. (Compared to hydrogen, renewables—especially wind—are also the clear winner when it comes to minimizing water use.)
We Need Accurate, Science-Based Modeling for Good Climate Policy
It is a scientific fact that climate change’s dangers become more urgent every day; that averting climate catastrophe requires ending fossil fuels; that renewables present the most effective strategy for reducing emissions. But dirty industries, their allies in Congress, and their mouthpieces are rejecting science to sell the lie of “clean” gas and hydrogen. They are pushing for the U.S. government to use models that lead to the best outcomes for them—not the planet.
By attacking this science and going after scientists like Dr. Howarth, the industry is doing what it’s always done. It’s casting doubt on established science to further its own ends; muddying the waters to sow confusion on what we already know. In order to pass policy that will actually prevent climate catastrophe, we need leaders who will see through their smoke and mirrors.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Prosecute the Climate Criminals
A new website and project calls for accountability.
Jul 22, 2024
Imagine a time, in the not-too-distant future, when an international tribunal convenes to ask the question: Who is responsible for climate disruption? Who knew about the dangers of burning oil, gas, and coal, with their atmosphere-altering properties, but did nothing about it? Or worse, which individuals worked to promote disinformation, block changes, and delay action?
We are all responsible for climate change, especially those of us who live in industrialized countries with a higher standard of living based on a century of low-cost, easy-to-extract fossil fuels. But not all contributions to climate disruption are equal: Some take the bus while others fly private jets. And some people have considerably more political power and wealth to influence the paths we have taken and, regrettably, not taken.
We now know that certain corporations, like ExxonMobil and Shell, hold oversized responsibility for running out humanity’s clock and limiting our present options. There are individuals, often presiding over powerful transnational corporations and institutions, with the clout of medium-sized nation-states. These are the “apex predators” in the climate inaction ecosystem. Future generations will know their names: They are the climate criminals.
We want the public to learn the names of these climate criminals and understand how they are largely to blame for the devastating climate impacts happening all around us.
These alleged climate criminals deploy their power to promote climate change denial while knowing the science documenting the harms of emitting billions of tons of carbon and methane into the atmosphere. When a scientific consensus emerged in the last two decades, the climate criminals sowed doubt to foster societal paralysis and inaction.
When the public began to awaken to the harms of greenhouse gas emissions, the climate criminals worked to capture our political system to thwart any efforts to regulate carbon pollution. They insidiously used their power to block less-polluting alternatives to oil, gas, and coal.
As each year has passed, the opportunities for averting the worst disruptions of climate change have diminished. The climate criminals use their power to run out the clock on climate change. They have brought us to the point of living through rising climate disruption with unprecedented rising temperatures, droughts, wildfires, floods, and rising ocean temperatures and sea levels.
Today, on Climate Emergency Day, we are releasing the names of the 2024 North American Climate Criminals: Individuals we have identified who are actively engaged in “crimes-in-progress.”
The 2024 Climate Criminals include leaders of energy companies, major financiers of fossil fuel projects, insurance companies, think tanks and foundations that fund climate change denial, and communications firms that spin disinformation and distraction.
A new project called the Climate Accountability Research Project (CARP) received over 300 nominations for climate criminals and prepared extensive dossiers on over 150. In selecting the 2024 Climate Criminals, we identified 40 individuals recently involved in jeopardizing our shared future. A committee of activists and researchers narrowed the list down to 24.
Most of the 2024 Climate Criminals, unlike their recent predecessors, do not deny the existence of human-created climate change. They leaped from outright denial to distracting delay in a nanosecond. Today’s climate criminals exercise their considerable clout to deflect responsibility, block meaningful action, and promote “greenwashed” solutions. They have staked their future on unrealistic, expensive, and unscalable technological fixes to distract us for a few more years while they squeeze riches from the fossil fuel stone.
The 2024 Climate Criminals have been personally enriched by their climate crimes. Their combined wealth is at least $29.8 billion, with an average of $1.7 billion. Three are billionaires: Kelcy Warren (worth $7.1 billion), Jamie Dimon ($2.3 billion), and Harold Hamm ($18.4 billion). Their combined annual compensation is $232 million, with an average of $11 million.
Even those at foundations, think tanks, and national lobbying associations are paid hefty salaries. Michelle Bloodworth, CEO of America’s Power, has been paid over $4 million since 2017 to lobby on behalf of the moribund coal industry. She hopes a Trump administration will declare coal plants as “critical infrastructure” and keep them spewing. Brian Hooks was paid over $5 million between 2020 and 2022 by one Koch-funded organization—and millions more through decades of work at the Koch Foundation and other Koch-funded climate-denying and action-delaying organizations.
Several 2024 Climate Criminals were involved in writing the environment and energy sections of the Project 2025 “Mandate for Leadership,” a public policy blueprint spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation that dismantles environmental protection and reduces investment in renewable energy while expanding Arctic drilling and Western coal mining. It would remove the U.S. from international climate change agreements.
In April 2024, four of our 2024 Climate Criminals attended a dinner at Mar-a-Lago of fossil fuel executives, organized by climate criminal Harold Hamm. Trump allegedly asked for $1 billion in campaign donations in exchange for rolling back U.S. President Joe Biden’s regulatory policies. Chevron CEO Mike Wirth, ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods, and American Petroleum Institute CEO Mike Sommers were reportedly also at the dinner. Hamm also co-hosted another fundraising luncheon for Trump with climate criminal Kelcy Warren on May 22, 2024.
This Climate Criminals educational campaign aims to shift the national conversation about who is responsible for climate disruption. We want the public to learn the names of these climate criminals and understand how they are largely to blame for the devastating climate impacts happening all around us. During the next heatwave, name the climate criminals out loud. Next flood or wildfire smoke in your eyes? Damn those climate criminals.
We support nonviolent protests against the climate criminals when they show up to be recognized at a charity gala or speak at a conference. We urge people to take public action at www.climatecriminals.org with a petition urging the International Criminal Court to investigate and prosecute these climate criminals.
When we understand the role of Climate Criminals in narrowing our options as citizens and consumers, we won’t tolerate insults like those dished out by Exxon CEO Darren Woods. Woods recognizes that our societies are failing to meet climate change mitigation goals, but instead of taking responsibility for his company’s leading role in causing climate change, he blames consumers. “The dirty secret nobody talks about is how much all this is going to cost and who’s willing to pay for it,” Woods told Fortune in March 2024. “We have opportunities to make fuels with lower carbon in it, but people aren’t willing to spend the money to do that.”
The real dirty secret is that it’s Darren Woods and his fellow climate criminals who’ve been running out the clock, engaging in denial, and blocking the development of the green technologies that we need to preserve a livable planet. They are responsible, and they need to be held to account.
Keep ReadingShow Less
No Amount of Greenwashing Can Make Gas Clean
Despite what the industry says, fracked methane gas is far from natural and isn’t a climate solution.
Jul 07, 2024
In response to multiple complaints, Ad Standards Canada recently found that advertising for fossil gas gave an “overall misleading impression… that B.C. LNG is good for the environment, amounting to greenwashing.”
The ads, by industry front group Canada Action, promoted the debunked message that so-called “liquefied natural gas”—which is mostly the deadly greenhouse gas methane—is good for the environment and climate because it can replace higher-emitting coal-fired power. “B.C. LNG will reduce global emissions,” the ads claimed over a bright green background. Other industry groups and gas companies are using similar messaging.
Although the standards branch has no enforcement power and doesn’t release its findings publicly, the issue illustrates the lengths to which the fossil fuel industry will go to keep profits rolling in, even in the face of disaster. (The decision was leaked by the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, which was not a complainant.)
Far from a “green” replacement for coal, LNG development locks up investment in fossil infrastructure, locks in emissions, and locks out renewables.
For a relatively brief, albeit far too long, period of human history, global economies have run on coal, oil, and gas. These fossil fuels appeared to be almost limitless, and could be quickly burned in gas-guzzling vehicles and factories, driving profits to the point that the industry became the most lucrative in history.
The fuels conferred real and imagined benefits for large numbers of people, offering mobility, heat, and light; faster production, and more. Used wisely, they might have provided a net benefit to humanity. But burned wastefully and rapidly in the name of greed and obscene profits, they’ve polluted air, land, and water; harmed human health; reduced biodiversity; and spewed climate-altering greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere. We’re now reaping the consequences with heat domes, floods, droughts, illness, death, migrant crises, biodiversity loss, water shortages, and more.
Most or all of the true benefits fossil fuels offer can be better realized with cleaner energy sources and less-polluting products—along with a shift away from wasteful, unnecessary consumerism.
As the consequences of burning coal for power and oil for transportation and more become clearer, the sector has seized on numerous survival strategies. For decades, industry executives and allies downplayed or covered up the evidence—some from its own scientists—that its products would heat the planet to dangerous levels if used as intended. Although that tactic is still employed, mounting evidence and real-life experiences of global heating have made it more difficult to fool the public.
So the industry is resorting to other plans—scaling up plastic production (plastic is an oil and gas byproduct) and touting the benefits of “natural” gas among them.
But fracked methane gas is far from natural and isn’t a climate solution. Throughout its life cycle, it devastates landscapes, pollutes waterways, uses excessive amounts of water (often in drought-stricken areas), consumes massive volumes of energy to process and liquefy, and creates emissions during transport and burning.
Not only that, flaring and leaks from wellhead to power plant emit massive amounts of methane into the atmosphere. Methane, of which the gas is composed, is up to 87 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. It breaks down much faster than CO2, which remains in the atmosphere for centuries, but it causes a lot of heating while it’s there. That’s why reducing and eliminating it is a good, quick climate solution.
New research from the David Suzuki Foundation shows British Columbia’s rush to develop LNG is bad on every front, from economics to climate. Far from a “green” replacement for coal, LNG development locks up investment in fossil infrastructure, locks in emissions, and locks out renewables. The International Energy Agency and others predict that LNG demand will drop precipitously as cheaper renewables are deployed at accelerating speed. A massive oversupply in gas is also being developed, much of it by low-cost competitors for Asian markets, where B.C.’s gas would be exported.
Every credible agency and person—from the International Energy Agency to the United Nations to universities worldwide and climate scientists everywhere—has warned that further development of gas, oil, and coal will propel the world into irreversible climate chaos.
We must leave fossil fuels in the ground. Our future depends on it. No amount of greenwashing or gaslighting will change that.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular