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lng exports
US DOE Approves New Fortress Energy LNG Export Despite Climate Risks
"As the disastrous impacts of increased fossil fuel development become more and more obvious here and around the globe," said one campaigner, "the notion of expanded LNG exports should be dismissed out of hand."
Sep 03, 2024
Despite the strong links between liquefied natural gas and harms to public health and the planet, the U.S. Department of Energy has approved the export of the methane-heavy gas by the fossil fuel company New Fortress Energy—leading one group to warn Tuesday that such approvals will ultimately negate any renewable energy progress the U.S. makes.
New Fortress Energy said the Biden administration had authorized it to export LNG, which is fracked gas that is liquefied in order be transported, from its offshore plant near Altamira, Mexico to non-free trade agreement companies, allowing it to send nearly 1.4 million tonnes per year for five years.
The announcement comes seven months after the Biden administration announced it was pausing LNG exports to non-FTA countries, following a push from frontline communities. The move put at least 14 pending projects on hold. The U.S. had previously been the world's largest exporter of LNG.
In July, a federal judge appointed by former Republican President Donald Trump—now the GOP's presidential nominee—blocked President Joe Biden's pause on the approvals of exports.
Allie Rosenbluth, U.S. program manager at Oil Change International (OCI), said the New Fortress Energy approval breaks the administration's "own commitment to pause LNG export authorizations—a commitment made out of recognition that its current guidance doesn't adequately consider the risks LNG exports pose to the climate, environment, and public health, and safety."
"The bottom line is that methane gas production and consumption must decline immediately to meet climate goals."
"The Department of Energy's decision to approve the New Fortress LNG Terminal is deeply concerning," said Rosenbluth. "The bottom line is that methane gas production and consumption must decline immediately to meet climate goals. No matter how much the United States invests in renewable energy, any additional export infrastructure will undermine domestic and international efforts to prevent climate catastrophe."
LNG is made predominantly of methane, which has 80 times the planet-heating potential of carbon dioxide over its first two decades in the atmosphere.
Advocates have estimated that the 14 LNG export projects that were temporarily paused by Biden could emit the same amount of greenhouse gases as 532 coal plants, contributing to premature deaths and health issues particularly for communities near LNG export terminals.
OCI denounced the approval of New Fortress' project as "reckless."
The LNG exports "will exacerbate the climate crisis, harm communities, create bigger barriers to a clean energy future, and become stranded assets that burden communities with toxic pollution, costly clean-ups, revenue shortfalls, and job losses," said Rosenbluth.
Mitch Jones, managing director of policy and litigation for Food & Water Watch, said it was "ridiculous" that the Biden administration would authorize the exports despite its ongoing review of how LNG impacts the public interest.
"The department is under no obligation to approve these ill-advised proposals, now or ever," said Jones. "As the disastrous impacts of increased fossil fuel development become more and more obvious here and around the globe, the notion of expanded LNG exports should be dismissed out of hand."
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'Absurd and Nakedly Partisan': Trump-Appointed Judge Blocks Biden LNG Pause
"Trump judges are hellbent on torching environmental safeguards, the climate, and our democracy," said an attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity.
Jul 02, 2024
A Trump-appointed judge on Monday blocked the Biden administration's pause on approvals of new liquefied natural gas export permits, the latest move by the nation's conservative-dominated judiciary to stop the federal government from taking action against the worsening climate emergency.
Judge James D. Cain Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana sided with more than a dozen Republican-led states that sued over the pause earlier this year, claiming it would harm their economies.
Cain wrote in his ruling that the pause, which temporarily halted the approval process for facilities exporting LNG to countries without a free trade agreement (FTA) with the U.S., was "perhaps the epiphany [sic] of ideocracy." The judge falsely characterized the pause as a "ban."
A Department of Energy (DOE) spokesperson said the agency "disagrees" with Cain's decision and "continues to review the court's order and evaluate next steps."
Jamie Henn, the director of Fossil Free Media, called Cain's ruling an "absurd and nakedly partisan decision untethered from reality."
"There is no 'LNG Export Ban' for the court to overturn," Henn wrote on social media. "DOE has simply paused new licenses while conducting a review of LNG's impacts."
This is an absurd and nakedly partisan decision untethered from reality.
There is no “LNG Export Ban” for the court to overturn. DOE has simply paused new licenses while conducting a review of LNG’s impacts. https://t.co/4TQFjYal4M
— Jamie Henn (@jamieclimate) July 1, 2024
The Congressional Research Service notes that under the Natural Gas Act, LNG exports to non-FTA countries "are presumed to be in the public interest, unless, after opportunity for a hearing, the DOE finds that the authorization would not be consistent with the public interest." Environmental groups have implored the Energy Department to develop a public-interest test that thoroughly weighs the climate impacts of LNG exports.
The Washington Postreported late Monday that Cain's ruling "means the Energy Department must resume its consideration of permit applications for new LNG export projects." The administration's pause put at least 14 pending gas export projects on hold, according to Earthjustice.
Craig Segall, the vice president of Evergreen Action, argued Monday that Cain's "deeply misguided" ruling "should have no impact on the Department of Energy's statutory authority over what must be included in a public-interest determination." Segall added that "pause or no pause, the science is clear: No sound analysis that accounts for the climate and environmental harm inflicted by LNG exports could possibly determine that these deadly facilities are in the public interest."
"It's no surprise that a Trump judge would bend the law to hand the oil industry a win," said Segall. "Corporate polluters have gone judge shopping to find a Trump-appointed ideologue to accept their short-sighted, profit-driven view that would advance their fossil fuel agenda without regard for their impact on communities, climate, or domestic energy prices. The Biden administration should appeal this baseless ruling immediately and ultimately make clear it stands with the public interest, not Big Oil."
"Halting the massive and dangerous expansion of these exports is the right thing to do for Gulf Coast communities, wildlife, and all of us who hope to keep living on a sustainable planet."
Climate advocates have argued that the United States' status as the world's largest LNG exporter is harmful to both consumers and the planet, pushing up domestic energy costs while threatening to lock in decades of potent emissions as fossil fuel-driven extreme weather intensifies and scientists warn the world is barreling toward devastation.
"Coupled with last week's court rulings, rolling back the LNG pause shows that Trump judges are hellbent on torching environmental safeguards, the climate, and our democracy," Lauren Parker, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity's Climate Law Institute, said in a statement Monday. "This ruling means the Energy Department should deny any more LNG exports and facilities. Halting the massive and dangerous expansion of these exports is the right thing to do for Gulf Coast communities, wildlife, and all of us who hope to keep living on a sustainable planet."
Cain's decision to block the Biden administration's LNG export pause came after the U.S. Supreme Court handed down several rulings that could imperil federal agencies' ability to limit planet-warming pollution.
“Coupled with last week’s court rulings, rolling back the LNG pause shows that Trump judges are hellbent on torching environmental safeguards, the climate, and our democracy," said Lauren Parker, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity's Climate Law Institute. "This ruling means the Energy Department should deny any more LNG exports and facilities. Halting the massive and dangerous expansion of these exports is the right thing to do for Gulf Coast communities, wildlife, and all of us who hope to keep living on a sustainable planet."
Cain's ruling also came days after the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)—an agency increasingly embraced by Republicans and the fossil fuel industry—approved Venture Global's Calcasieu Pass 2 (CP2) LNG terminal, which if completed would become the nation's largest fracked gas export terminal and increase daily U.S. gas exports by roughly 20%.
"A rubber stamp from FERC is business-as-usual for fossil fuel projects," Lukas Ross, climate and energy justice deputy director at Friends of the Earth,
said in a statement last week. "Thankfully CP2 has a long way to go and we intend to fight it every step of the way. No amount of lobbying will make this project anything other than a climate and environmental justice nightmare."
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New Report Debunks Industry-Backed Greenwashing Scam of 'Certified Gas'
"Hundreds of hours of on-the-ground research has made it more clear than ever that certifiers are not living up to their claims," one report author said.
Jun 18, 2024
Methane emissions monitors operated by third-party gas certification companies only picked up one of the 23 pollution events detected by anti-extraction group Earthworks.
That's one of the findings in Certified Gaslighting, a report published by Earthworks and Oil Change International on Tuesday that reveals how fossil fuel companies are increasingly turning to private gas certification companies to prove that they are reducing their methane emissions.
The evidence indicates that the "certified gas" label is just another industry smokescreen thrown up by climate arsonists to shield themselves from public pressure.
"'Certified' gas is the industry's latest effort at greenwashing, not an earnest effort at halting the accelerating climate crisis," Dakota Raynes, report author and Earthworks research and policy manager, said in a statement. "Hundreds of hours of on-the-ground research has made it more clear than ever that certifiers are not living up to their claims."
"If we want to stop rising methane emissions, then we must stop the gas certification farce."
For the report, Earthworks carried out 81 surveys at 38 oil and gas sites in Colorado over the course of 10 months in 2023, reviewing both pollution levels and the continuous emissions monitors (CEMS) designed to detect it. While Earthworks detected pollution events during a quarter of its site visits, the CEMs only caught one.
What's more, Earthworks looked at the monitors operated by Project Canary, one of the leading gas-certification companies. The environmental group found that the company's monitors, advertised as "continuous," were actually offline more than 25% of the time.
"Fossil fuel companies are scrambling to maintain relevance amid mounting pressure from communities and climate advocates, so they resort to third-party 'certification' schemes as a last-ditch effort to portray their operations as 'clean,'" Oil Change International research director Lorne Stockman said in a statement. "Our research reveals these certification scams are deceptive, enabling gas companies to expand under the false pretense of emission reductions. This greenwashing scam must end so we can focus on what's urgently needed—phasing out oil and gas."
Tuesday's report builds on a growing body of evidence that "gas certification" is another trick from what Raynes described as the "industry's grab bag of dangerous distractions." While private companies certify almost 40% of U.S. gas, the nation's oil and gas sector emits more methane than any other country's. In 2023, it released 13.8 million metric tons, translating to almost 1.2 billion tons of CO2 equivalent or the emissions of 301 coal plants, according to International Energy Agency figures. Globally, the oil and gas industry spewed more than 79.5 million metric tons of methane last year.
The report also follows previous research from Earthworks and Oil Change, which found that Project Canary monitors failed to detect every pollution event picked up by Earthworks' Optical Gas Imaging cameras.
The fact that the monitors only picked up one Earthworks-detected event a year later "suggests that operators have made minimal changes to monitoring efforts to account for the findings in our report," the authors of Tuesday's report wrote.
The latest report also points out what it terms a "dangerous loophole": The companies are not required by Colorado law or by certification standards to address pollution events that occur due to normal operations as opposed to malfunctions. Yet most of the events detected by Earthworks were part of normal operations.
"These emissions are no less harmful to communities exposed to the pollution nor less impactful with respect to the climate crisis," the authors wrote.
Despite the many problems with the gas-certification process, the industry is rushing to adopt it as the U.S. Department of Energy, Environmental Protection Agency, and Treasury Department are considering incorporating it into regulations. Some public utilities are also buying certified gas and then charging customers more to deliver it as they claim to make progress on climate goals.
"As they have for decades, the fossil fuel industry is deliberately lying, manipulating, and gaslighting the public," Leah Qusba, executive director for Action for the Climate Emergency, said in a statement. "Before 'certified gas' there was 'next-gen gas,' before that there was 'natural gas,' and before that there was the myth of 'clean coal.' All these fancy terms to hide the truth: Fossil fuels are deadly, and they're stealing our future."
In response to their findings, the report authors recommended that methane-reduction efforts should be carried out under government overview and within a regulatory framework that prioritizes the well-being of communities and consumers. Further, they advised that regulators should not include certification schemes as part of their efforts and that CEMs should be used transparently and in accordance with peer-reviewed best practices and with all of their data made publicly available.
"It's no surprise that the same industry that has spent decades marketing gas as 'safe,' 'clean,' and 'natural' is now looking for new ways to greenwash its product," said Gas Leaks Project executive director James Hadgis. "Third-party gas certification schemes are unable, or unwilling, to capture emissions events that intensify the climate crisis while poisoning nearby communities. If we want to stop rising methane emissions, then we must stop the gas certification farce."
Moreover, the report emphasizes that, while important, simply reducing oil-and-gas methane emissions is not enough. The government must encourage and facilitate a rapid and just transition away from fossil fuels.
This includes resisting the industry push to increase the production and export of liquefied natural gas (LNG). LNG has emerged as a major front in the battle to combat the climate emergency, as the Biden administration has announced a pause on export approvals to assess their impact on the climate and consumers, even as fossil fuel companies and allied politicians protest.
"LNG exports are a certified disaster. No amount of greenwashing changes the fact that continuing to expand fossil fuels will perpetuate harms to our climate and the communities in the path of the fracking industry's drilling pads, pipelines, and export facilities," Jim Walsh, the policy director of Food & Water Watch and Food & Water Action, said in a statement.
"We continue to see major fossil fuel companies move forward plans to increase exports of fracked gas, despite the limited pause on new export approvals," Walsh continued. "The health of our communities and the planet depends on President Biden rejecting these misleading industry certification schemes and starting a real and robust effort to phase out fossil fuels."
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