LNG exports are incompatible with the efforts to address our climate crisis

While “banning fracking” dominated the discussion during last year’s election, an equally pressing issue was largely ignored: What should we dowith all the gas produced from fracked wells?

With the U.S. market saturated and prices languishing, the industry has focused on one big alternative — exports. But liquefied natural gas has an Achilles heel, one the industry ignores at its peril.

New research my colleagues and I recently published demonstrates that the rapid increase in LNG exports is incompatible with efforts to address our climate crisis. If you include pollution emitted at drilling sites and during transportation, LNG releases far more emissions than the low-cost wind and solar technologies available today. And, in fact, the leaks and other associated emissions from LNG can be so high that in some cases the climate impact of LNG is on par with coal.

With science telling us that we need to zero out carbon emissions over the next 30 years, we cannot rely on a technology that locks in millions of tons of emissions over that period — or long after it. After siding with the Trump administration’s regulatory rollbacks, the oil and gas industry now says it wants to be part of the solution on climate change. But modest measures like preventing methane leakage are not enough; it’s time to transition off of fossil fuels.

Nations around the world are already doing so, adopting bold promises to slash their emissions and reliance on fossil fuels. Whether it’s China or France, South Korea or the United Kingdom, nations that are now importing U.S. LNG are moving quickly to decarbonize.

In the U.S., President-elect Joe Biden’s incoming administration has made bold climate pledges that are incompatible with new investments in LNG. Our research found that just producing, transporting and liquefying this gas will generate up to 213 million metric tons of new GHG emissions annually in the U.S. by 2030, equal to the yearly emissions of up to 45 million cars. And that doesn’t even include the emissions that will be released when that gas is eventually consumed and burned overseas.

With U.S. gas so cheap, the industry may prefer to ignore these risks and keep pumping away. U.S. exports of LNG reached record highs in November, with the federal government projecting that exports will rise by another 30 percent in 2021. The Gulf Coast has been at the forefront of this expansion, with four of the six largest LNG export facilities in Texas or Louisiana. All five export terminals currently under construction are located in the Gulf Coast, with another 12 terminals approved, but not yet under construction across the region.

The recent decision by France to reject U.S. LNG fromthe proposed Rio Grande LNG terminal should alarm anyone counting on 30 or more years of continued and growing LNG exports. Market conditions can change quickly, especially as the costs of renewable energy and storage continue to plummet, and zero-carbon alternatives in industrial sectors are scaled up.

All the gas industry needs to do is look at what happened to coal. A little over 10 years ago, nearly half of U.S. electricity was generated by coal; today it’s less than a quarter — despite overwrought efforts by the Trump administration to prop up this industry. Some analysts are looking at the comparative costs of wind and solar and predicting that in the U.S., gas may be where coal is today within the next decade or so.

The oil and gas industry prefers to point to those analysts saying half of our energy will still come from oil and gas by 2040, but a decade ago analysts were predicting the same bullish future for coal. And even if oil and gas remain part of the mix, there’s no reason to add to that infrastructure now when we know we should be ramping up investments in cleaner, more cost-effective alternatives.

Countries are already projected to produce more emissions from fossil fuels in 2030 than what would be required to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, according to the UN. We cannot keep investing in this polluting infrastructure and expecting a low-carbon future to emerge.

It’s not just the industry that needs to grapple with these risks.

In recent years, federal regulators have short-changed their environmental reviews of LNG projects, failing to either adequately consider the life-cycle emissions of LNG projects or apply a climate test for measuring the significance of those emissions. The Biden administration should appoint regulators committed to doing so.

Secondly, the Biden administration needs tomove swiftly to control methane leakage and gas flaring, a problem especially acute in the Permian Basin. As the example of France rejecting U.S. gas shows, repealing these common sense rules was counterproductive for the industry. While this will not and cannot save LNG in the long term, it will ensure that LNG isn’t actually worse for the climate today.

Third, investors need to consider these climate risks when considering support for LNG projects. Many investors are finally realizing that climate change is a true financial risk, and so evaluating the full direct, indirect and cumulative emissions of these projects is necessary before they pour in billions of dollars. So far, investors are jettisoning these projects because they don’t make financial sense; but increasingly financial issues and climate issues are becoming one and the same. Just look at how Wall Street banks have sworn off investments in Arctic drilling.

These changes and more will help ensure that white elephant projects don’t end up abandoned along the Gulf Coast in the future. With the stunning expansion of wind and solar power in recent years, Texas has shown that it can be an energy superpower while moving beyond polluting fossil fuels.

It won’t be a simple transition, but the sooner we start the better off we all will be.