FERC Alternative Climate Facts Exposed

Long before Trump spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway took the phrase ‘alternative facts’ mainstream, a rogue federal agency with authority to ram giant gas pipelines through people’s property against their will has for years pioneered the Trumpian version of reality when assessing the climate impact of natural gas infrastructure.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), an “independent” agency that regulates the interstate transmission of gas and electricity, has permitted nearly 200 interstate gas pipeline projects stretching over 6,000 miles since 2009, and rejected only a single application. For each of these permitted projects an environmental impact statement was conducted. Where climate was assessed in these studies, the conclusion has always been the same – “no significant impact”.

Oil Change International and partners are launching a series of briefings today, together with a detailed methodology, that set the record straight on FERC’s alternative climate facts. The evidence is as clear as the rain on Trump’s inauguration ceremony. Major interstate gas pipelines cause climate change.

We kick this series off with assessments of two proposed pipelines that would tear through the pristine national forests and historic bucolic farmlands of West Virginia and Virginia (and in the case of one, also through North Carolina), the Mountain Valley and Atlantic Coast pipelines.

Together these pipelines would cause annual emissions of around 158 million metric tons, equivalent to that of 46 average coal plants or over 33 million passenger vehicles. These projects could deliver these emissions for decades to come, so given the urgency to reduce emissions close to zero by mid-century to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, a verdict of ‘no significant impact’ seems a little lenient.

So how does FERC manage to portray these emissions as not actually happening (Sean Spicer should take note here because we’re about to reveal some tricks of the trade)?

First, FERC sticks to long-since-discredited assumptions by ignoring an entire body of research that contradicts its preferred finding.  Second, it pretends stuff that’s happening is not happening. 

The discredited assumption FERC is wedded to is the idea that gas is a cleaner fossil fuel than coal or oil and therefore more gas flowing into the market means reduced emissions. Like many things emanating from the current administration, it’s not that hard to scratch beneath the surface in order to find that the truth is much more complex.

At the tailpipe of the natural gas-powered truck or the chimney stack of the gas-fired power plant, gas does emit less greenhouse gas, and other pollutants, than the oil and coal it might be replacing. However, there’s two problems with relying on this assumption to conclude that more gas is less climate pollution.

First, it’s not at all clear that burgeoning natural gas production and consumption is simply replacing oil and coal in the market rather than clean energy, which is already out competing fossil fuels in some markets and set to do so globally within less than a decade.

Secondly, there is a huge body of scientific study that points to the full life cycle of natural gas causing greater damage to the climate than coal or oil because of the prolific leakage of gas along the supply chain emitting super potent methane into the atmosphere. Natural gas is generally between 75% and 95% methane. Methane is a greenhouse gas that packs 86 times the punch of the most common climate altering gas – carbon dioxide. Therefore, a ton of methane leaked to the atmosphere from the gas supply system is equivalent to 86 tons of carbon dioxide in terms of its global warming potential. 

Measurements of methane in the atmosphere above oil and gas producing regions in the U.S. have led to estimates that as much as 3.8% of U.S. gas production is leaked or vented to the atmosphere on average. This means that the climate impact of gas-fired power could be more than double that of the gas combustion at the power plant. Therefore, if retiring coal power plants are replaced with gas power plants, emissions are higher than if the coal plant was allowed to continue operation. This is clearly not most people’s idea of a clean energy revolution.

The new briefings and accompanying methodology paper detail these issues and provide clear analysis of the climate impact of these disastrous pipeline projects. As FERC begins a round of so-called “listening sessions” in three states along the route of the Atlantic Coast pipeline, we hope that citizens planning on commenting on the agency’s alternative climate facts in its Draft Environmental Impact Statement will be able to use these documents to inform FERC of the true scope of these impacts.

The key points are that the pipelines’ full life cycle emissions are a climate disaster because: