Why The Department of Energy Must Reject New Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) Exports
The explosive growth of the U.S. LNG sector is harming communities’ health and threatening to put our climate goals out of reach.
Over the past decade, the United States’s “natural” 1. gas sector has exploded, threatening to put our climate goals out of reach. The U.S. now produces more gas than any other country, much of it for export in the form of liquefied “natural” gas or LNG. And the industry isn’t slowing down: U.S. fossil fuel companies plan to nearly double LNG exports by 2028, making it impossible not to blow past the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. LNG export projects not only threaten our climate: They also cause asthma, cancers, and other illnesses in nearby communities like the Gulf Coast and Appalachia.
The Biden administration has plenty of tools to reign in the gas industry’s dangerous expansion, if they choose to use them. For example, in January 2024, President Biden announced a “pause” on approvals of new LNG exports to non-fair trade agreement countries. This pause, which came after over a year of fierce organizing by the Gulf Coast communities harmed by LNG projects and their allies, would give the DOE time to update the process they use to determine whether additional LNG exports are in the public interest (known as a public interest determination, or PID).
In the past, the public interest determination process has downplayed the harms LNG exports inflict upon our climate and communities, leading the DOE to rubber-stamp projects that should never have been built. Now, DOE has the opportunity to do better by fully considering the impacts of LNG on key public goods like health, safety, and a liveable climate.
With a better process in place, the DOE should find that no new LNG exports are in the public interest – defusing a slew of climate bombs and protecting frontline communities’ health and safety. That would be a monumental, legacy-defining moment in any administration’s fight against the climate crisis and for environmental justice.
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Here are the key issues the Department of Energy must consider in its updated public interest determination process if it is taking the impacts of LNG seriously.
Halting new LNG projects is in the public’s interest.
In 2021, the International Energy Agency (IEA) published a report that mapped out a net-zero emissions (NZE) scenario, showing what fossil fuel consumption must look like if we want to stay under 1.5°C of warming. It demonstrated that “No new natural gas fields are needed in the NZE beyond those already under development. Also not needed are many of the liquefied natural gas (LNG) liquefaction facilities currently under construction or at the planning stage.” It was a remarkable finding for this historically conservative organization.
But the U.S. failed to heed the IEA’s guidance. Instead, it spent the last three years on a gas-production spree. Today, the U.S.’s LNG capacity already exceeds what’s aligned with limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius and averting the most catastrophic impacts of the climate crisis. Approving more new LNG capacity would be a death sentence for our climate and communities.
Simply put, there is no room for new fossil fuel projects in a 1.5-degree world.
To justify this expansion, the fossil fuel industry claimed that LNG is a “cleaner” alternative to coal and oil. But research has shown again and again that exporting LNG is actually much worse for our climate than burning coal, which was long considered the dirtiest fossil fuel.
The public’s interest is also in a rapid decline of existing fossil fuel production.
Ending new fossil fuel production is a necessary first step towards avoiding catastrophic climate change. But to meet its climate goals, the U.S. must go further, and rapidly and fairly phase out fossil fuels. The IEA found that to keep warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the world must decrease gas production by 20% by 2030, and nearly 80% by 2050. As the biggest historical emitter, largest producer of oil and gas today, and wealthiest country in the world, the U.S. must phase out its fossil fuel production at an even faster clip to give Global South countries time to decarbonize.
The bottom line is, we have no room in our carbon budget to continue to burn fossil fuels. We must phase out fossil fuels to protect our communities and our planet from the climate crisis.
The public’s interest requires seeing past the fossil fuel industry’s lies.
The U.S. fossil fuel industry loves to brag that American gas is “the cleanest in the world,” and getting cleaner all the time. They say this because it gives them cover to continue producing gas while pretending they care about the climate.
But none of this is true. The U.S. oil and gas industry is a massively polluting force. It emits more methane than any other. The IEA estimates 2023 methane emissions from America’s oil and gas infrastructure at nearly 13.8 million metric tons. This equates to nearly 1.2 billion tons of CO2 equivalent (CO2e), as much as 301 coal plants.
U.S. gas is also far from the cleanest in the world. When fossil fuel companies call gas “clean,” they mean that it emits relatively little methane as it’s extracted, processed, and transported. Using this metric, it’s clear that U.S. gas is far from the cleanest in the world. In fact, the U.S. lags behind nearly 20 other countries for the “methane intensity” of its gas.
This reality hasn’t stopped the gas industry from pursuing new “cleaner gas” marketing ploys. One of the latest is “certified gas,” which is supposed to be less methane-intense than other gas. Despite the fact that up to 30% of U.S. gas is now “certified,”methane emissions remain “stubbornly high,” according to the IEA, and continue to rise in lockstep with production. (If certified gas were actually less methane-intense, methane emissions would be rising more slowly than production.) Additionally, “certified gas” has a major accountability problem: The IEA found that companies may under-report methane by as much as 95%.
If the industry could manage to “clean up” its methane emissions, it would be an important step towards reducing the industry’s impact and slowing the ongoing climate crisis. But that still wouldn’t replace the fundamental role of phasing out fossil fuels. The science is clear that to maintain a livable planet, we need to produce and consume less oil, gas, and coal tomorrow than we do today. The IEA’s Net Zero Scenario, which provides a roadmap for maintaining the 1.5°C goal, requires a 20% reduction in gas by 2030 and an 80% reduction by 2050. This projection incorporates a 75% reduction in methane emissions from oil and gas by 2030, a goal that the industry has failed to make progress toward.
The fossil fuel industry’s scams not only fail to meaningfully reduce emissions; they don’t even attempt to mitigate the impact of pollution on the communities near LNG terminals. The Department of Energy should see the gas industry’s marketing ploys for what they are and meet the urgent need for a full phase-out of fossil fuels.
The public’s interest is in health and safety.
LNG projects threaten the health and safety of the Gulf Coast and Appalachian communities where they are sited. Those living nearby experience headaches, coughing, dizziness, and other ailments, and their long-term health is threatened by the toxic chemicals emitted by LNG projects, which include volatile organic compounds, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter. These chemicals increase the risk of asthma, certain cancers, and harm to maternal and infant health.
LNG facilities are usually placed in the Black, Brown, Indigenous, and low-income communities that the fossil fuel industry has designated “sacrifice zones.” Because of environmental racism, these communities are often already facing high burdens of pollution. Allowing new LNG projects would only exacerbate the situation, making residents sicker and less safe.
Conclusion
The bottom line is that new LNG exports would be a hazard to our climate and our communities. They threaten to push our climate goals out of reach and harm public health and safety. Despite the industry’s red herrings, there remains no substitute for a full, fair, fast, and funded phase-out of fossil fuels if we are to prevent catastrophic warming.
The Biden administration must continue to improve DOE’s public determination process for new LNG exports, and conclude that no new LNG exports are in the public interest. Doing so would be a true show of climate leadership and an important step towards building the clean energy future we need.
Footnotes:
1. “Natural” gas is the industry’s preferred euphemism for methane gas. We will use “methane gas” or “gas” in this blog post instead.
For more information about the dangers of LNG and why the Biden administration should reject new LNG exports, please see the 2024 LNG Analysis on which this blog was based.